Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Posted by xCHIPxSEM |

Hardline straight edge hardcore with artworkby Guav (I was told). I ripped this personally so its nice and loud and scanned the cover for a nice full size image. Also I think Ryan Downey sang for this, correct me if Im wrong

Hardball - One On One

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=SZZ166H5

10 comments:

Guav said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Guav said...

Yes and yes. I'm sending Downey over, this is awesome haha

Anonymous said...

i only met downey a couple of times, but cool guy! i always liked his zines.

Ryan J. Downey said...

If you've got questions, I've got answers! First of all, I'll have to check this out. I bet it's better quality than what I have. The MP3s I have were sent to me by a fan in Europe (he did have the 7", the demo and some unreleased / alternate takes, and a comp. song).

Hardball was never a Hardline band. The guitar player, John Johnson, and myself started the band after our prior posi-sxe band, Clear Sight, broke up after one show. Clear Sight got a lot of crap in the local scene as we were the only straight edge band. We thought being straight edge was all about being positive and friendly until we got attacked, mocked and generally ridiculed by other "scene" folks, namely a band called Radiation Sickness.

And therefore, after reading about bands like Confront and Die Hard in the letters section of MRR and hearing the Judge 7", we were inspired to take a "hard"-er stance. The first Hardball song was called "Payback" and was written about this idea.

We released a demo called "My Fist Your Face" and played a lot of shows with our friends Split Lip (both bands played their first show together, in fact), then Progression Records in Michigan agreed to put us on a comp and release our first 7". They ran ads for us. But after seeing us play a show in Indy w/ our friends in Integrity, who Brian Progression was also talking to, he decided to spend his time and money trying to do something with them. We had recorded the 7", with back up vocals from Erba from Face Value, but it didn't come out.

Then Rob-R Rock at New Start Records agreed to put it out. We re-recorded the 7" and he pressed about 500 copies and made t-shirts without ever giving us a copy of either. Also, he threw out the artwork we had submitted (a picture from Marvel's Punisher comic) and used a goofy drawing from some random dude named Guav AND inserted a little flyer about how the lyrics were a "joke."

Hey, we sang about lynching drug dealers, about broken relationships and about animal rights, and we weren't joking. We might have been teenagers. But we were serious LOL.

At the time of the 7"s recording, we were all straight edge, Keith (drums) and myself were vegan and the other two were vegetarian. John (guitar) and I later became Hardline. John is still vegan straight edge and is a rapper named Edge Wit' Tha Dreadz. Check him out online.

I'm still straight edge and vegetarian, almost vegan (I was vegan for 14 years). I think we probably have a better track record than other bands from 1990 in that regard haha.

Ryan J. Downey said...

Also, in 1993, John and I repressed 100 of the 7" with a new cover retitled "Any Means Necessary."

And yes, nowadays I love and appreciate Guav's cover.

Jeff J Jawk said...

and I have a Hardball tattoo...

AWC said...

Thanks for the info, Ryan! Always interesting to know as much as possible about the backgrounds of the bands.
-Kimmo

reece said...

hah. don't forget the by all means comp, which we also never got. i had to randomly find one in a record store...

Anonymous said...

I have some fairly shitty VHS footage of Hardball playing one of the Hardline Gatherings in Memphis, with Raid et al. If anyone can copy VHS to DVD or any digital format, hit me up at xveganmilitantx[at]hotmail[dot]com

Toad734 said...

Ha, this is great..

Ryan, do you not have a copy of the 7" you repressed? I have a couple of those I think but I think I only saw this Rob R Cock version once in my life.

Matt:

I think I have the same VHS tape from Memphis and yes I can get VHS converted into DVD ( I also have an old Fugazi show from their In on the kill taker tour). I need to get a record player and convert the old 7" into wave files although, I probably wont like what I hear.

If anyone has the original DAT or better yet, the original multitrack "tapes" (which I doubt exist), I can either remix, or remaster it.