REDD KROSS - Best Album/EP: The Re-Run

If we're including EPs then we're missing 2500 Redd Kross Fans Can't Be Wrong.

well i could also have included Trance Australian Tour as well but most of that is the teen babes ep. I thought we would keep it simple.

and it has most of the 2500 tracks too

Phaseshifter for me anyways. With 3rd Eye close behind. The rest are great but not close. Another poll or thread idea would be discussing their side projects cos I've missed out on some of them. Anarchy 6 and Tater Totz I have. Ze Malibu Kids, It's OK, Steve MacDonald's solo band etc are all still strangers to me.

Okay, I just saw that the previous poll was revived. One reason that Neurotica might have polled poorly was that it was damn near unobtainable in some parts of the world. I think there was about 5 copies in the whole of the UK. After I moved to Canada I STILL couldn't find that fucker!

Nah when I ran that poll before Neurotica had been reissued ages and been very well received. Most people assumed others would vote for it so voted something else (Like happens in loads of ILM polls)

Neurotica was one of the 1st things I got from Napster in 2000. Finally got a vinyl version about 3 years later after about 10 years of looking. Got the vinyl and cd reissues too(both have a different bonus track)

Teen Babes for me.

Thought you might say that :)

Teen Babes vs Neurotica.

Neurotica lost out the last time because everyone left it to others to vote for it. It only got 2 votes.

I was just listening to the 1st EP this morning. Probably vote for that.

I just did.

The Beatles weren't actually still making noise when Jesus Christ Superstar was crucified though, were they?

Speaking of which, here's my annual request for ANY recordings of The Disposals. Anyone? Anything? Hello? (click)

Ha, was this you?:
http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/typicalgirls/2004-April/000021.html

lol that's him

LOL! Yes!

How did people see this band around the time of Neurotica? Like, were they embraced by Amerindie critics and fans or did people kind of see them as some weird half-assed hair band? Did they get more attention from rock/metal writers?

I think chuck had went off them by then.

But I wouldn't be surprised if other critics loved them.

Actually, I reviewed Neurotica (more or less positively) in Creem and probably Creem Metal too when it came out. They were definitely considered an indie band, not a hair-metal band -- i.e., their fans would have been more likely to also like Dinosaur than Poison. Pretty sure Neurotica finished in the Top 100 in Pazz & Jop that year, too -- probably the best the band ever did.

From Christgau's 1987 Pazz & Jop essay:

If any of the six American ill-mades to place 41-100 this year--Red Kross, Dinosaur Jr., Firehose, Big Black, Chain Gang, Negativland--ever finish as high again, I'll be astonished.

http://robertchristgau.com/xg/pnj/pj87.php

Redd Kross were sorta seen as punk heretics circa Teen Babes (prior to Neurotica. I remember seeing them at the old Ritz, opening for D.O.A. and the Circle Jerks (whose Greg Hetson was previously a RK member). This would have been `85/`86, and the purist hardcore crowd was *not* amused by Redd Kross' shaggy freak-out 70's-palooza shtick at all.

...which, of course, made them brilliant.

Yeah, definitely part of the big post-Flipper / pre-grunge wave of '80s indie rock bands who let their hair grow longer and let their songs grow longer and slower and weirder, like the Necros and Das Damen and Die Kreuzen and Killdozer and Das Damen and Buttholes and Green River etc etc etc. Though Redd Kross obviously more bubblegum-factoried than those. (A couple L.A. bands, like Celebrity Skin and the Zeroes, seemed to fall more in line with what they were doing a few years later.) And right, toe-the-line doctrinaire HC dorks totally hated this stuff. Which is part of what made it fun for us who didn't.

One album that predated even Teen Babes as punks-blatantly-getting-into-'70s-AOR/metal was Bad Religion's Into the Unknown in 1983, which the band itself disowns to this day. So before it became commonplace, the move came off as fairly daring and controversial in that circle.

I remember the Back to the Known e.p., wherein they had a song about the videogame Frogger.

...pre-dating Buckner & Garcia?

I remember Spin giving Neurotica the record of the month or whatever they called their feature review.

Musically it seemed to fit into the Australian Stooges/Psychedelic thing of the time, including being on Big Time label.

Found it, Spin July 1987. First Annual Swimsuit Issue, Susannah Hoffs on the cover in swimsuit. John Leland reviews Neurotica as "loudest, dumbest, most tightly conceived one-joke band since the boys from Queens. And it's a brilliantly funny joke", "Redd Kross play stupid, tacky music for people who know better, and play it with wild abandon"

Hey, next review is Locust Abortion Technician reviewed by Chuck Eddy.

Swimsuit photos of Dylan, Paula Pierce, James Hetfield, Hoffs, Motorhead, Fat Boys, Joey Ramone, Washington Squares, Bunny Wailer, Sting.

I've loved Phaseshifter for years, got into it b/c of a compilation with "Lady In The Front Row". So I voted for that one. "Ms. Lady Evans" is the highlight off this for me, the drumming on it kills me, hell the dynamics of the song as a whole are great. I've never heard anything else by the band; was Phaseshifter an anomaly for the band (like, I think it was on a major label---is the sound better for that reason than their other albums)?

Third Eye was on a major label (and won the last redd kross albums poll on ILM)

I thought the two major label albums sounded really wimpy and emaciated at the time, at least compared to their earlier indie output. Reviewed one of them for Request; maybe I'll see if I can dig that out of the file cabinet. (I might or might not think differently, though, if I revisited them now.)

MAYBE some songs on 3rd Eye are comparatively a bit wimpy but never Phaseshifter.

Bubblegum factory is wimpy and cheesy and ace.

Maybe someone's pointed this out already but Third Eye is back in print again thanks to Rhino's Encore series.

with extra tracks/demos?

http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=7680223

no extra tracks?

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great clip.
they were marvellously incongrous.

seen that great clip before

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Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

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Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

7 votes for Show World is totally LOL.

The soundcheck footage is great -- they start off with "Live Fast Die Young" by the Circle Jerks.

How many Redd Kross fans realize that Michael Cudahy (of my beloved Christmas) wrote Annie's Gone?

Doesn't alter the fact that I vastly prefer Neurotica, but a good trivial pursuit factoid.

I like show world. I cant argue with the results here. Nice showing for every album and the order seems about right. (IMO born innocent is their weakest release)

How many Redd Kross fans realize that Michael Cudahy (of my beloved Christmas) wrote Annie's Gone?

How many Redd Kross fans care?

lol

First time I heard that it was kind of like finding out that Scott Miller had written "Demonica" for the Dwarves...just a weird combo of people.

[You can never be too careful: SM didn't write Demonica]

The results from the last time I ran this poll

Third Eye 15
Phaseshifter 10
Born Innocent 5
Teen Babes From Monsanto EP 3
Show World 3
Red Cross EP 2
Neurotica 2

I want a checked jacket and green jeans.

you do?

which album should we poll best track on?