The Red Molotov T-Shirts Blog

It is probably fair to say that my own musical taste is quite easy to establish from some of the t-shirt designs on sale on our site. In fact, it is probably about time that our range of music designs strayed somewhere beyond what critics of NME sometimes refer to “white boys with guitars”, with the occasional ground-breaking genius thrown in for good measure. That said, I expect you could easily pigeon-hole me as an indie type, and not only the t-shirt designs that we do but also my gigging repertoire generally reflects this.

Recent concerts include Damien Rice (genuinely very entertaining), the Arctic Monkeys (hugely disappointing, might as well have listened to the studio album in a small room packed with several thousand greasy students and a load of chavs singing Ricky Hatton songs for all their live stage presence), Hard Fi (worked the venue fantastically hard, had some great lighting and multimedia effects and also provided some of the most fist-chewingly embarrassing parochial ad-libs: “we love Manc”, “Walking down the street today/in a Mancunian style”… you get the picture) and several trips to see the simply magnificent Babyshambles.

I have something of a confession: I think Pete Doherty is by far the most entertaining, intersting, eloquent and, yes, talented musician around at the moment. I say this is a confession as I fear it is far, far too common to judge the captain of the good ship Albion by his media profile and forget that, long before the Daily Mail had ever heard of him, the Libertines were the most exciting band that Britain has produced since the late 80s. I loved the Libertines. I loved the energy and the chemistry. The love and the hatred. The stylish kids in the riot. The horse is brown. I even thought, once it had all come crashing inevitably to earth, the Dirty Pretty Things were half decent.

I saw Babyshambles in concert again last night: yet again, they were superb. Emerging bruised, hoarse and covered in sweat from gooning for an hour and a half in a manner of which any normal 32 year old should be positively ashamed I offer this conclusion to you: Lose your preconceptions, the man is simply a star. Pete Doherty; no one likes him, I don’t care.