The Blindboy Podcast - The History of Bootcut Jeans

Episode Date: September 6, 2023

The historic roots of Irish Celtic Tiger Bootcut Jeans in the 14th century West African textile industry Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Squeeze the Queen's teeth you steeplechasing ephes. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. We are experiencing September climate change weather here in Limerick. That's the only way I can describe it. I've been on this planet long enough to know when weather comes along that just doesn't make sense. So this morning it was intensely hot. I mean like 28 degrees. Really really hot. Type of heat you'd expect for June. But the breeze. The breeze was very different.

And it's a breeze that I'm quite familiar with. It's an early September breeze. And I know that breeze well and so do you. Because it's the breeze that you get back when you're a child, and it's your first week back in school, and you're walking to school in the morning, and you see the first leaves being knocked from a tree. And then you know, fuck it, summer is over. It's not a summer breeze. It's an autumnal breeze. So that's what the weather was today.

The heat and extreme humidity of June. With the violent breeze of early September. And it just wasn't right. It was. Do you ever put your underpants on backwards? Do you ever accidentally put your underpants on backwards? And you kind of don't really notice it? If you put your t-shirt on backwards, that's different. That's quite uncomfortable. You notice

it very quickly. But when you put your underpants on backwards, it takes a while for you to go, something's not right about today. Ah, my jocks are on backwards. That's what the weather was today. September has its underpants on backwards. I had a very intense weekend. A very enjoyable and intense weekend. I did a live podcast in Birmingham at the Mosley Folk Festival. It was fucking magnificent. It was truly wonderful. I had a fantastic guest

his name was Carl Chin he's a Birmingham local historian who's an expert he kind of puts himself forward as an expert in the history of the real Peaky Blinders and he's written books about the real Peaky Blinders but he's so much more than that he is a fascinating

passionate man when it comes to history, politics he's unbelievably knowledgeable about the history of the English working class which is something I don't know enough about

he knows more about fucking Irish history than a lot of Irish historians. He was talking about Jim Larkin, James Connolly. He knew about Frederick Douglass visiting Ireland.

He knew about shit from the 11th century, the 12th century. But me and this historian, Carl Chin, we fucking hit it off immediately so I arrived at this festival it was a beautiful little festival it was tiny like a small festival maybe 20,000 people in this really beautiful little English park you know with a, an idyllic setting. And Carl Chin, he's like, he's a 67-year-old man covered in gold chains.

And I said to him, Jesus, man, you have a thick Birmingham accent. And then immediately he starts deconstructing the word thick and telling me that the word thick when it refers to accents is actually something created by the English upper class to portray the English working class as being stupid. So instead of saying that someone has a thick Birmingham accent, he prefers to say that they have a strong Birmingham accent. And then we started roaring at each other about Winston Churchill. And this was like before the

fucking live podcast. This was backstage. We were standing underneath a tree just chatting. the fucking live podcast. This was backstage. We were standing underneath a tree just chatting and me and this fella Carachin, I don't think we stopped talking for five hours. Five hours straight. In the middle of that five hours there was a live podcast where we spoke on stage and it was only 50 minutes long but to be honest the chat we had was so enthralling and engaging I kind of forgot that some of it was on stage in front of an audience so then we got off stage and immediately continued our chat about English history, Irish history, classism, colonization. Now I didn't intend to drink alcohol. I didn't intend to drink alcohol at this gig. You see, because I was gigging electric picnic the next day and I had flights and everything. But me and Carl Chin were having such

enthusiastic non-stop conversation that people at the festival, they didn't interrupt us at all and they just kept putting pints down in front of us. So I started drinking pints and then I got rat arsed. I got unintentionally rat arsed in Birmingham on local lager. Delicious local lager. Then someone sent me in a taxi back to my hotel. I was pissed in my hotel room and went fuck it. I'd love a bit of baldy. I don't have any baldy over in England. Then I went onto Instagram and asked everybody on Instagram if anyone in Birmingham has weed, which I did as a piece of performance art.

Forgot about it. Fell asleep on top of my luggage. Woke up and see that everybody in Birmingham had texted their fucking local drug dealer. No laws were broken. I didn't break any of the Queen's laws or the King's laws. No laws were broken. All that had happened is I got unintentionally rat arsed because I had such a wonderful conversation with this historian, Carl Chin, but he's someone I'm going to have back on on the podcast. When we were at this festival, we only got about 40 or 50

minutes on stage. And to be honest, the best crack that we had was backstage. So I'm going to interview Carl Chin again for a proper chat because I think he'd really love him. So then I flew back to Dublin with the mother and father of all hangovers and I did my gig at Electric Picnic. I spoke to a wonderful comedian from Kerry called Shane Clifford and I was going to go straight home back to Limerick but I get off stage and this lovely woman approaches me. And her name is Sonny. And she says, my da wants to talk to you.

Would you like to meet my da? And then I said, who's your da? And she goes, Johnny Marr. And I go, fuck off. Johnny Marr's your da? She goes, yeah. So then I went backstage and hung around with Johnny Marr. I don't want to tell you who Johnny Marr is.

