Black T-Shirt of the week. LOGAN. Week unknown.

Ricky hooked me up with three of his old Logan shirts only two of which are black so I guess I can't feature the third. Rules are rules. The third un-featured shirt happens to be my favourite UK BMX underground shirt of all time, maybe I'll throw it up on here in another unrelated post. 

Logan was a badass T-shirt company which eventually went on to have parts as well, their bars were pretty popular and were featured in an unforgettable advert where a full can of FAXE got chugged through the tubing while Ben Lewis and other members of the UK scene partied in the background. To begin with Logan was very much all about super cheesy heavy metal. Bands like Manowar, Kiss, Judas Priest and ACDC fuelled and inspired the brand. Baz Kinghan the visionary behind Logan was a pretty over the top character, his childhood was spent  playing Warhammer, listening to NWOBHM and watching Heavy Metal the animated film by Gerald Potterton.  These influences shine through in his creative output. The phrase hail and kill is from the Manowar song of the same name.

This second shirt features castle Greyskull from the 80s animated TV show He-Man. He-man is pretty Gnar, you only need check the packaging that the toys came in to believe how badass they actually were.  Logan shirts are much more inline with the kind of thing I normally wear. I cant relate to most of BMXs current clothing output.

I'm pretty sure the slogan sitting on leather and riding on steel is a lyric from a Manowar song. I suppose just as all the current underground and not so underground companies use 60s Garage Psyche, hip hop street lingo and marijuana to sell you BMX clothing, back in the 00s it was all about heavy metal, leopard skin, motor bikes and living fast and loose, like a wet dream by the swimming pool with Motley Crew all while the world burns outside and orcs and dragons have taken over, and kids are running about with broad swords, rune staffs and flanged maces fighting over the last case of natty ice, rights to ride the pool, who and who isn't allowed to grind the coping, and the nuances of the the no build no ride policy, they then go on to finish each other off with the mercygiver as both sides clutch at a KINK Empire frame on the edge of a windy and cinematically pleasing volcanic mountain crevasse. Finally silent, all passions of death have reached an obvious conclusion of zero, the world descends into abject chaos, the seas boil and consume the last green life as the camera pans out to reveal a world entirely consumed by flame.

 I wonder how Jimmy Levan feels about the monster he created.

As a bonus Ricky hooked me up with this covert zine (also produced by Baz) and it is still in the sealed jiffy bag with free tea bags. I can't wait to brew this up and drink in the heady atmosphere of the early 00s when men were men, tea was tea and the UK had a powerful underground thrust for self betterment.