Mötley Crüe, metal t-shirts in Japan, and a return to youth

I won’t lie. I’m fast approaching 40. The inevitable decline toward the, what, post-lunch of my days has manifest itself in a number of ways, perhaps the most pleasurable of which has been a return to the kind of music I was listening to when I first realized just how much I could enjoy music.

This last couple of weeks then I’ve been listening, almost exclusively, to L.A.’s notorious glam-rock-metal legends Mötley Crüe. And am absolutely loving it.  

I downloaded a recording of a live show the band performed as recently as 2015, and they sound fantastic. Really tight. The songwriting has stood the test of time, Vince Neil’s vocals sound as crisp on stage as they do in a recording studio, and the whole set is doing a sterling job in guiding me through the currently, and still sweaty, horror of my commute to work into central Tokyo. 

It’s not just Mötley Crüe. Since hitting my late 30s birthday and Christmas care packages sent to me in Japan from back home have included CDs for the car -- Megadeth, Tool, Pantera among the misty-eyed reminders of my youth in suburban England.  

At that time such music was all about the angst and imagined anger (At what?) -- more about the message than the songwriting or musicianship. Now though, I seem to have entered that territory where I feel compelled to say, “They don’t make em like this anymore.” And I genuinely believe it! I must be getting old(er).

I’ve also felt compelled to go out and represent.  

The other day I went to Ueno’s Ameya Yokocho. Among the market stalls there I knew there to be one selling rock and metal t-shirts.

The stall has a pretty extensive collection. All the heavy (metal)-hitters are represented -- Metallica, Slayer, Mötley Crüe, Megadeth, Anthrax, Kiss, Guns n Roses et al. It’s all a racket of rushed-job fakery, of course, but a least the t-shirt material seems to be of decent quality.

I opted for a “Guns” t-shirt, with the print of the album cover for their classic, Appetite for Destruction. In “large” size. Honestly, I couldn’t wait to get home and try it on.

I haven’t worn it since, though. I may be approaching 40 but there’s no sign of much weight being gained to accompany the gain in years. I remain fairly tall and fairly skinny, an almost useless combination when it comes to clothing sizes in Japan.  

As such I’m in a constant compromise between length and width, a failed example of which can be seen in my Guns n Roses t-shirt which, at Japanese L size, looks on my frame to be as wide a sumo wrestler but with a stunted length that only just covers the belly button.

Perhaps with enough runs through the washing machine I could shrink it to something tighter, and with the extra belly exposure, turn it into something glam. But then maybe Mötley Crüe or Poison would have been better for that. And I’m not THAT disturbed about turning 40.

Anyway, all of this has been a convoluted way of asking if anyone out there knows of stores in Japan (preferably Tokyo and surrounds) that sell decent quality rock / metal t-shirts in sensible sizes?