He's one of the most important guitar players of all time. He's a hero of mine and he listens to this podcast. So I went back and had a chat with Johnny Marr and we spoke about Rhodesian Ridgeback Dogs, why music as an art form is inherently generous and how the first century Roman writer Marcus Aurelius was a precursor to cognitive behavioural therapy. And Johnny Marr is an absolute gentleman, a pure curious person who loves ideas. So we got on like a house on fire. And then when me and Johnny Marr were talking,

that band Idles walked past. How could I describe Idles? They've captured the energy of a man screaming into the mirror in a pub toilet at two in the morning and turned it into beautiful music. So idols walked past and it turned out that they listened to my podcast, which was fantastic. And then we all had a chat about the music of Frank Zappa. Lovely lads.

And then the whole time while this was going on, Kanye West was there and no one even knew. No one even knew. We were backstage at Electric Picnic and Kanye West was somewhere. Hiding in a tent, obscured from view, possibly in disguise. He had arrived unannounced at Electric Picnic. Fresh from getting kicked out of Venice for receiving fellatio on a barge to see Steve Lacey's gig so then I went back home to Limerick and then the next day I met someone in the street who hadn't seen in ages

and they said to me what have you been up to and I said I had nothing much because I can't I can't I can't just say that was my weekend I'm'm not wearing my bag. I'm not wearing my bag when I meet someone on the street who knows me in real life. I mean, they know I'm blind by, but once I'm just back in Limerick and I'm not wearing my plastic bag and I meet someone I know and this person, this person is a Smiths fan.

They're a fan of the Smiths. I just can't say, oh yeah, I was just chatting with Johnny Marr there last night with Good Crack because it sounds mad when I'm back in Limerick in civilian life with no plastic bag on my head it sounds like I'm making things up

that's the strange dichotomy of my life I feel like your man Mr Ben I don't know if you remember that cartoon. It was a cartoon from the 1970s that used to get shown on children's TV years ago. And it's about this fella, it's a cartoon character called Mr. Ben. And every week he goes into a costume shop and puts on a new costume.

So he might put on like an astronaut's costume. And then he goes into the dressing room and has a big adventure on the moon and then comes back, takes the costume off and goes about his regular life and doesn't tell anybody that he just spent the day on the moon. So that was my intense weekend, my intense and bizarre weekend. And then on Monday my calf had become swollen because I went for a run on the Friday but I'd done so much traveling over the weekend that I hadn't allowed my calf to rest so on Monday morning my calf was all swollen and very sore and because I'd been on an airplane I convinced myself I had

deep vein thrombosis so I went to a doctor just so he could tell me that I wasn't having a heart attack. Well I'm telling you this story anyway because Johnny Marr is going to be a guest on this podcast and we're going to talk about art and creativity because that's what you should do when you're speaking to an accomplished artist. It's a really terrible thing that when someone gets to the level of fame and notoriety and legendary status that Johnny Marr has, the media organisations that interview people at that level, they tend to waste the opportunity by asking questions that just generate headlines instead of focusing the conversation around the craft, the craft that they've dedicated their lives to so for this week's podcast I'd like to explore the history of boat cut jeans the reason I want to explore the history of boat

cut jeans is because even when I mention them they bring up a very visceral feeling a very specific set of images and themes occur in most people's minds when you think of bootcut jeans in particular the early 2000s combination of baggy wide flared bootcut jeans and formal pointy leather. Because it's a combination that clearly does not work. You don't need to know anything about style, about fashion. When you see baggy blue flared denims over formal leather shoes, the flare of the denim enveloping that leather shoe, so that all you have is the pointy top of that leather poking out.

You just look at it and you go. That doesn't make any sense. It doesn't work. And I can't believe people did that. I cannot believe people used to do that. That is fucking insane. What was going on with people in the early 2000s that they were wearing flared bootcut jeans and pointy formal leather shoes? What set of circumstances existed in culture for so many people to arrive at this decision?

Was it something to do with 9-11? Was it something to do with the economy at the time? What was going on? and I need to arrive at an answer to this what made me think about this this week was I came across a photograph of the boy band Westlife the Irish boy band Westlife this photograph is probably from I'd say about 2000 or 2001 it's early in their career. Westlife were fucking massive. They were a really, really big boy band. They were like One Direction.

Westlife were also sex symbols. These were considered very desirable men. And in this photograph, which was taken in a studio, and it has a white, it's all five members of westlife posing in a studio with a white background which means that a stylist was present and chose the clothes that they're wearing all five members of westlife are wearing identical bootcut jeans real baggy looking very wide flares at the bottom two of them their flares are so wide

that they've cut them with scissors to make these exceptionally wide flares one of them is wearing these hybrid boot cut jeans that I'm going to get onto but what we're dealing with here really is four young attractive cool men at the height of what is considered in vogue.

Four of them wearing the exact same set of jeans, boat cut jeans, and all of them wearing identical shoes. Identical. And the shoes that they're wearing are shiny, pointy, brown leather shoes. These are not boots. These are the shoes that you would wear if you were wearing a suit. And they don't go with these jeans. And when I look at this image, I get a visceral response. This has nothing to do with Westlife.

