A trio of reissues from Merge and Third Man capture the L.A. punk veterans at two very different points in their career, tracking their growth from scrappy dilettantes to swaggering glam rockers.
In a 1993 feature on his band Redd Kross, singer/bassist Steve McDonald bemoaned the fate of the group he started with his older brother Jeff in the late 1970s. “We’ve always been ahead of our time,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “We make records, and five years later another band has success with the sounds we’d already done.” At the time, that probably felt like the case, as some of the band’s most vocal fans, like Stone Temple Pilots’ Scott Weiland, were scoring multi-platinum sales by applying the same formula—’70s glam meets underground rock—that Redd Kross nailed on their second full-length, 1987’s Neurotica.
But listening to the work that Redd Kross did in the ’90s, the truth is much simpler. That’s particularly true of Phaseshifter and Show World, the two fine albums they cut for Mercury Records that were recently reissued on vinyl by Third Man Records. To paraphrase a song by Brian Wilson, another songwriter that hailed from the McDonalds’ hometown of Hawthorne, California, Redd Kross weren’t made for that time. They have always looked and sounded like a throwback to a bygone era of rock, no matter what the calendar said at the time.
That wasn’t always the case. When the McDonald brothers started making music together, they were caught up in the swell of punk rock, cadging rides from their folks to see X and the Dickies, and making a three-chord racket in their garage. They were enterprising enough to look up the phone numbers belonging to members of their favorite groups and bug them for a shot. Only one band took the bait, and before they knew it Red Cross, as they were known at the time, had their first gig opening up for Black Flag. Steve was all of 12 years old.
This is the period captured in another Redd Kross reissue: an expanded edition on Merge Records, their current label, of the group’s 1980 debut EP. The vinyl/CD re-release adds on a handful of demos and a live track recorded at the former Baptist church where Black Flag rehearsed. It’s capped off by some fantastic photos of the fresh-faced group—which at the time included Greg Hetson (Circle Jerks, Bad Religion) on guitar and early Flag vocalist Ron Reyes on drums—in all their precocious glory.
Heard some four decades on, the cookie-cutter punk of Red Cross sounds downright adorable. All six songs are wobbly and sloppy and fast—only two tracks are over a minute long—but played with undeniable enthusiasm. True to their tender age, the McDonalds sing silly screeds about spoiled rich kids, jocks, and cover bands.
The brothers’ punk inclinations on this EP masked their fondness for pop. Lyrical gripes about Kiss and the Knack in “Cover Band” belied the truth that the McDonalds were actually big fans of both, and the titles of “Annette’s Got the Hits” and “Fun With Connie,” the overblown live track that closes this reissue, are references to ’60s pop icons Annette Funicello and Connie Francis. Fast forward just a few years and the veil would be completely removed. The McDonalds and their bandmates played up their influences, dressing in loud thrift-store duds and recording covers of the Partridge Family, Bowie, and Charles Manson.
By the ’90s, Redd Kross were nowhere nearer the top of the charts, despite some valiant efforts and a lot of expense on behalf of their labels (Atlantic Records supposedly spent nearly $200,000 to promote 1990’s Third Eye). But a new deal with Mercury held some promise for the group, as did the cultural shift fomented by grunge. What came out of it, though, were two albums hampered by strange decisions and indifference from their label.
Although Phaseshifter was produced by the band—at this point a quintet including keyboardist Gere Fennelly, guitarist Eddie Kurdziel, and future soundtrack guru Brian Reitzell on drums—the thick, brawny sound of the record owes everything to John Agnello, who recorded and mixed the sessions. Perhaps an attempt to apply some hard-rock spunk to their power pop, in the vein of Andy Wallace’s work on Nevermind, the unfortunate results turn hip-swingers like “Jimmy’s Fantasy” and “Visionary” into headbangers and almost entirely bury Fennelly’s contributions. When Agnello releases his grip, the album is a blast, with “Lady in the Front Row” and “Ms. Lady Evans” evoking the luscious camp of the Sweet, and “Pay For Love,” a tune co-written by Jeff’s wife, Charlotte Caffey of the Go-Go’s, revealing the thick, sugary zip of a milkshake beneath the power chords and Kurdziel’s yowling solo.
With the help of Mercury’s full-court promotional press (a spot on The Tonight Show, tours with Stone Temple Pilots and the Lemonheads), Phaseshifter was supposed to turn Redd Kross into a sensation, and when it failed to achieve liftoff, the label barely moved a finger for its follow up. The added shame of it is that 1997’s Show World is a little gem of an album. The group found a far more complementary collaborator with co-producer Chris Shaw, who, the year before, had helped Fountains of Wayne achieve power-pop grandeur.
Show World plays like a tour through Redd Kross’ record collection. Explosive acid rocker “Teen Competition” closes side A only to be followed by the ’60s Britpop homage “Follow the Leader” on the flip. The sweaty ballad “Secret Life” gets nestled between “Ugly Town,” which imagines the Righteous Brothers coated in distortion, and the glammy spark of “Vanity Mirror.” In contrast to its often muddy predecessor, the production here feels crisp and colorful, with plenty of open air for Kurdziel’s sharp-toothed and surprising solos to take flight.
Following some perfunctory efforts to promote the album, including a tour with the Presidents of the United States of America, Redd Kross went into a holding pattern for the better part of a decade. In 1999, Kurdziel died from what was reported to be an apparent drug overdose. The McDonalds stayed busy, producing other bands’ work, and Steve found gigs playing bass with Sparks and punk supergroup OFF! But as artists like Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees started to find success mining a similar sound, Redd Kross were coaxed out of hibernation in 2006. Since then, they have steadily picked up momentum, playing numerous live shows and releasing 2012’s Researching the Blues and 2019’s Beyond the Door on Merge.
Between those new recordings and this recent spate of reissues—which includes 2018’s Record Store Day re-release of Third Eye and repressings of early efforts by the McDonalds on Merge—the world is finally catching up with Redd Kross. Hearing the cheeky ebullience of the first EP and the candied pop sheen of the group’s ’90s work confirms that, even as they sat alongside the biggest names in underground rock, the McDonalds never fit with the trends of the moment. But it’s not so much the case that they were ahead of their time, as Steve McDonald asserted in 1993; for decades, they’ve existed outside it entirely.
View the original article here
0 comments:
Post a Comment