Before there was Team Edward there was team Blaster.
My wife is terribly pleased. Wednesday after a taping for an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Twilight star, Robert Pattinson "Edward"was seen leaving the studio wearing a Blaster the Rocket Man T-shirt designed as a collaboration between myself and my good friend Brett Sempsrott, Blaster's drummer. This would be remarkable enough in itself, but to add to the fun a crazed fan had to be tackled to the ground by Pattinson's bodyguard. (More about the incident here.) I postulate that the man was not after Robert himself, but the super-rare Blaster the Rocket Man t-shirt. Only a few hundred of the punk-quality shirts were made, and they were sold exclusively at a 2004 concert at Cornerstone Festival in Illinois and through my friend's ebay store.
Blaster the Rocketman was formed in 1992 as "Blaster the Rocket boy", when Robert Pattinson was six. Perhaps more than incidentally, Blaster's lyrics use horrific tales of monsters, werewolves and vampires to form ingenious Christian theological parallels. A local band comprised of my friends, I naturally became one of their chief illustrators along with Jonathan Queen. In 1999 they made a comeback as Blaster the Rocketman, and I returned to dreaming up ideas for merchandise. Blaster's frontman, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen still hosts a blog on the theology of monsters and is the vocalist and lyricist for Scotland-based band "Voice of the Mysterons".
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| My original drawing for the t-shirt. |
The top hatted, bemonicled werewolf on the shirt was originally my design. It was drawn, I believe, in 2004 for reunion mini-tour and appeared as in the above scan of my drawing. Blaster ran a small batch of these shirts, which sold out so fast that fans and even some of the band members couldn't get their hooks on them. As demand for the t-shirts increased, Brett decided to redraw the design in order to make a new batch and a few hundred more were screen printed, I think by hand. I must say he did a smashing job, and added a lot of pizazz to the logo, as well as altitude to the top hat.
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| Pattinson wearing Brett Sempsrott's redesigned logo. |
Kimmel's Interview with Mr. Pattinson about the fourth installment of the Twilight saga "Breaking Dawn" is scheduled to air November 9th, and the film opens in theaters next week.
One question remains: How and where did he get the shirt?
7 comments:
Ah me, truth is genuinely stranger than fiction, eh old friend? Nice write up about the bizarre hilarity.
What a bizarre turn of events. Who can tell?
That's Awesome! My daughters are very impressed and they informed me on who Robert Pattinson is ... I guess I've been in the "paint cave" to long.
Best cave to be in!
I saw a photo of him wearing this shirt once before just recently, too. I think he shops at vintage stores a lot, so he may have gotten it at one. But he commented that the shirt is not actually his, so it could have borrowed it from one of his friends. Rob is big into a lot of different music, though, so I'm not totally convinced it's not his.
Too bad you couldn't ride that publicity train and get some commercial benefit from it.
People love following celebrities and buying whatever they touch.
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