In February, a Facebook post brought the news that Redd Kross would return to the road for their longest tour in 20 years. The band’s die-hard fans immediately lit up social media with their excitement — while many of their friends asked, “Who?” In the weeks that followed, stories about the 39-year-old band attempted to answer that question, often citing Redd Kross’ influence on superstars like Nirvana, Sonic Youth and the Melvins.
The “fathers of grunge” will rumble into Nashville this Saturday for a one-night stand in Third Man Records’ Blue Room. Redd Kross co-founder and bass player Steve McDonald tells the Scene by telephone that he and his brother Jeff never saw themselves as punk pioneers — they just wanted to be Hawthorne, Calif.’s answer to The Partridge Family.
“We grew up in the ’70s, and popular culture was quite extreme,” McDonald says. “Most of us were latchkey kids, and television was our babysitter. There were only three channels, and you ingested all of it, so it was rife for someone to vomit it back at people.”
That’s what they did in 1978, when 11-year-old Steve and 15-year-old Jeff formed The Tourists, which later became Red Cross — whose name they changed to Redd Kross after Steve was called to the principal’s office to receive a cease-and-desist letter from the humanitarian organization. In short order, they made the jump from middle school graduation parties to the burgeoning West Coast punk scene.
“Black Flag was the first group to take us under their wing and let us play shows with them,” Steve McDonald says. “They had a very strong identity that included a lot of rules about what was punk and what was poseur. If you had green hair, it better not be food coloring that you could wash out before you went to school the next day.”
The McDonalds and their cohorts delivered pure snot-nosed teenage attitude on their debut EP Red Cross (1979) and the follow-up long-player Born Innocent (1982), but their punk fury came with a slightly different flavor. Songs about Linda Blair’s made-for-TV movies might seem de rigueur for punks, but there was genuine affection for the pop culture Redd Kross skewered. That love affair came to full fruition with the band’s 1984 release Teen Babes From Monsanto. The EP features 100 percent irony-free covers of songs by KISS and The Stooges alongside “Blow You a Kiss in the Wind,” a lost pop masterpiece originally performed by Elizabeth Montgomery on an episode of Bewitched.
“Teen Babes was definitely a declaration,” McDonald says. “It was us saying, ‘We dig the punk ethic, and we like being outside the mainstream, but we’ve got a few other tricks to throw at you now, including breaking this rule and that fucking rule.’ Flying the KISS flag in that post-hardcore SoCal environment was probably the most uncool thing that you could be doing.”
If Teen Babes From Monsanto was a shot across the bow of punk orthodoxy, Redd Kross’ 1987 follow-up Neurotica was a full-frontal assault. The band’s overdriven fusion of glam, bubblegum and punk attitude remained leagues away from the seawall of mainstream rock radio, but for a new generation of punk-inclined rockers who connected the dots between black flags, black diamonds and Bonaduces, it served as a blueprint for grunge and the pop-culture-driven power punk of the ’90s.
During the ’90s, Redd Kross recorded three more classic albums with various lineups. They often opened for the bands they helped inspire and became a ubiquitous presence on the fringes of the alternative rock scene through music and film projects, like the 1990 comedy The Spirit of ’76, a psychedelic riff on ’70s culture featuring the McDonalds alongside members of Devo and former Partridge Family star David Cassidy.
After Redd Kross went on hiatus following 1997’s Show World, both McDonalds worked on various musical projects. Steve nurtured a Nashville connection by producing two albums for Music City teen punks Be Your Own Pet. In 2006, Redd Kross reunited, playing festivals and short tours, which eventually led to a fresh platter of trash-pop-rock madness called Researching the Blues in 2012. Another spate of side projects followed, but Redd Kross is back with a new lineup, including Steve and Jeff McDonald, guitarist Jason Shapiro and Melvins drummer Dale Crover. This fall, they plan to record a new Redd Kross album tentatively titled Octavia.
“It has been a really bitchin’ tour so far,” Steve says. “There’s been a lot of energy, and I’m hoping this will be the start of a new era of activity for the band. Even if you only go to one show a year, this should be it. Who cares if you’re 50 years old? That’s no reason to be a shut-in!”
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