Last week, the music community lost a legend: Les Paul, creator of the Gibson Les Paul guitar. Forget about T-shirts, the man had guitars he created branded after himself, that many famous musicians raved about for the duration of their careers (and the compliments are still going strong). With his passing many are turning to recognize his accomplishments. Here’s to you, Les Paul, and the impact you’ve had on the music industry.

Over the weekend my younger brother introduced me to a new band– one of his favorites– called Dr. Dog. I naturally had to check out their merch offerings, and the one thing that stood out in the sea of promotional t-shirts was this pair of custom sunglasses. They definitely seem like the correct form of promotional apparel for the “psychedelic indie rock” that is Dr. Dog.

This is a really neat merch idea, and one I’ve never seen before. On Tegan and Sara’s website, you can purchase merch bundles– the one featured above, for example, contains a promotional T-shirt, scarf, and a deluxe edition of one of their CDs, The Con. It’s a really neat idea and would probably make a great gift for a hardcore Tegan and Sara fan. I wonder why more bands aren’t creating bundles like this? It would be especially appealing if they were pieces you couldn’t purchase separately.

I know it’s rare, or perhaps even unprecedented, to post videos on this here little blog where I’m mostly concerned about merchandise, but Modest Mouse is my favorite band and I really respected Heath Ledger as an actor, so I’ve posted the video directed by Ledger, King Rat, off of the new album “No One’s First and You’re Next”. As you can see, it has a very nautical theme with whales going human-ing instead of humans going whaling. It’s a little gruesome, but as long as those images of humans being skinned don’t wind up on promotional T-shirts, I’ll be ok. This album is getting put on my mp3 player tonight, and I’m pumped about it.

So it seems that every time I want to share with you some of my favorite merch from the height of my merch collecting days, Google can’t pull its weight and help me out. I’m not asking for much! Just an image of this awesome black and red baseball T-shirt my friend picked up for me when she went to go see The Bouncing Souls. I had really wanted their anchor necklace, but this shirt substituted just fine and I wore it constantly (with a plaid skirt and beat up Converse because let me tell you, I was sooooo punk rawk). Long story short– I don’t have it anymore because those youth large shirts shrink down to nothing after about 100 rounds in the dryer. So instead all I can show you is the design that was on the pin I had. But it’s definitely not as cool as my baseball tee. *Sigh*

I’m not gonna lie– I never really got into Coldplay, but I am a sucker for all things Spanish and bought their most recent album, Viva la Vida, because 1) of the Spanish title, and 2) I heard some of the tracks were recorded in Spanish churches, and I think that’s really rad. Anyway, Coldplay played at All Points East this past weekend, so I was inspired to see what kind of merch they offer. They have a lot of branded T-shirts and water bottles, stuff like that, but what caught my eye was this promotional mug– I swear, slap “Viva la Vida” on anything, and I’ll buy it. It really looks more like a tea cup and would not at all be suitable for the gallons of coffee I drink every morning, but Coldplay is a British band after all so I guess we’ll have to let it slide.