How to read a tour shirt's back print

The back of a tour shirt is often a list: cities, sometimes venues, and the date of each show. Wikipedia's article on the concert T-shirt calls it one of the most popular choices for the back (Wikipedia). It is a useful record, with two limits worth knowing. The list was usually printed before the shows happened, and a later printing copies it exactly.

What the dates tell you

The dates say which tour, and often which part of a tour, the design was made for. They don't say when a particular shirt was printed. A design made for a tour can be printed again years later, and the reprint carries the same dates. Our guide to reading a vintage tag treats tour dates as the earliest a shirt could be, never as proof that it is that old.

Read the list from the top:

• The first and last dates give the stretch of the tour the shirt covers.
• The cities show where. Many tours are split into legs by dates, countries or continents (Wikipedia), and a back print can cover one leg only. The Victoria and Albert Museum holds a David Bowie Reality Tour shirt whose back lists only its European and UK stops, from Copenhagen on 7 October to London on 26 November (V&A).
• Venues, when they are named, make a date easier to check.

Cancelled and moved shows

Tour shirts are made ahead of the shows they name. When Bonnaroo 2021 was called off, one merch company had a truck loaded with thousands of Tame Impala shirts for it; Rolling Stone also reported artists selling shirts left over from cancelled 2020 shows (Rolling Stone, 2021). In March 2020, Bandcamp Daily listed bands putting up T-shirts made for cancelled tours (Bandcamp Daily).

So a date on the back is a show that was planned, not always one that was played. A show can be cancelled, moved to another night or another venue, or added after the shirts were printed and so be missing from them. The V&A keeps a shirt made for Michael Jackson's This Is It concerts at the O2 in London, shows cancelled after his death in June 2009; the museum calls it "a tangible link to a concert that never happened" (V&A).

A cancelled date on a back print is part of the shirt's story. It doesn't make the shirt any more or less what it is.

Checking a date

To see whether a show on the list went ahead, check a record of the shows that were played.

• setlist.fm keeps the songs played at concerts that happened, and its editing guidelines ask people not to add cancelled shows (setlist.fm guidelines, FAQ). A date missing there may have been cancelled, or nobody has added it yet; a date that is there was played. Its guidelines accept a photo of a tour shirt as a source for a show, but near the bottom of their list of sources.
• A band's own history. Some band sites and band history sites list every show, with the cancelled ones marked. LiveNirvana's day by day history of 1994, for one, marks shows "(cancelled)" and even "(re-cancelled)" (LiveNirvana).
• Newspapers. Local papers announced shows, and reported them when they were called off. Google's scanned newspaper archive is the place to search for stories from 1995 or before (Google News Initiative), and your library may give you access to others.

The copyright line

Under the art, often in small type, there may be a copyright line such as "© 1988" and a name. In US law the year in a copyright notice is the year the work was first published (17 U.S.C. 401, Cornell Legal Information Institute). That is the year the artwork first came out, not the year a given shirt was printed: a reprint keeps the year.

Two more things about the notice:

• A missing year proves nothing. The same law lets the year be left off when a picture is reproduced on a "useful article", which a T-shirt is.
• Before and after 1 March 1989. A copyright notice was required on works first published in the US before 1 March 1989 and has been optional since (US Copyright Office, Circular 3). A design from after that date may have no notice at all.

The licensing line

The line often names a second company: the merch company licensed to make the shirt. The V&A's records show it on their tour shirts: "©1978 WINTERLAND PRODUCTIONS" on a 1978 Bowie tour shirt (V&A), and "©1995 Stenton S.A. under license to Brockum" on a 1995 one (V&A). Where the line says "under license to", the name after it is the merch company that made the shirt. Wikipedia names Brockum and Giant among Winterland's competitors (Wikipedia), and our tag guide has the years each of the three names appears on tags.

Put it with the tag

The back print says which tour; the tag and the stitching say when the blank shirt was made. Read them together.

• They agree: a tag and stitching from the years of the tour fit a shirt printed for it.
• The tag is later than the tour: the design was printed again on a later blank. That happens with official reprints and with shirts made by someone else, and the tag alone can't say which. Our guide to telling an unofficial shirt goes further.
• The tag is earlier than the tour: blanks can sit in a warehouse for years before they are printed, so this is possible.

Our vintage tag dater reads a tag and the stitching for a likely range of years, with the source for each sign. Photograph the back print too: our guide to photographing your merch says how.

Sources

Law and archives:

• US Copyright Office: Circular 3, Copyright Notice
• 17 U.S.C. 401, Notice of copyright, Cornell Legal Information Institute
• Victoria and Albert Museum: Michael Jackson This Is It T-shirt, David Bowie Reality Tour T-shirt, David Bowie 1978 tour T-shirt, David Bowie Outside tour T-shirt
• Google News Initiative: Google News Archive: Access the past

Reporting:

• Rolling Stone: How the Concert Merch Crisis Might Be Hurting Your Favorite Artist, 2021
• Bandcamp Daily: Artists and Labels Offering Donations, Special Merch, and More For Covid-19 Relief, 2020

Show records:

• setlist.fm: Guidelines for editing setlists and FAQ
• LiveNirvana: day by day history, 1994

Reference:

• Wikipedia: Concert T-shirt, Concert tour, Winterland Productions

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