And this is no disrespect to Westlife. All they were doing was dressing in the style of the time. They were cool back then. This was cool. They're in the style at the time. No disrespect to Westlife. My question is around how the fuck did that become the style of the time? See the big issue with bootcut jeans when they're worn with a very wide flare over a pair of formal leather fucking shoes that belong on another outfit the first major issue that the bottom of your denims is literally touching the floor it's touching the concrete not only is it touching the concrete but one of the lads, the cuffs of his denims are completely engulfing his shoe, which means that the heel of his shoe is actually stepping on the denim. We now have a pair of

trousers that do not function. They don't work. And one of the issues with bootcut jeans was they were normally worn on nights out. Now used to wear them too but as i remember women would wear bootcut jeans with pointy stiletto heels but the heel would give just them just enough height so that the denim wasn't dragging on the floor but men used to wear bootcut jeans literally with the fabric of the denim dragging off the ground that you were walking on so what would happen is as you walk you're fraying the bottom of your own jeans but then in Ireland particularly if the ground was wet or god forbid the persistent centimeter of piss that exists on the floor of all men's toilets, when you'd walk with

bootcut jeans in the men's toilet in the nightclub, a process of capillary action would occur, where the frayed bottoms of your bootcut jeans would gradually soak piss up from the floor of the bathroom, and then slowly drag it all the way up your shin so by the end of the night the full bottom of your fucking jeans were dark wet with piss and everybody did it everybody did it this was just life back then and this is one way i want to speak about the fifth member of westlife in this photograph the member member called Marcus Feeley. He's wearing a different set of bootcut jeans, a very strange hybrid that I'd never seen but exist definitely for this reason. He's wearing bootcut jeans that are denim as far as the knees and then from the knee down they're leather flares. That definitely existed so that the leather wouldn't soak up piss

wouldn't soak up floor piss now bootcut jeans they weren't just an Irish thing in England and Australia they were a big deal I don't think they were as big a deal in America in the 2000s in Ireland bootcut jeans were a very very big deal. Flared bootcut jeans in particular. During my research this week I found out that companies

like Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein and Diesel around the early 2000s they had to make a special bootcut jean just for the Irish market with extra wide flares. Now why are they called bootcut jeans? It's very simple it's in the name. They're jeans that are designed to fit over boats. If you're wearing big boats then straight leg jeans are gonna bunch up so bootcut jeans have a little bit of width down at the bottom so that they fit comfortably over a pair of boots. When you wear bootcut jeans like that they fit comfortably over a pair of boots. When you wear boot cut jeans like that they actually look quite nice. That look is that's your classic

50s. That's James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. That's Marlon Brando in The Wild Bunch. Bootcut jeans actually worn with boots. That looks pretty good. That's classic denim jeans right there. It looks really nice. Similarly bootcut jeans worn over high top runners. You know that that's in style right now. That's the Jerry Seinfeld look. That looks okay. You look like you have a set of legs now. But something happened in the early 2000s where these bootcut jeans were being worn with flat pointy leather shoes that belonged on a suit and two together did not mix. They didn't mix to the point that they looked ridiculous and they also were wildly fucking impractical because you're soaking up piss and rain from the ground and wetting your own shin. And from what my research is telling me, in Ireland, this is what people wanted.

In Ireland, Calvin Klein had to make specific bootcut jeans with very wide flares just for Irish people to wear them with fucking pointy shoes. And I need to know why and I'm not I don't want to be judging people here for what they wear I can't dress myself I'm fucking shit at fashion like really really bad so I'm the last person to be judging but I just need answers the first thing obviously that I'm going to look at is the explosion of bootcut jeans in Ireland around the early 2000s it happened at the time that we called the Celtic Tiger in Ireland which was a time of huge huge economic prosperity and excess if you show somebody flared bootcut jeans and pointy brown leather shoes now, in Ireland a lot of them will think, ah, that's the uniform of the Celtic Tiger.

That's what men wore during the Celtic Tiger. So I started to think, regarding the Celtic Tiger, and I've done a podcast on this before, Ireland had an identity crisis. For the first time we had money. For the first time we started to try and see ourselves as a European country. The culinary equivalent of the boat cut jean and shoe is the breakfast roll. During the Irish Celtic Tiger a piece of food called the breakfast roll became very very popular. People would go to nightclubs, they would drink like absolute lunatics, they'd have a hangover the next day, and then they'd go to a petrol station,

and they would buy a breakfast roll for breakfast. And a breakfast roll is a French baguette. And in 1996 onwards, a French baguette in Ireland is quite fancy and Irish people got the French baguette this European symbol of our new prosperity and in this we put traditional Irish pig meats sausage rasher black pudding so the French baguette that's the fancy part the French baguette, that's the fancy part. The French baguette is the denim jean. Because denim jeans aren't Irish.

