Jeff Hess is all round Crucial Edge man, and Vocalist in the awesome Band RIGHT IDEA. After getting to know Jeff from ordering the RI demo tape when the band first started, I decided he would be a perfect person to kick off this Blog with StyleThese questions were done in April 09' I believe, so sorry if one or two might be out of date :)
If you haven't checked our RIGHT IDEA, stop sleeping under a rock and do so here, http://if-you-cared.blogspot.com/ if you like good traditional hardcore then you'll love them, and if you don't like that kinda thing then get the hell outta my world!
Enjoy! :)
So Jeff, let’s start off at the beginning, what is the first hardcore shirt you can ever remember owning? Do you still have the shirt in question?
The first hardcore shirt I ever bought was the BOLD Speak Out shirt and yes I still have it today....although it would prob fit a 12yr old pretty good these days. I got it at a local record store, Sound of Music, along with YOT CCME, Judge BID, and Shelter's Perfection of Desire all on cassette, I was way young and it was my first great score at a record store. Sound of Music was a little kids dream just getting into hardcore, cause even though they didn't have much vinyl they were the only store in the area to carry hardcore and the two creepy dudes that ran it only hired the hottest highschool girls to work there. From that point on I was hooked on collecting hardcore related items. I say related cause many of the kids around here at that time were into skating so the two kind of went hand in hand. I still have cool stuff from that part of my life too like a Vision Street Wear varsity jacket and the Tom Knox Minor Threat ripoff shirt, along with some old decks with some pretty sweet band logos chalked in.
What would you say are you top 5 favourite hardcore shirts of all time? How many, if any, of them do you own?
This is always one of those questions that I can never give consistent answers to over the years but I would say right now I would go with the white BOLD shirt with black ink (even when it was worn by a model in GQ magazine in the 90s it looked so classic, never out of place), Unit Pride's Holding On Strong shirt, YOT 4 sided Break Down The Walls tour shirt, Chain's True Til Death shirt, and then the shirts that made the perfect match with camo shorts like the Straight Ahead lion logo, Wide Awake skiz longsleeve, etc. I was way more into record collecting than shirts but I have a fair amount of gems, at least in my eyes. I never threw out or traded any shirts so some of my faves are Dwid's old PX shirt, a bunch of YOT, Judge, COS, GB and BOLD shirts, my Powerhouse and Vision shirts get lots of wear, etc. I would say I have a rather extensive large late 90s collection of shirts too as I liked every band then putting out straight hardcore and there were some cool designs popping up from the bigger bands like my FP Final Mosh shirt, to the lesser known bands like The Trust's shirt that was similar to UP's handshake design. I think other shirts were just so mass produced that people forget how cool they were at first viewing like AF's boots and Warzone's iron cross shirt....camo pants don't need to be cut into shorts with these ha. Since this blog is for fans of shirts I guess this would be a good spot to throw out there that I am in dire need of an Altercation shirt, the Krakdown shirt with the guy skating the letters as seen on the Crumbsuckers BOMB lp and the YOT Josh says Mosh shirt that's been getting a lot of talk lately.
Have you ever brought a shirt, just because you love the design, but are actually not so keen on the band? If so, which shirt/band?
I think I've bought way more shirts where I just wanted to support the band but the designs sucked and I would never wear them. Just a few years back it seemed like it was a competition between bands to see who could make the worst designed shirts.
What was the last shirt you remembering buying?
Probably the Face Reality longsleeve which I like to sport at baseball practice lately. It has artwork by Slaba and they also made a 1 of 1 longsleeve just for me so I gotta love it. Pick up their new 7" on Dead End Records, I'm a fan of it. I'm sure I will pick up a shirt or two by Resolve and Alert when they play here later this month with Face Reality and Overload. It's gonna be a no pizza band show I'm looking forward to it.
Most people are probably aware of your current band Right Idea, but what people probably aren’t so aware of is that you used to run the record label Looking Back Records. As well as 7”inchs by Panic Attack and Grudgematch, was there any other records you released, or had in the pipeline? Were there ever any shirts to come from the label (either shirts for the bands, or label shirts?)
