Posted a picture of this in the comments somewhere else and people seemed to like it, so I figured I’d try to breathe a little life into a pretty dead community

I’m trying to keep the band patches to bands I’ve seen live, except technically I haven’t seen sabaton yet, but will be seeing them in a few weeks. I was ordering patches and doing some sewing so I went for it. Go ahead and sue me.

I don’t get to too many live shows, and a fair amount of the ones I do are smaller local bands with little to no merch, so I’ve padded out the vest with other cool stuff.

Quick rundown of everything on the vest

Left side (wearer’s right):

This is Lemmy, you all know who Tux is.

Pride flag

“This Machine Kills Fascists” guitar- Woody Guthrie famously had a sticker with this saying on his guitar. I was born a few decades too late to see Woody, but I have seen his son Arlo, so close enough.

I painted the yellow caution stripes on that pocket flap because I just thought it looks cool. Ended up putting the guitar there because I felt like it reinforced the idea that it’s a machine.

Luigi.

The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band- if you like country blues, or even if you don’t, look these guys up, you won’t regret it. It’s a guy with a guitar, a lady with a washboard, and a drummer with a plastic bucket on his kit. How could you go wrong?

Fuck AI pin.

Sabaton - power metal band that sings about wars and history. If I ever somehow find myself teaching history, I plan to start off as many lessons as possible with a relevant sabaton song.

Alestorm- I know this band and specifically Chris Bowes are a little problematic, but he has apologized, I haven’t seen any more controversy from him, and I like pirates

Bella Ciao- Italian folk song and anti fascist slogan

Nekrogoblikon - they have a goblin, need I say more?

Left Lapel- a frog. I like frogs, ok? This actually ends up coming off the vest to be a lapel pin pretty much whenever I wear a suit.

Right:

Straw Hat Jolly Roger- I like one piece.

Streetlight Manifesto- probably my favorite band of all time. They tend to get called ska punk because they have a horn section, I don’t think that really fits, but if you try to throw a label like “post ska punk” or whatever around you sound like a pretentious asshole.

Fight fascism pin

Tiki- I wear a lot of Hawaiian shirts, I like tiki bars, I enjoy fruity drinks full of rum with little umbrellas in them.

I ripped the pocket a little while I was taking off a seen on brand label there, so I tried my hand at a little embroidery with that rainbow. I’m a straight dude, I’m not afraid to wear rainbows.

Watchmen smiley face pin

Makers Mark ambassador medal- little bit of corporate shilling, but I do like makers mark, and when you sign up for their fanclub (“ambassador program”) thing they put you name (and a bunch of other people’s names) on a barrel, and once it’s mature if you can get to KY, you get a free tour and can buy bottles that contain whiskey from that barrel (blended with many other barrels, because that’s how whiskey is made) My barrel matured during the pandemic, and so they kept pushing back the deadline for me to get down there to do that, finally made it almost a year later just before the deadline passed.

Eagle Scout medal- I’m an eagle scout. I have a lot of things I don’t like about scouting, but I do feel that I got a lot out of the program and see a lot of value in it. I don’t like how they gave into some of Hegseth’s demands, so the medal lives on my vest now instead of with my old uniform.

Space marine helmet- I got into 40k a while back. I play Orks, but some book store was giving these pins out as freebies so I grabbed one

Rebel Scum- star wars was probably my first fandom, and I’m certainly not for the empire.

The Dread Crew of Oddwod- “Heavy Mahogany” pirate music. Sort of acoustic folk metal. I think I’ve mentioned that I like pirates.

Don’t Panic- The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy has these words in large, friendly letters on the cover, and I think it’s good advice. To borrow from another favorite book series of mine, “fear is the mind killer”

Reel Big Fish- this is some proper ska/ska-punk. I was, once upon a time a trumpet player, and found a live of ska largely through that (although arguably it goes back to watching Kablam! on Nickelodeon back in the day, the theme song was a version of Two Tone Army by The Toasters, and I think that worked it’s way into my head pretty early)

Right Lapel- A flying Spaghetti Monster

Bottom Edge:

Like I said, I dig ska, so that’s why I went with the black and white checkerboard studs. I wanted some kind of studs or spikes, but some venues don’t like spikes so I figured these were pretty unobtrusive.

Back-

Again, I like ska, so I painted a checkerboard into the upper part of the jacket. Then after looking at it for a couple days I remembered that I play Orks, and they also like checkerboards, so I went and wrote WAAAGH! across it. The red lettering also makes me go faster.

Resist Smokey the Bear patch - From the Alt National Park Service, a bunch of park rangers and other such employees trying to keep the current administration from fucking up our national parks too badly

The Appalachian Trail Symbol - I haven’t thru-hiked the AT (but I haven’t ruled out trying to someday) but I have done more than a few trips a long different stretches of it.

I wasn’t sure what to do with the back patch, but as I was browsing around for patches I saw a few small ones with the “fish around and find trout” slogan, and as a fisherman I thought that was funny. Then I came across an Etsy seller with that big trout patch and the idea clicked into place to use that with some biker-style rocker patches. The seller was also based out of Ukraine, so I was more than happy to throw some money towards them.