What are your likes/dislikes?

The subject of this post is a little shirt that I originally thought came from 1977, Punk Year One, but after doing some investigating I found it came from November 1974 - the year & month I was first married. But anyway, here's the story, with timeline somewhat skewed (I'm not rewriting it, this preface will have to do)...

Back in 1977 - year one for punk - specific touchstones explicitly defined that era IF you were young (or not so much) and in tune with whatever was poised to kill off the crap of the day. At the heart of it for a minute was Vivienne Westwood and her "boyfriend" Malcolm McLaren who was the manager of it-boys Sex Pistols. McLaren & Westwood had a shop in Chelsea initially called Let It Rock, then SEX, then Seditionaries. They sold stuff, mainly odball clothes that became early punk uniforms: rubber trousers, mohair sweaters, the dreaded Doc Martens or brothel creepers. They produced some iconic t-shirts that were exclusively associated with that little storefront: the "Vive Le Rock" one, the cheesecloth "Destroy" bondage shirt that looked as if it would fall apart any second, and the rarest one of the bunch: a shirt that attempted to define punk the very moment it was designed, and then render it obsolete in quick time. Across the top was the statement "You're gonna wake up one morning and know which side of the bed you've been lying on!" Then just below, two columns, the bad stuff on the left, the good on the right, compiled by McLaren, his mate Gary Goldstein and Bernie Rhodes, who two years later would become manager of The Clash. You could either thumb your nose at, alter your disposition for, or if you were a true punk simply ignore, all or any of the above. The last choice being the wisest - who wants some boring old fart to specify what's cool & what isn't? EXCEPT this boring old fart was The Pistols' daddy & he and The Clash's manager say THIS is what's cool & what's not. The thing is, neither column specified which was the cool or uncool side. Genius!

What if you slept in the middle of the mattress?

for the contents of the shirt, check it:

http://www.hyenaproductions.com/index.asp?PageAction=Custom&ID=25