They're American. So the French baguette is this fancy foreign thing. And then the sausages and rashers. That's the old familiar Irish brogue. They're two very unrelated things that when you put them beside each other it's just a bit fucking nuts. The thing is the breakfast roll works. Breakfast rolls are delicious. We got something right there. We really got it right. We didn't get exceptionally wide flared bootcut jeans and pointy

leather shoes. We didn't get that right at all so a comparison can be made between the breakfast roll and boat cut jeans and pointy leather shoes because they both come from the exact same era the exact same economic circumstances and the people who are enjoying breakfast rolls are the same people who were wearing bow-cut jeans and shoes the night before. And then I started to think about the night before and I started to think back to the early 2000s. You see nightclubs, nightclubs were very very important in the early 2000s in Ireland, hugely important. There was a lot of nightclubs in Ireland and nightclubs in Ireland were very busy places. Seven

nights a fucking week, I'm not joking you, seven nights a week people went to the nightclub and these were extravagant fancy places, seven days a week and I'm talking not just in Dublin but all over Ireland and every city and town. We had about five nightclubs in Limerick. You could go out on a Monday night in 2004 and it was like a Saturday. It just didn't stop. And the nightclub was utterly essential to the social and sex lives of people in their twenties in in the fucking 2000s you had to be able to get into that nightclub people didn't have tinder there was no such thing as online dating if young people were to meet each other to hook up it had to occur in the nightclub that's where it happened

and people had to be able to dance and people had to be able to approach members of the opposite sex. And express interest in them. In fucking real life. This is just how it was. Also you didn't have influencers back then. So. The type of. The type of physically attractive people.

Okay. Glamorous looking young physically attractive people. Who would today be micro influencers. people okay glamorous looking young physically attractive people who would today be micro influencers on Instagram like if you think now people in their 20s whether it's a lad or a woman and they're very good-looking and they're in your local town chances are they have between five and ten thousand followers on Instagram and they're like a little micro-influencer. In the 2000s, that didn't exist.

So those people, they either worked in a nightclub or, particularly the women, they worked in high street shops. So the places where you'd buy the bootcut jeans, River Island, Jack and Jones, these places would deliberately hire people who looked physically attractive to work in the shops. And working in one of these shops was like a status symbol akin to being an influencer today. But why? Why the shoes? Why are all of Westlife in 2001, why are they all wearing identical fucking shoes? The same brown

pointy brogues that belong on a suit. Why are they all wearing the same shoes? What's going on there? Here's my theory and I remember this because in the early 2000s I was a teenager. I was just approaching 18. I was thinking about going to nightclubs but I wasn't the type of young fella who was wearing bootcut jeans and shoes. I was into new metal music so I was wearing, I was either wearing track suits if I was hanging around with the boys and the boys were like my group of friends from school that I would have been in the same class with who we'd get up to a bit of divilment we'd smoke a bit of hash gather around in a circle and spit on the ground because that's what you did back then before iPhones groups of teenage boys you wore

tracksuits and you all spat on the ground together all of you all at once until there was a giant pool of spit that's what you had to do back then so if I was with those lads I wore my track suit and then if I was with my friends who weren't into music then I wore new metal clothes I wore my corn hoodie and then baggy blue jeans with a big long wallet chain and runners but when the thought of getting into a nightclub came up for me and any of my friends, we were like, fuck, we can't get into a nightclub dressed like this. Because you see, Celtic Tiger nightclubs had very, very strict dress policies, which they had taken from the fucking 70s, 80s and 90s. During the Celtic Tiger, this this is no joke you could not get into a nightclub if you weren't wearing a collar and shoes so you had to have formal fucking shoes and a short

collar and then everything in between that collar and the shoes you could have some fun with you could do what you want in the middle but the collar and the shoes were fucking essential. A few reasons for this in Ireland. I've explored this on an entire podcast about three years ago but I'll go over it briefly. In the 90s you had a strange thing with nightclubs in Ireland because of licensing laws. Irish nightclubs had to shut down at 11 o'clock and then serve everybody chicken, chips and curry. That was the rule. If a nightclub wanted to stay open, they also had to be able to serve people dinner. Now, this is before my time, but my brothers tell me about it.

In the 90s, the music stops, the lights come up and everybody is given mandatory chicken. Mandatory chicken and chips. What this did is that it turned the nightclub into a dinner dance situation. So there was a level of formality to your dress that was expected. It's not a night out, it's a dinner dance and the establishments had to do this to get around licensing laws. The other reason that collars and shoes were enforced in nightclubs. Now this was social exclusion. That was an example of classism. They believed that anyone who was wearing runners was going to be trouble. They were trying to keep out trouble. Also they were trying to keep out

punks even though there was no punks left by the early 2000s but the rules still exist this is also why if you went to a nightclub then you couldn't order a snake bite a snake bite is a pint that's half cider half beer you couldn't order it it wasn't illegal they just wouldn't serve it the reason you couldn't buy a snake bite in a pub is because in the 80s that's what the punks and the gots used to drink. So these were just rules to keep out people who they believed were going to be trouble. So if you wanted to go to that nightclub you had to wear formal shoes and that was it. And that's why I think we arrived at boat cut jeans and pointy fucking leather shoes. It wasn't an expression of style or individualism.

It was a collective anxiety. Because your night, your life, could be ruined by the decision of a bouncer. And it happened. It would happen all the time. I'd be out with a group of friends, and one of the lads would go, fuck that, I'm not wearing fucking pointy shoes.

I'm going to wear wear my runners and that's it he has to go home in a taxi he's not getting into the nightclub that's how it was and that's the reason that in that photograph of Westlife they're all wearing the exact same shoes it's the uniform of trying to get into a Celtic Tiger nightclub you're there you're on a huge queue so the queue for the nightclub is massive because it's very very busy the bouncers are very busy too and they're just turning people away because they don't need that business so they need to be able to see your shoes very quickly very clearly in a dark queue where's your id grand look at the collar fine i can see can see that. Quick look down. Grand, I see your brown shoes.

