This morning I was getting caught up on Idolator (and the small handful of other music sites I read regularly) and two items caught my eye.

The first was a post linking to USA Today's story celebrating the $55 concert t-shirt. My favorite passage:

In the apparel world of the living and dead, "there are no bands outselling the Rolling Stones," says designer Blaine Halvorson, co-founder of 10-year-old Junk Food Clothing, which specializes in soft, weathered pop-retro clothing (junkfoodclothing.com). "The Beatles are right there, as well. They run the market and hang from the best department stores to Wal-Mart.

"With some things, when it moves to Target, you've hurt the brand and it's not good anymore at (upscale boutique) Fred Segal. The Beatles and the Stones are above that. It's like Levi's. They have the strongest legs, and it's not surprising. We're talking about the two biggest bands ever to hit the planet."

The article goes on to quote some industry hack with the obligatory and tired cliche "you can't illegally download a t-shirt." Groan. Even worse, they have a list of rules to appropriately wear t-shirts. "A Nirvana T-shirt at a Foo Fighters concert is too obvious; Melvins, maybe. A Screaming Trees shirt at a Queens of the Stone Age concert or a Green Jello shirt at a Tool show will reveal you as a fan with roots." Jesus.

Then I a little further down the page and ran across a story about how the tombstone for Joy Division's Ian Curtis was stolen. I'm not sure what the impetus for stealing the tombstone of a dead rocker is, but I guess if all the original 45s and a tattoo just aren't enough…