Pop quiz: Who are you if you're barely 30 years old but have -
(i) influenced the likes of Sonic Youth, the Pixies and Faith No More,
(ii) a punk band that you started way back in the original Punk Explosion,
(iii) one of the worst band names in rock history/one of the best American bands around,
(iv) released a song called "Linda Blair," another that cannonizes "St." Lita Ford, and yet another
that pays tribute to both Debbie Gibson and Kim Gordon in the same breath.
Answer: That's right, you must be Jeff or Steve MacDonald of the legendary Redd Kross!!
Congratulations! And your prize is a slightly-used copy of your band's new cd, SHOW WORLD,
which we want you to have because we don't want it anymore. Please take it back. Listen to it, and
maybe you can tell us why we here at Rehabilitated Punk Delinquents Suck Eggs seem to vastly
prefer everything you've done before this; from the tuneless teenage punk rants on your debut disc, BORN INNOCENT, to
the inspired Hollies-gone-Heavy-Metal of 1993's PHASESHIFTER.
Sure, we have our theories, and we don't mind sharing them with you, 'cos who would've thought to countenance a Redd
Kross that has to riff away so earnestly on a song as unchallenged by even a smidgen of your characteristic pop irreverence as
"Pretty Please Me." It's the first track on SHOW WORLD for crying out loud, and already you sound like you're just going
through the motions.
Worse (and maybe it's just paranoia on our part), we thought you might've been trying to draw in the Green Day crowd with
all those brain-dead power-chords. But listening closely to a few more tracks, especially empathetic teen-anthems like "Get
Out of Myself" and "Teen Competition" (boy, this one's title just gave it away), it dawned on us that it was really the Weezer
crowd that you were trying to get to, and that you must want quite badly to be the bar band at Big Al's, play punchy power
pop numbers to the Happy Days kids, and well, basically do what Weezer did in the video for "Buddy Holly." As George
Harrison might say on an episode of The Simpsons, "it's been done before." Hey, wait a minute, he really did say that on an
episode of The Simpsons, didn't he? Listen to George, he's been sued for song plagiarism before, he knows what he's talking
about.
And since we're on about the Fab Four, you guys have really gotten your Beatles impersonation act together. It may sound
abit like Archie and Jughead doing John and Paul, but I can definitely see "Follow the Leader" on the Beatles' Anthology IV.
"Secret Life" could be there too. Hmmm, so could "Ugly Town" actually. Come to think of it, alot of SHOW WORLD sounds
like a well-researched Beatles tribute collection, doesn't it? Heck, couldn't you just have recorded "Ticket to Ride" and spared
us the rest of the work out?
This next point of contention may be just disappointment speaking, but we thought it rather sad to see the kitschiest of bands
sink to cynical spitefulness. Why take an archly vicious pot-shot at hippie culture in "Stoned"? What's the point? Where's the
challenge? And to sound like a dissolute John Lennon on "Girl God" singing a line that goes "the prophets of this generation
always lack imagination" while sounding equally derivative and bankrupt of creativity yourself is just plain pathetic. You're only
30, but you're already more jaded than the 50-year old rockers in Aerosmith, and not half as funny.
We're hopeful still though, 'cos there's clearly a nimble intelligence at work on a song like "One Chord Progression" that makes
it shine even through the retardly flat mix that buries the drums and muffles the guitars on the whole album. Reworking Led
Zep's "When the Levee Breaks" into "Kiss the Goat" was rather smart too. But the rest of the album... so plain finger-snappin'
foot-tappin' listenable it doesn't stand any real listening to. Just awfully disheartening to see the weird turning pro. Give me
"Notes and Chords Mean Nothing To Me" anyday.
Gerald Tan 1997
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