Everyone's wearing the same ones. So it's like a ticket. It's a ticket on your feet that lets you get in the door. But I think the wide flare was to hide the shame of the shoe. Because not everybody wanted to do this. This is what you have to remember when you think back to back then. It was mandatory behaviour. it wasn't a fashion choice most lads dreaded having to like you'd be going fuck it great i'm gonna go to nightclub

tonight now i'm gonna have a lot of crack i'm gonna meet a lot of people that i know and then the little stinger in the evening was oh for fuck fuck's sake, but I have to wear a shirt and shoes for God's sake. This is why alternative clubs were very, very important. In Limerick, we had two alternative clubs. One of them was called Termites. That's where you could go if you were a goth or a punk or whatever. You could listen to The Cure. You could listen to Sonic Youth. You could hear a bit of metal. And then we had another nightclub called costalos which was also the alternative nightclub where you go there wear whatever the fuck you want listen to music that you like and you could avoid mandatory mandatory bootcut jeans and pointy leather shoes so that's the way to look at bootcut jeans and pointy leather shoes.

It wasn't so much a stylistic choice. It was a response to rules that were made by bouncers and nightclubs to keep a certain type of person out. And if you couldn't get into a nightclub in the 2000s, if you didn't have access to nightclubs in the 2000s, then you might as well have not had a social life. There was no social media. You had to go to the nightclub if you wanted to get your haul. That was it. So you went short, baggy flared bootcut jeans, pointy leather shoes, dressed like an 085 number. And the only time you really see that look today in the wild number and the only time you really see that look today in the wild is kind of men in their 50s who just didn't really move on from it like an interesting thing about the bootcut jeans too was the the pocket the little pocket that's inside the main pocket on the front of the trousers that used to be the condom pocket that little pocket at the top of the trousers. That used to be the condom pocket. That little pocket at the

top within the trouser pocket, that's where lads would put their condom. But about five years ago, I saw a beautiful thing. I was at a disco bar. Is that what you'd call it? Because there's not really nightclubs anymore. I was at one of these late bars, a large one, about five years ago. one of these late bars, a large one, about five years ago. And there was a work due on. Some company were having their work due. And I saw a lot of like managers in their 50s who probably worked in finance. And they were all dressed like it was 2004. They were all out, shirts, bootcut jeans, big flares, pointy leather shoes. And I saw something beautiful. They weren't putting condoms into the condom pockets anymore.

They were going out onto the dance floor. And these men in their 50s were taking off their wedding rings and hiding them in their condom pockets. Trying to dance with women half their age who weren't interested and I just found it fascinating that that same little pocket on the bootcut jeans was still a location of sexual intention. It wasn't condoms anymore

they were hiding their wedding rings. I saw about three men do it. The slow little strange waddly dance up to the dance floor. Then they turned her back to the dance floor, subtly slipped the wedding ring in, and then turn around and try and dance with a 25-year-old. So that's my theory about bootcut jeans. That's something that...

It relieves the sense of anxiety that I have when I saw that photograph of Westlife and I'm not slagging Westlife this has nothing to do with Westlife I just I couldn't believe that photograph and I couldn't believe wow everybody dressed like that what the fuck was happening what was going on I think that's a good answer. Nobody wanted that. Nobody really wanted to dress like that. It was something you had to do. And I remember when the rule relaxed in the nightclubs. It was around 2006.

When, like Pharrell Williams or the first Kanye West songs became the thing in nightclubs, people's style just changed especially Pharrell Williams people used to wear hoodies like Pharrell wore and they used to wear real nice clean runners and fashion changed so much

that collars and shoes became unenforceable and there was a brief beautiful spot from about 2006 to 2008 when you could go to any nightclub you wanted and wear whatever you want then the recession happened and nightclubs disappeared and both cut jeans and shoes they are making a comeback they're being worn They are making a comeback. They're being worn incredibly ironically by, I suppose you'd call them hipsters in their early 20s. You might see someone going to art college now and they're wearing bow cut jeans and pointy leather shoes.

As a gnawing ironic statement and one of the most amazing things I saw recently. most amazing things I saw recently. I saw a video online where a fellow was interviewing attendees to the Gareth Brooks concert up in Dublin. Now the tone of the video was kind of I suppose sneering or laughing at the Gareth Brooks fans. It was kind of framing the Gareth Brooks fans as just being unbelievably uncool and kind of rural. Now the person doing the interview on this video they were young and hip and cool and they were wearing boat cut jeans and pointy leather shoes ironically in 2023 but he was interviewing Garth Brooks fans who were wearing bootcut jeans and pointy leather shoes unironically because their fashion hadn't moved on since 2004 and it was amazing to see that the editing of the video tried to kind of make fun of the Gareth Brooks fans jeans and shoes when the fucking

presenter is dressed the exact same just just for very different ironic reasons. And you know what's going to make a comeback next? And I guarantee you this is going to make a comeback in the next year or two. Because it was a strong look in the early 2000s. Boatgut jeans, pointy leather shoes, t-shirt, suit jacket, trucker hat. That's what a hipster had to wear in 2002 to get into a nightclub. See they were ticking the boxes. They were ticking the bouncers boxes. They're wearing the shoes, the pointy leather shoes. That's there. They didn't have a shirt collar but they had subverted that rule

by wearing a t-shirt and a suit jacket. So there's your collar looked after and then they topped it off with a little trucker hat. You'll see photographs of Johnny Knoxville used to dress like that circa 2001. Now I want to reiterate that I'm not making fun of how anybody dresses. I can't dress myself. I dress like shit.

