[bobro]

My favorite example of this is Joy Division. They’re the band with that cool white-on-black ridge line plot shirt. If you haven’t listened to their music before, go check it out. You probably won’t like it very much. I don’t know how many records or shirts they sold, but their ratio of shirts sold to records sold has to be one of the wildest.

[guyzero]

The bulk of those shirts have got to be pirated, but for a while they were selling them at Bandy Melville, a clothing store whose target demographic has seemingly very little overlap with fans of Joy Division. The ultimate triumph of the signifier over the signified.

[pstuart]

Well, it was a public domain picture of pulsar, and I remember seeing it in Scientific American before the band used it. I had the shirt, loved it. Had tix to see them on their first tour of the states and then Ian had to go and off himself.

[assface]

Has anybody recently interviewed Ian Curtis to get his thoughts about their shirt sales?

[smrq]

I doubt he would have much to say on the subject these days.

[SoftTalker]

That's a band I have seen mentioned here on HN quite a bit, but I have never heard of anywhere else. I proably do know a couple of their songs but just in a way that I would say "I've heard that before" not that I would be able to say "oh that's Joy Division."