My New Invisible Friend

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My old pal, well an online friend, perhaps he’s my invisible friend, anyway, Ian Cretney of Invisible Friend has just released his latest collection of revamped and highly original new tees at his fresh and snazzily redesigned site at www.invisible-friend.co.uk. This is probably a collection you won’t be familiar with, and it always surprises me that I.F haven’t had far more exposure than they do, the truth is that it just takes time for the public to catch on to new ideas and new ways of thinking.

To be frank, one of my all-time favourite t-shirts is by this guy, it’s called Dead Rock Stars, he sent me a freebie when I first reviewed the site, totally out of the blue, as you know I don’t ask for freebies to review t-shirts, I do it for the lurve as they say. Anyway, I love that t-shirt to death, which is rather apt, and looking down I’ve just noticed I’m wearing it again! Ian is what I’d call a true craftsman in the field of t-shirt design and production, he’s a dedicated soul who spent the first few years hand screen printing every single shirt, as the business has grown he’s branched out and took on a little help to keep up with demand, (in fact he’s promised to guide me through the art of screen printing so I can start producing my own graffiti posters), but rest assured, the ethos and philosophy of Invisible Friend is still as strong and true as ever.

Trying to pin down exactly what that might be is a tricky thing though, I suppose you could say it lies somewhere in an artistic mind’s interpretation of urban myth, social revolution and music folklore peppered with a healthy dose of cynical humour and a rather laid-back attitude to mortality. Each t-shirt is almost a work of modern art in itself, the iconography lies halfway between graffiti and Post-Modern illustration, the attitude, quirky, irreverent, and with an undercurrent of ever-so-slightly solemnity, which for me is an extremely refreshing change from the usual run-of-the-mill funny one-liners tees you’ll usually come across on the Net.

Anyway let’s take a look at what Ian’s been up to, I’m sure you’ll fall in love or at least heavily in like with one of the following:

SexDrugsRockAndRoll T-Shirt

Now as you may or may not know, I’m not one for typographic tees, as the saying goes, picture, blah, 1000 words, blah… or words to that effect, the truth is a lot of people seem to enjoy my rants, but imagery, iconography is my first love. However, and here’s the big “if”, I studied conceptual art at the height of typographic art, image and text was all the rage, if you didn’t slap a few words over a photograph it wasn’t worth taking, but nowadays it’s all calmed down more, and even I, yes even I can see the beauty of typography, but only and the occasions are rare when this doesn’t apply, only when there’s a solid reason for spelling out your message. This is one time when typography, text, the written word kicks back with the force of a pair of hind legs of an angry mule. It’s not often a list can deliver so many powerful cultural references, idioms and ideographies at once, but SexDrugsRockAndRoll delivers 100%.

Here are just a few of the names that stand out for me… Marvin Gaye, The Stones, Velvet Underground (sex and death personified), Joy Division (the perfect downer), David Bowie (A former god of weirdness), Jimi Hendrix (God of The Guitar), The Doors (It was Jim’s finger on stage), Pink Floyd (Visit The Moon), The Stooges, The Strokes, hey there’s Jesus and The Mary Chain (I thought I was the only one who like them . I’ve left out around another fifty I love or this review will never finish! Hmm, I haven’t heard of the band Invisible Friend Clothing featured at the end of the list and where’s Nirvana??? Oh well arguments will ensue I am sure – perhaps this tee needs a dedicated forum for the next redesign lol.

Apart from the nice addition of a cypher in the form of the t-shirt’s title, there’s a whole heap of some of the coolest singers and bands to hit rock and roll history since cavemen first beat their clubs on the ground. Sure we can argue what’s been left out, or what shouldn’t be included, but in essence Ian has achieved the near impossible here, I can see two great uses for this tee.

1) Guarantee to start a long and most likely highly inebriated conversation at a party as you drink your mates’ dregs and smoke the last o their stash.
2) A perfect t-shirt to wear to the grave. If consciousness does exist beyond the mortal coil, I know I’d like to be able to remember a lot of these bands for posterity!

