I love a quality Smorgasbord Straight Edge Tshirt!
Oh wait, I mean Progression Straight Edge. I’m not even sure if that’s a record label or just a state of mind. I’m assuming there is a connection between Hardball and Smorgasbord Records somewhere, but I can’t think of it. Voice Of the Voiceless?
Great One For One graphic on the back. Hopefully also drawn up by Guav. But I can’t vouch for that.
I interviewed Guav about a million years ago about the Hardball ep. It was amusing.
You drew the hardball 7″ design. How did that come about?
I think I was still living in Ithaca when I did that. Yeah, I think Rob R Rock and his girlfriend Krys were living with me for the summer…. He was putting that out, and I had already had that character drawn up, it was just the type of thing I always drew back then. He used it. I didn’t even know Ryan Downey (the singer of Hardball) back then I don’t think. I think it was around then that I first met him.
You can read the full interview here.
Wasn’t me!
Hey, it’s Downey, the artist formerly known as Ryan Hardball. Progression Records was, in fact, a label based in Michigan. It was ran by a kid named Brian Leitgeb (sp?). He put out a 7″ from a Michigan band called Relapse, followed by a 7″ compilation called By All Means that featured a song from Hardball (“Faced With Guilt”). The layout for the 7″ comp was done by Dwid from Integrity. Progression released the Integrity “Grace of the Unholy” cassingle (yes, cassingle) and as far as I know, that was the last thing they put out. The Hardball 7″ was never actually released.
What happened was, Progression paid for the recording and put ads in Maximum Rock N’ Roll for the 7″ (featuring the Die Hard crossed baseball bat logo used by Dwid’s suggestion / permission) but I don’t think he ever had the money together to actually press it.
A while later, Rob R-Rock / New Start offered to release our 7″. We re-recorded it (the 7″ was actually recorded three different times in total) and he put it out. He also made t-shirts. He never gave us a single copy of the 7″ nor a single t-shirt. We gave him artwork that featured stuff we took from a Punisher comic book. He threw it out, used a drawing from Guav instead, and put a crappy insert in the 7″ explaining that the lyrics were some kind of “joke” (they weren’t).
He also made a “side Hard” and “side Ball” on the vinyl, which always bothered me, since Hardball is, in fact, one word. In 1992 or 1993, I was able to get Rob to give me the pressing plant info and we contacted them and repressed 100 copies ourselves. That version was released by the “Hardline Music Collective” (the guitarist, Johnny, and myself) and renamed “Any Means Necessary,” although it’s the exact same 7″ as the “One On One” 7″ on New Start.
The interesting thing about the t-shirt you have picture here is that… It never existed in the ’90s (Hardball was a band from 1990 – 1992). Those shirts were made, with my permission, by a fan / collector in Europe a couple of years ago. Unlike Rob R-Rock, he actually sent us some.
He is enough of a fan / collector to be aware of the Progression Records association and added that sleeve print, which was on the Progression Records shirts that Brian made that advertised the label and were, of course, as you point out, a ripoff of Smorgasboard.
We weren’t on the Voice Of The Voiceless comp. btw, you may be thinking of Split Lip.
I don’t know who drew them or where they came from beyond this, but, the crossed bats were the logo for the pre-Integrity band Die Hard. Dwid had a silkscreen of them and actually gave the screen to me to use for Hardball. He suggested initially to Brian that Hardball use that as a logo. We were huge fans of Integrity, starting with the demo, and very, very, very, very influenced by them.
Holy shit, Ryan. Thanks for the info. Your insight is gold!
I honestly never knew this about Hardball. Wild.
Yeah Downey, thank you for the golden insight that Hardball was very, very, very, very influenced by Integrity. Couldn’t tell by listening to the 7″ hehe …. very subtle :)
Thank you TeeTillDeath (and Guav and Downey and Jawk’s tattoo) for being my sorta source of info while I am trying to eBay this BY ALL MEANS comp