Frosty's Shirt Picks

After running the piece on the Chain Of Strength "Has The Edge Gone Dull Shirt," Tim got a pretty cool email from Frosty. We thought it was definitely post-worthy - and we hope that more people write in with personal favorites (shirts or otherwise) from their own collection. -Gordo DCXX

You seem like you may be a fan/collector of HC shirts so I thought I would share a few of my personal treasures I just dug out of my collection.

After reading your post about your "HTEGD" athletic gray shirt, I remembered about an item I stored away and have held on to for all these years. I decided to look for it in one of my boxes of my t-shirt collection and after a little digging, low and behold, I found it: CHAIN "Has The Edge Gone Dull?" Champion sweatshirt. 1 of 2 made (if my memory serves). It was custom hand screened in '89 by Tim Singer and Dennis Cheng at Tim's pad on a gray Champion sweatshirt that I had with me while on tour. They were screening the gray athletic shirts for the upcoming shows of the CHAIN tour (the Cleveland show that S.Wade refers to in the comments section of your post), and did a special one for me on the sweatshirt and also a similar screen on a sweatshirt for Dennis I believe (2 of 2). The screen came out a little light in the center for some reason but I wore the hell out of it back in the day anyways. It has faded out even further over the years and has started to stain and yellow out around a lot of the edges from the age and storage. Back then, it was huge on me, so I cut the bottom to shorten it up a little, hence, why it is all frayed at the bottom.

CHAIN "Has The Edge Gone Dull?" Champion sweatshirt

(1 of 2 ever made)

The other pics are of shirts I found next to the sweatshirt. The white CHAIN logo shirt is one that I kept from the original batch of shirts for CHAIN's very first show in Pomona, CA with YOT, Underdog, SoulSide, etc. It's almost mint. It is single sided with the logo on the front. I don't ever remember wearing it, but it seems small for an unwashed Hanes Beefy Tee XL that never hit the dryer.

Original CHAIN shirt sold at their first show

The Beyond shirt is a hand made 'tye dye' shirt that I received in the mail after sending money from Cali to NYC ('88/'89?) for the original demo tape and shirt offer I found in a zine (I can't remember which one, maybe MRR?) At the time, I didn't even know what the band was even about but I remeber just hearing that they were killer live and everyone describing them as "the NYC Hardcore version of Embrace." Much later on, after meeting Vic DiCara and Tom Capone, I remember showing the shirt to Vic after he moved to Cali, and he had remembered him and Tom personally screening that shirt. The shirt still has a lot of sentimental value for me. It has faded out considerably over the years.

Beyond "No Longer At Ease" handmade tie dye shirt

Finally, the Negative Approach shirt was personally given to me as a gift from Porcell while at the Schism aprtment in Brooklyn just hours before CHAIN flew back to Cali from NYC on our first East Coast tour. He also gave me a home screened SSD shirt, and I've yet to see any other of its kind. I was unable to find it with these shirts to photograph but I do still have it somewhere in my collection. The NA shirt is classic and, as you can see, was custom cut to his personal liking, as many a SE shirt was done to by everyone at the time. I received it in almost the same condition that you see and it already had heavy road wear. It is starting to stain and discolor even more now from storage. It is very thin. I remember holding and staring at the shirt in the airport until boarding the plane in utter awe as NA (and SSD) were, and are, in my top five HC bands of all time. Again, this shirt holds a huge amount of sentimental value to me.

Porcell's Negative Approach shirt gifted to Frosty

Hope you enjoy the pics. Some of them came out a little blurry though.

Frosty