I have another idea for my Invisible Friend, how about giving artists the same treatment? I’d want to see Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp, M.C Escher, and Hieronymus Bosch in there for starters. Perhaps authors? for a start let’s have William S. Burroughs, Charles Bukowski, Luke Rhinehart (but only for The Diceman), and J.D. Sallinger somewhere on that list. Oh well enough of my twisted visions for the future of I.F, back to the present! Phew.

Dead Rock Stars T-Shirt

Like I said, I have the original, but here’s one of two revamped versions, better than ever! Pretty self-explanatory really, a roll call for gloriously over-the-top death by intoxification, over-indulgence, and general rock and roll exuberance. Available in Plum, Olive and original Navy.

Revolution T-Shirt

It’s not as jolly as the old Beatles song makes out, but it’s true, it’s truer than true. This one’s guaranteed to get you banned from most international airports and governmental buildings in the paranoid West, it’s not an incitement to riot, it’s art, but self-censorship is advised (cover up) whenever encountering the fascist overlord authorities of the new plutocracy. The Revolution Tee comes with a set of handy instructions should you ever find yourself in the midst of a violent revolution (aren’t they always? a wise man once told me to evolve, not revolve, it’s far less painful). Molotov Cocktails – not my favourite aperatif although I do love the simplicity of this design, bold and unabashed message. Violence is so ordinary and mundane when seen close-up, it’s a fact of life that the people will never be happy and every leader has an ego the size of a planet.

Destroy What You Love

I usually love the simplicity of Ian’s designs, however I’m having a little trouble with Destroy What You Love, conceptually a master stroke, but the results leave me wanting. Why? Perhaps it’s the colour, although the close up of the t-shirt is a more bloody red, I’d have rather seen this in the old black and blue combo, or perhaps a shade more purple. I get it, I understand the motive for red, it’s blood, it’s violence, it’s love, but does it work? I’d have detailed the figure more, give them a flowing mane of dreads, or long greasy hair flying in the wind, something to show more movement. Perhaps some kind of representation of the damage done would help. How about a scattering of broken pieces of guitar on the ground rising up to hit the guy back in the face? Right now I can see a hunchback, or rather others will. I can see why, a jacket or shirt is rising up over the character’s head, but without more illustration it’s hard for most to tell that. At first glance, from a distance, I thought the guy was holding a baseball bat, I imagined all sorts of things, but it wasn’t rock and roll. It was a very nasty street brawl outside a Mets game. Rock is dark and dirty, it isn’t bright and clean, this should be far darker, or trippy, take your pick. Still, from past experience I’ve found that what I don’t like is usually very close to what I love, it’s the frustration of being so close to perfection and then not quite making the grade. Yes, love has left me too clean, bright red and frustrated lol.

Forbidden Fruit

Oh temptation, you damnable temptress, you foul beauty of the mire, can I get a quickie before the Lord on high banishes us to the hell of humanity? Sorry, poetry of all things, that’s not what you want in a t-shirt reviews blog. Okay, I love this one, I have a feeling it’s been swiped from a page of a Medieval bible, but I don’t care, it rocks. This is what Invisible Friend Clothing is all about for me, sex, death, and a moment of indecision that seems to last forever. It’s a philosophical quagmire, a cultural and sexual malaise, a constant temptation of fate, and the inevitable fear of mortality.

I love the tag line “One of your five a day” – this is a new direction for I.F as far as I’m concerned, I’d like to see more like this, plagiarising the past with a healthy dose of disrespect and indifference to major religious beliefs and history in general. Religion has caused a lot of problems in this world, especially war amongst a whole lot more. I saw a documentary once about somewhere in the Middle East (that’s where all this bible stuff seems to be) which showed the remains of a once impossibly fertile enclosure hidden off in a desert, don’t ask me where. The fact is there was a drought, sure that one apple might have helped the compost bin, but as most ancient South American cultures discovered, if you chop down the trees and the water runs out, it’s the end of the world as we know it. By the way the original Hebrew version of Adam and Eve was mistranslated (a lot of the bible was), it’s not a snake it’s a guy from the Brotherhood of Serpents, don’t ask, I have no idea. Anyway, rest easy, if this is hell it’s all our own fault :p

Check out www.invisible-friend.co.uk, they have a community, they’ve got a sale on too here, and a groovy competition (if you like Franz Ferdinand).

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