I don't understand style, fashion. I've a weird body shape so clothes don't really fit me. I've disproportionately large shoulders and then knees that turn in like an ostrich's knees. If I wear skinny jeans I look like a pigeon. If I wore baggy boot cut jeans I look like I just shat myself. So I don't really get fashion. I can look at it from the outside and analyze it but I can't apply it to myself. So I'm throwing rocks in a glass house

over here. I dress functionally. I try and dress. I want to draw the least amount of attention to myself. I don't want to look so ridiculous that people look at me and I don't want to look so stylish that people look at me. I just want to blend in and be nobody but in the course of my research for this podcast I went deep down the rabbit hole of denim and it's an intriguing story which I'm going to explore in the second part of the podcast. First let's do a little ocarina pause. I don't have an ocarina this week but I do have a carton of chewing gums. I've got a carton of chewing gums. I don't have a book this week either. I'm going to shake a carton of chewing gums so I don't have a book this week either. I'm going to shake a carton of chewing gums.

So you don't get surprised by an advert. Some loud, some loud fucking advert that belongs on the radio. Okay, here we go. Here's a chewing gum pause. I'm going to do it gently because I don't want to fuck up my chewing gums. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Thank you. Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre

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Just plug a few gigs now. A couple of live podcasts. There's fuck all tickets left for my UK tour. Thank you so much to the people over in England and Scotland. I can't wait to come over and gig fee. So Edinburgh is sold out. London has a couple of tickets left. Manchester.

Very few tickets left for Manchester. I'm going to have a very special guest in Manchester. You can put two and two together there. But if you want to see that, there's literally like 90 tickets left in the Manchester Academy. Then Coventry. Coventry has a good few tickets left

and then Liverpool as well I think is about to go all these gigs are in November as part of my book tour over in Belfast on the waterfront on the 18th of November down to the last tickets for that and then the 19th this actually isn't on sale yet I thought it was but it's not on sale yet it'll be going on sale next week I think I'm trying to get't on sale yet. I thought it was, but it's not on sale yet. It'll be going on sale next week. I think I'm trying to get it on sale this Friday. I'm going to be doing another Vicar Street in Dublin on the 19th of November. That's going to be my book launch. Oslo and Berlin, early 24.

I'll let you know when they're on sale. So I want to speak about the history of denim and denim jeans and how do you arrive, how do you arrive at bootcut jeans? Because I think it's fair to say that denim jeans are probably the most ubiquitous piece of clothing in the 20th century. In the 21st century, denims became a little bit less important. But from the 1950s onwards, everybody wore denim jeans. Regardless of gender, everybody wore a version of denim jeans. Now most people have an idea. Most people have an idea of what they think denim jeans are or where they came from. The popular narrative about denim jeans is

they were invented in America around the gold rush and if you asked people who invented them a lot of people would say Levi Strauss. Levi Strauss of Levi's invented denims in 1870 in America for people who were working in gold mines. That's partly true. Denim the fabric was traditionally a fabric that workers wore. A very very tough fabric that's made from interwoven cotton that's durable and that doesn't rip and doesn't break. Now America, especially in the West, had a gold rush from about 1840 onwards,

where people believed that gold was to be found in mountains. So loads and loads of people went to states like California or Nevada in America in search of gold in the mines. Now not a lot of people actually found gold or made it rich from finding gold in mines but the people who did make money during the gold rush weren't people who found gold but people who like sold shovels and sold buckets or people who opened up restaurants and saloons and bars that serviced the people who were looking for gold. That's who made money during the gold rush but who made a lot of money was a fellow called Jacob W Davis and Levi Strauss in 1873 in Nevada.

Now Levi Strauss didn't invent denim jeans but what happened was his miners in Nevada in 1873 they were working down the mines bending over all day long scraping their denim off walls off rocks and they found that their denim jeans were ripping so what Levi Strauss basically did is if you look at a pair of denim jeans you'll see little metal buttons little metal rivets so Levi Strauss inserted metal rivets on denim jeans so that they wouldn't rip. And he standardized the modern denim jean, the 501s, and also patented riveted jeans, which led to mass production of denim jeans. And they were bought by people who were doing hard work in America. These were working people's clothes. But what you find

with a lot of American history, a lot of American history is whitewashed and the story is told by the people who made money. And the story of denim jeans goes back farther than the 1870s. The cloth, the cotton cloth fabric that became denim, you can trace to the 16th and 17th century in France in a place called Nimes. That's where you get Denims, Denims. Also there were similar cotton woven pants that came from Genoa in Italy that people who were working wore and Genoa that's where you get jeans from so Genoa in Italy and Nimes, Denimes in France. Also denim jeans being blue in India around the 17th century there was a place called Dungaree and Dungaree is where this fabric was dyed blue that's where you get the term Dungarees from

