Redd Kross: Researching the Blues (Full Stream Available)

Redd Kross's full-blooded return-to-magnificence, Researching the Blues (full stream here), is out this week, offering a chance to right the wrong the world made by ignoring their 1997 masterpiece, Show World. The long-running LA punk/rock/pop band have joined the roster of Merge Records, adding another jewel to that label's indie-king crown. The album itself is a monster of rock riffage and pop hookage - for stone-cold proof check out the first single "Stay Away From Downtown".





Despite the band's claim that "we're getting uglier everyday", their power-pop in fact grows more beautiful every year, as songs like "Dracula's Daughters " and "One of the Good Ones" will surely prove. Of course, the band keep the power side of the bargain here on rockers like "Uglier" and "Choose to Play". And, as if  if revitalized by Steve McDonald's participation in Keith Morris' explosive hardcore-revival band, OFF!, Redd Kross keep things relentless here, wrapping up the whole album in thirty-two minutes. Don't call it a comeback, Redd Kross (and their innumerable side-projects) have been here for years. Last time around, Redd Kross got lost in the guitar-rock glut of this mid-nineties but this time it looks like a rock-starved world is finally gonna do it's fuckin' research.
(more Redd Kross on MRML can be found HERE!)


Redd Kross Hompage

Redd Kross: 2,500 Redd Kross Fans Can't Be Wrong

(Image courtesy of Record Collectors of the World Unite)

COMMENTER THANK YOU'S (#5 in an intermittent series).

(As MRML's thanks to the great commenters, those who add to the
conversation here, I'll be trying to fulfill some of their requests.
This one is for Nazz at Bleeedin Out, ViaCom... at Down Underground
and Chris at Scruffy the Yak

A 1994 collection of Redd Kross (more here) studio rarities put out by Sympathy for the Record Industry as a limited edition (2,500 copies, natch') 10" record.

A1 Any Hour, Every Day
A2 Switchblade Sister
A3 What's Wrong With Me

B1 Trance
B2 Byrds And Fleas
B3 Huge Wonder

2,500 Redd Kross Fans Can't Be Wrong link is in the comments

Speaking of comments, talk to us about Redd Kross!

UPDATE: MORE KROSS EPHEMERA OVER AT BLEEDIN' OUT!

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Redd Kross: Black Shapmpoo (Shows World Demos)

COMMENTER THANK YOU'S (#4 in an intermittent series).

(As MRML's thanks to the great commenters, those who add to the
conversation here, I'll be trying to fulfill some of their requests.
This one is for CallPastorJerkface (and Don)

I once wrote an arguably decent post on Redd Kross and their late career-resurgence known as Show World. You can still read the post and download the out-of-print album here but for today, let's listen to Black Shampoo, the demos for Show World.

1. Redd Kross - Vanity Mirror (02:59)
2. Redd Kross - What Went so Wrong? (03:02)
3. Redd Kross - Popular Cult (03:29)
4. Redd Kross - Number One (02:29)
5. Redd Kross - Get Out of Myself (03:39)
6. Redd Kross - Out of my Tree (02:28)
7. Redd Kross - jam (00:06)
8. Redd Kross - Secret Life (03:49)
9. Redd Kross - It's in the Sky (03:15)
10. Redd Kross - Stoned (03:53)
11. Redd Kross - So Cal V8 (02:37)
12. Redd Kross - Sick Love (03:19)
13. Redd Kross - insrtumental (03:20)
14. Redd Kross - Vasoline (02:36)
15. Redd Kross - instrumental (03:45)
16. Redd Kross - Get out of Myself (04:02)
17. Redd Kross - Misery is Mother (02:13)
18. Redd Kross - One Chord Progression (02:57)
19. Redd Kross - Girl God (03:35)
20. Redd Kross - Ugly Town
21. Redd Kross - Teen Competition

Black Shampoo link is in the comments

Speaking of comments, is Show World one of the best things Redd Kross ever did?


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Off! Live!

Speaking of punk rock vets on the comeback warpath, Keith Morris (BLACK FLAG, CIRCLE JERKS) has, alongside Steve Mcdonald of REDD KROSS, Dimitri Coats from the BURNING BRIDES, Mario Rubalcaba of HOT SNAKES, ROCKET FROM THE CRYPT), started a pummeling new band called Off! (which would make for Morris' second band named after a domestic pesticide).

Here's a live set from the FYF Festival in L.A. on September 10th 2010 to whet your appetiate for the 7" to come in October on Vice Records and the boxed set of singles to follow that!


Off! Live! link is in the comments

Speaking of comments, let us know what the hell you think of this!!

OFFicial site

Notes, Chords and Me

My first guitar was a black, splatter-painted, imitation Gibson with three strings. It was also my last guitar. In the first blush of infatuation, I attacked that guitar with fingers and pick but nothing coherent emerged from that machine, even after I upgraded to a full brace of strings.

I kept that guitar till one day, in a pique of failure-induced nausea, I lashed out at the beast: first with a hammer, then with a jagged rock before finally pitching it out the window of my third-story apartment. When it hit the ground, the neck snapped off with a satisfying twang. It gave me a new respect for the work of Pete Townsend.

So what song did I imagine playing both while strumming and while destroying? Why, Notes and Chords Mean Nothing to Me by Red Cross of course.

boomp3.com

I’m only mildly acquainted with Red Kross’ ridiculous yet perverse history, so I encourage you to peruse the story as soon as we’re done talking about me.

After they became Redd Kross and issued the oft-loved “Neurotica” people raved, “They’re like an ironic bubblegum Kiss”. But without songs it all just seemed so arch. So after years of ignoring the Brothers McDonald, last week I had “Show World” rammed down my throat (not entirely metaphorically). And it rocked. For this album Redd Kross made their (third or fourth) grab at the brass ring, missed it and clenched something all together better. Instead of Ironic-Bubblegum-Kiss, it’s actual power-pop – the often fey American version but rocked out beyond Cheap Trick’s dream.

This album may dally with 1990’s production values (see the intro to “Kiss the Goat” or don’t) but it’s always the 1970’s in the McDonald’s universe. What’s fascinating for the listener is how many wildly disparate elements of that decade’s flotsam and jetsam they’re willing to pinch. Pretty Please Me is stolen from the mid-70’s LA wuss-pop legends the Quick, layered bubblegum choruses buoy even the weaker tracks such as Teen Competition and the Carpenters re-appear on the string-accompanied Secret Life while Get Out of Myself emulates the ’79 power-pop rockers the Records. Even the ever-present Beatles-isms, like Lied Again and Mess Around seem copped from the hit-after-hit-after-hit Red and Blue comps of 1973.

So what was Red Kross’ reward for putting out the greatest album of their career? Indigence, indifference and an indefinite hiatus. Things may be changing now, Borack chose Show World for his Best 200 Power-Pop Album list (though it remains out-of-print) and the band is preparing a new album and I’m willing to admit that despite my attempts to play the ukulele, the piano, the guitar and the bass that I remain simply a listener.

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And for obsessives (which is MRML's target audience after all) here's, "Black Shampoo" a bootleg of the "Show World" demos.




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