Haha LB kinda started to help promote some local bands that were coming up in my area at the time. I started off first releasing the Set Straight 7", then the Committed European release of the demo, and GrudgeMatch was the last local band. I always liked the idea of helping bands I was into that were just starting out and not many people heard. So after scoring the Holding On demo and Intention demo at shows I contacted those two bands which led to the releases of 7"s by them too. The Intention 7" also had a small number of them come with my friend Clif Shumaker's zine Vinyl Rights which was an excellent zine for collecting at the time cause it was filled with pressing info. As far as bands that almost came about it would include more bands in the same vein as well as bands like Tears of Frustration and Phantom Pains but the scene began to change then along with my life too so I just kind of took a break.....and never got back to the label. It's cool to see what some of those band members went on to do and even cooler to still be friends with most of the people involved.
So let’s talk about Right Idea, the first shirts you guys made were the spoiler design shirt (which is also the artwork used on the demo tape). How did this design and co-operation with spoiler come about? Were you happy with how the shirts turned out? How many were made?
Well if you say 
first shirts you are right but the first design was actually just the hoods with a huge X on the back out of 24, pulling the idea from Insted shirts and some old videos of Beyond shows. The first Spoiler design was out of 55 I believe and I like keeping things collectible so even though we have since made shirts with the same design we made sure to change up the ink color. I have been a fan of Spoiler's art since the beginning of Justice so I just asked him if he'd do it and he was more than into helping out, he even gave me a bunch of designs that haven't seen the light of day yet. I came up with the idea of wanting a guy holding the world above him and kind of pushing in on it making cracks in the earth that would resemble an X and Spoiler just ran with it. I won't admit this often haha, but I def rejected the first few drawings saying the guy's arms were too weak looking.
What other shirt designs have Right Idea had so far, im aware of the React Records ones (available from the React site). I am right in thinking you guys also had some Smorgasbord rip-off ones, and a cali tour shirt also? And the hoodie with the giant X backprint (which im the proud owner of!) How many of them were made?
That's really about all we've released just in different ink colors and formats like longsleeves. We generally do small runs of designs, I think the most we ever did of one shirt is out of 60 and we did a bunch out of around 25-30. I'd rather see some color variations out in the crowd than the same color or same exact shirt on everyone. Oh I guess I forgot there is a 1 of 1 green and white hoodie out there too.
What next for Right Idea Merchwise, can we expect to see more shirts in the near future? How about crews, or mesh shorts!
As far as shirts go, we cannot seem to agree on the next designs. We all wanted crewnecks but all didn't want the same thing on them. Shorts would be great now with the weather changing so I think that will prob happen. A good friend is Larry from Lotus Printing who I told him I'd have new designs for him by the end of next week so I guess this is crunch time.
You guys have got the LP (Our World) being released on 7”inch soon by Bottle Up Records, correct? What else have you guys got planned this year? I think maybe somewhere I read that the demo is getting released on 7”inch, is there any truth in that at all?
Recordwise, we have the demo coming out on Refused Records, the repress of the lp coming out on Bottled Up Records and then we also have a new song on the Youth Crew 2009 comp coming out on Upside Down Records. The Bottled Up repress is actually coming out on 7" just so people who weren't so keen on the price before might give us a chance now. We were gonna do an lp repress on Not Just Words too but we both agreed to hold off for some new recordings insted.
How long before we can expect to see Right Idea euro tour shirts? Any chance of that happening in 2009?
Depends who you ask in the band haha. I'm pretty hopeful and confident you will see us over there sooner than later and we really owe Balance a tour together over there, great guys! I've also been working on trying to persuade a certain older band to come over with us and they are trying to make things happen it's just a matter of coordinating everyone's schedules. All I'll say is if it happens....up front is where we all belong!
Any other words, shout outs?
Thanks James for the interview, cool idea for a blog and your band has the shirt designs to back it up! Lots of good bands around this year be sure to check em out! Stay physically strong and morally straight, live your life breathe every breath, look towards the future and move straight ahead! Thanks