Dungaree from India but if you really want to go back farther blue denim jeans you want to go to West Africa and the color blue. I've done multiple podcasts on pigments and colors throughout history dyeing clothes was really really difficult. Finding dyes from plants or from the earth, that was easy. But making a dye stick to fabric and stay, that was very, very difficult. It required a lot of skill, technology, tradition. Some of the finest textiles in the world historically came from West Africa, in particular the colour blue, indigo. In West Africa, for centuries, the West African tradition, they had learned and developed how to farm the indigo plant

and how to go through the incredibly complicated process of turning indigo leaves, which are green, into a blue dye that could stick to fabrics. And the West African tradition of dyeing fabrics blue with indigo through trade that has made its way up to Egypt, up to Italy, all the way over to India. And blue indigo dye from West Africa was the best way to dye this cotton, this woven cotton that became denim jeans. In America, the first people who would have worn what you'd call denim were enslaved African people. African people who were taken from Africa and enslaved in the southern states of America

wore a type of cloth that was denim because their lives were consistent continual hard labor because they were enslaved. But in the 1700s the denim that enslaved people were wearing it wasn't blue it was a kind of a coarse gray. This is where the whitewashing comes in of American history. The person who's credited with making denims blue in America and discovering how to take the indigo plant and turn it into the color blue, the person who's credited with that is a white American woman called Eliza Lucas in the 1700s in South Carolina who was a botanist. She was 18 years of age and she was a slave owner and her father was a slave owner. And the story goes that in the 1700s her father had a slave plantation in Antigua

which is in the Caribbean I believe, a British colony, and he sent his daughter some seeds of the indigo plant up in South Carolina. She planted it and figured out how to make blue dye from this plant. That's bullshit. She was a slave owner in South Carolina. Now one of the racist myths and narratives around slavery is that enslaved people from Africa america just performed hard labor and that was it just physical labor see these people were under chattel slavery at the time they would not have been viewed as humans the slavers would have viewed them and presented them as animals who were only capable of physical labor now they did go through a huge amount of physical labor because they were fucking enslaved. But one something that gets left out is the

enslaved people had technology and culture and knowledge from Africa that was stolen by their slave owners. So this Eliza Lucas woman in the 1700s in South Carolina who owned a lot of slaves, who was a botanist, yes her dad did send up seeds from Antigua of this indigo plant but she didn't figure out how to turn it into dye. The people who she had enslaved who were from West Africa had hundreds and hundreds of years of culture in the textile industry and they had the knowledge and technology to turn the indigo plant into actual blue, to dye the fabric, to make it denim. So indigo dye and American blue denim jeans are an invention of enslaved African people in America and that invention was stolen by

white American people. What is true is that Eliza Lucas took that knowledge presented it as her own invention and then that caused an explosion of blue dye indigo dye for dyeing fabrics in America. So blue denim quickly became the fabric that you wore if you worked on the land. And it was enslaved people wore it. And then also cowboys wore denim. Minors wore denim. Anyone who did hard labor wore denim. Now let's fast forward a couple of hundred years to we'll say the 1930s in America.

When America was experiencing the Great Depression. This huge gigantic recession where there was fuck all work. How did denim jeans go from something that was only worn by people who were working to becoming a fashion symbol? How did denim jeans become something that people in cities wore? So during the 1930s in America during the Great Depression rich Americans began to be nostalgic about an imagined past of the Wild West. Cowboy films became huge. The image of the cowboy in movies and in popular media and in comic books became a symbol of a kind of stronger America while America was facing economic collapse. And there was also a crisis of masculinity amongst richer American men who

lived in cities during the 1930s. These men viewed cowboys who worked in ranches as being real men, real masculine men. So lads from cities, and women too, they would go on holidays to places like Nevada, California, and they would go to a place called a dude ranch. And a dude ranch was like a holiday destination in 1930s America where you could experience a kind of fake version of the wild west. You'd go on holidays for two weeks to a dude ranch to become a cowboy. Not to become a cowboy but to to perform the actions of a cowboy on a dude ranch and this is where we get the phrase cool dude. A dude was a city slicker. A dude wasn't necessarily, it was a pejorative term. Actual

cowboys, people who worked with their hands and worked on ranches and herded cows and went around on horses with lassoes, those actual people, they would look down on city slickers as being kind of weak and effeminate. So these people were dudes. But if a city slicker came being kind of weak and effeminate so these people were dudes but if a city slicker came to a dude ranch and they did a good job and they showed that they could lasso a cow or ride a horse and wear denim jeans then they became a cool dude that's what a cool dude is that guy from the city there he's not too bad he's cool he can lasso a cow so all these rich Americans used to go to a dude ranch to perform the wild west for two weeks and then they'd go back home to the city with their denim jeans and then everyone back in the city

would go wow what are those things that you're wearing oh these are denim jeans this is what you wear when you're a real hard man like me out in the dude ranch. So then denim jeans in the 1930s in American cities they became a fashion item that suggested an authenticity an earthiness. They suggested a strong masculinity when the economy wasn't performing so well. And then World War II happens and when World War II happens in the 40s in America, enter World War II, all the soldiers were given denim jeans to wear on their downtime. So you had American soldiers now in Italy and England and Germany and all the cool yanks are wearing denim jeans so it spreads around the world. And bootcut jeans, worn with boots,

