Thomas Rackow ofonly.hc.sticker is a dedicated collector of hardcore stickers and is gearing up for a show in France this month with help from the hardcore community and Supreme. We caught up with Thomas to see how he got stuck on stickers...
Anton: My first interaction with hardcore in general was through skateboarding and the media surrounding it. I had no idea what I was in for when I first heard bands like Dead Kennedys, Circle Jerks and 25 ta Life in the Tony Hawk games...
In hardcore, the flyers, vinyl and shirts measure the passing world. This culture is urgent, finding it in our youth. When the inside is catching up with the outside. The music is a reverberation of a ‘I won’t go quietly’ attitude.
Do songs only glue memories? How are they born? Can they die? Do tunes serve the past or future?
To know hardcore is to be there. The explanation is in the experience.
One comprehends it after a stage dive. After reading a typo-heavy zine. After hanging out in a record store for hours, digesting opinions and witnessing characters. You grasp it during a sing along, when all the oxygen has been sucked up and over used, in a basement or a small club.
I’ve never been the most talented musician in the bands I’ve been in. I haven’t even always been the best guitar player when I was the only one playing guitar in bands I started. I’ve always tried to make up for it by being on time, having decent reliable equipment, and doing art for whatever I was doing when the inspiration hit me.
Ed Crooks has been heavily involved in the hardcore scene for 20+ years. He started talking to bands in the early 00’s, with a love for all the old zines like Schisim, Boiling Point, Good and Plenty etc, but he only started putting stuff together after moving to Sweden in 2013.
Powerline, a Los Angeles based hardcore zine, Interview with Sammy Siegler of World Be Free Judge etc. for Powerline Issue 6 (Available at RevHQ.com, Powerline webstore, and check out their Instagram @powerlineusa)
I booked my first show on February 20 in the years 2000 amidst my one failed year at UC Santa Cruz without any clue what I was doing. I had some help from the local kids but my overhead to not lose money was $1,200 and Death By Stereo had bailed last minute. The Nerve Agents showed up to headline and, despite breaking the mic cord on the first song, delivered a great set and drew enough people to make the night a huge success.
It's difficult for me to really explain what happened with Mark, Mike Judge and Youth Of Today mainly because I was an outsider to it all. Most people know that Ray Cappo and Mark Ryan were living in the same apartment in NYC for a brief time.