which you would have associated with cowboys who had cowboy boots. Because see, the cowboys were wearing bootcut jeans to accommodate the cowboy boots that they were wearing by the 1950s. Within representations in cinema, the cowboy was gone and now it was the outlaw biker. Outlaws and rebels now wore boot cut jeans over boots except they're riding motorcycles and that's when denim jeans became a symbol of teenage rebellion. Teenagers now wore jeans as a way to differentiate themselves from their parents who wore slacks. But how do you end

up with flared trousers? The type of flared trousers that you know from the 70s we'll say and then start to reappear in the 2000s in the form of Irish flared boat cut jeans. How the fuck do you arrive at that? Who decides that jeans need to be flared around the bottom well first and foremost in the early 2000s flared jeans became popular like bootcuts with a flare became popular because everyone in the 2000s was a child in the 70s so early 2000s had a nostalgia for the 1970s and that's where the flair came back then. But if you think back to the flair, you're thinking late 1960s and hippies. If you think of a fucking hippie, what is a hippie wearing?

Like a 60s hippie. 60s hippies are wearing flared fucking bell-bottom jeans. Where does that come from? Flared, wide-bottom wide bottom, bell bottom, denim jeans become popular in America with the hippie movement in San Francisco in the mid to late 1960s. And it wasn't the hippies who started wearing flared jeans in San Francisco first. It would have been the gay community. Now why is the gay community in San Francisco wearing flared jeans in the 1960s? Well first you gotta ask the question, why is there a

load of gay people in San Francisco in the 1950s and 1960s? Why is San Francisco seen as one of the first places in the world where you actually have a gay community at a time when being gay was illegal. Well here's the strange irony about flared bell-bottom bootcut jeans. You know I said in the 2000s the big problem with bootcut jeans when you're wearing them in Ireland in the Celtic Tiger is that they soak up piss from the floor. Here's these jeans that are baggy around the bottom and you wear them with shoes and now they're soaking wet. Well flared jeans were made for the navy, the US navy. If you're a sailor on a ship in World War II, an American sailor, and you have to scrub the deck or you're around water a lot. They had these

giant flares, bell bottoms at the bottom of their jeans so that they could roll them up easily if they came around water. So the actual purpose of big baggy bootcut jeans is to roll them up so you don't get fucking water on them. But here's the thing with San Francisco. America entered World War two America's main enemy was Japan the Pacific Ocean so America concentrated a huge amount of military bases on the west coast specifically around San Francisco and because Pearl Harbor was attacked in Hawaii they concentrated a massive amount of the Navy around San Francisco but during World War two

people were conscripted to the army they just got as many men as possible and said you're in the fucking army now you're in the Navy but if you were gay in the Navy you were kicked out of the Navy. The US Army had a lot of controversial tests that they would do on soldiers that they conscripted to try and see if they were gay or not. And if a soldier or a member of the Navy was flamboyantly gay or camp, they were discharged from the Navy immediately. It wasn't a dishonorable discharge and it wasn't an honorable discharge.

They were just said, you're not welcome in the Navy. So what happened was in San Francisco, you had all these men who were in the Navy that were conscripted and then they were let go because they were gay. Now they all found themselves in San Francisco going, well that's, I can't go back to my hometown in Nevada or in fucking Colorado and tell them I've been kicked out of the Navy for being gay. So a load of gay people stayed in San Francisco

from the 1940s, 1950s onwards. And that's why you started to see the first proper gay community in san francisco but a lot of them were ex-navy and they were wearing bell-bottomed wide flared boot cut navy jeans that are designed for pulling up when you're washing the deck and it's from that community in san francisco that the hippies then started wearing flared fucking jeans. And that's how flared bell-bottom jeans became associated with the counterculture movement and rebellion, most likely from soldiers that were discharged from the Navy

because they were gay and they settled in San Francisco. And you follow that thread and you find yourself in an Irish nightclub around 2004, and there's lads with piss soaking up the bottom of their bell-bottom bootcut flares, because they can't wear them over boots, they have to wear them over shoes that the bouncer has approved, and nobody has said to them,

by the way the reason those jeans are flared is because you're supposed to actually pull them up when you find yourself in two inches of piss so that's a very abridged history there of boat cut jeans I'll catch you next week

dog bless in the meantime wink at a swan. If you find a European house spider inside your house, they're wandering all around houses right now this week. I've had three of them in my house at the moment. You know the big fucking spiders. They're just looking for a mate. They're walking around your house because there's a female spider is somewhere in the house and what the males are doing at this time of year they walk around and ironically what they've done is those mate those huge spiders that are in your house right now and it starts September

the male spider has actually masturbated into his own hands swear to fuck he's masturbated into his own hands so they're walking around the house searching for the smaller female that's probably behind a washing machine or in the skirting board and she has a lot of eggs and he's gonna punch his own sperm into her sack of eggs and then she's gonna eat him so if you do see those large spiders around your house if you if you can't deal with them just put them into a glass and throw them out the back garden but do what i do i just leave them go i just leave them off there's a biodiversity crisis large spiders are welcoming my house they can't bite me. They're silly looking things. I don't mind them. Leave the

big fellas off. Leave them off. They're only having crack. Think of them as men called Declan wandering around a Celtic Tiger nightclub. And instead of jeans and shoes they've wanked onto their hands. That's all that's going on. I'll see you next week. Chester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game

and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. you