One of the most common things you’ll ever hear musicians of A Certain Age say onstage is some variation of “We never dreamed we’d still be playing and talking about these songs” 20 or 35 or 55 years later.
For the vastly underrated veteran alt-rock icons Redd Kross — who managed to be players and a pivotal influence on the punk, indie and even metal scenes of the ’80s and ’90s — that existential conundrum is compounded by the fact that their music, image and raison d’etre was retro from the jump: an elaborately ironic take on the early 1970s music and culture they grew up on, making an art of the then-novel concept that you can revere and respect something and mock it mercilessly at the same time. Kiss, the Beatles, the Partridge Family, garish early ‘70s fashion all got thrown into the same blender and spit out in a fun, funny and deceptively clever way that helped set the cultural tone for Gen X. And yet, when Redd Kross’ “moment” arrived in the early ‘90s, when they got a major-label deal and their influencees started becoming superstars, they just couldn’t bring themselves to take it seriously.
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While irreverent as ever, they’re taking it all pretty seriously now: On their current tour, they’re supporting a new album (a double!), and two retrospective projects: a book, “Now You’re OneOfUs: The Incredible Story of ReddKross,” due in October, and an excellent, recently completed documentary called “Born Innocent” (named after their first album) that has been making the festival rounds and shows just how far ahead of their time Redd Kross were, as well as being distinctly of their time. To recap quickly: Brothers Jeff and Steve McDonald performed their first show 45 years ago, opening for punk icons Black Flag in a park in Redondo Beach when Jeff was 14 and Steve was 11. As they progressed from punk to a sort of comically glam take on power-pop, bands from Nirvana (whose manager, John Silva, managed Redd Kross first) to Guns N’ Roses to Stone Temple Pilots would take notes from their look, moves, attitude and/or sound. And after the alt-rock wave they’d help to create had risen and fallen, they split up — as much as most bandmate brothers really split up, anyway —before figuring out how to reunite around a dozen years ago.
So, given all of the above, what does Redd Kross look like in 2024? As great as ever and not that much older, in most major ways. Rather than the flamboyant bell bottoms and paisley of yesteryear, they took the stage in matching light-blue suits; Steve’s hair is still waist-length but Jeff’s is short and he wore his glasses for half the set. They’re still incredibly funny onstage, recalling that first gig opening for “dirtbags” Black Flag and working recurring, generationally specific punchlines about a “rock and roll party” (a line popularized by Paul Stanley on “Kiss Alive,” 1975) and “This next song is the first song on our neeeeeewwww album” (ditto Robin Zander on “Cheap Trick at Budokan,” 1978).
And it’s safe to say that at least 95% of the audience at Brooklyn’s Music Hall of Williamsburg on this night understood every single joke, even though most of the references would be baffling to anyone under the age of 50. (The band knows its audience, too: They hit the stage at the older-person-friendly hour of 9 p.m. —on a Friday, no less —and were done before 10:30.)
The beginning of the set leaned on later material, hitting several songs from their eponymous new album —designed like the Beatles’ eponymous “White Album” but in red (and nicknamed “The Redd Album”), a joke so obvious it’s surprising it took them 45 years to execute it — with more-recent tracks like “Candy Colored Catastrophe,” “I’ll Take Your Word for It” and 2012’s “Stay Away From Downtown” showing the band’s pop chops to be as strong as ever. But at the set’s mid-point they began going through their classic era in reverse chronological order, with songs from “Phase Shifter,” “Neurotica” and their debut album, winding down the main set with the 1984 classic “Linda Blair,” which was extended with some comically rawk big riffing.
The McDonalds’ charismatic and hilarious dynamic remains, with the occasional brotherly jab but also charming moments like Steve sticking out his tongue at Jeff in the middle of a song. They traded jibes with the crowd and also took a couple of moments to recall their history kind of wistfully, noting that their first show was almost exactly 45 years before this night — July 22, 1979, they said —and thanking the audience for riding with them on their long “journey,” although Steve rolled his eyes sarcastically when he said that particular word.
The pair are capably joined by lead guitarist Jason Shapiro and drummer Dale Crover, both of whom joined in 2019. Crover was a seemingly unlikely addition: One of the best drummers of his generation, he has powered the crushing sludge-rock of grunge progenitors the Melvins since the early ‘80s — actually, his drums are that band’s lead instrument —and among many other side-hustles, played with Nirvana (who saw the Melvins as mentors) at two critical junctures when they were between drummers: First, on the band’s 1988 demo, before Chad Channing joined, and again two years later, for a tour before Dave Grohl completed the trio that would change the world. Crover’s heavy style is a little outsized for a nimble power-pop band like Redd Kross — we’d have thought his occasional double-bass-drum rolls would be a firing offense — but he’s adapted to the band’s ‘60s pop-psychedelic, crash-cymbal style and he’s so powerful and versatile that they probably thought, OK, a non-ironic double-kick roll once in a while is worth everything else we’re getting.
The encore began with the song that put them on the map, the 1982 KROQ anthem “Annette’s Got the Hits” — with the signature riff that Steve recalled writing on his bass in the brothers’ childhood bedroom — and concluded, inevitably, with the song that they may have performed at every single gig they’ve ever played. Kiss’ “Deuce,” delivered with equal parts reverence and irony, which Steve introduced as the first song performed by the first band he ever saw in concert — Kiss at the Great Western Forum in Los Angeles in early 1976, to which he was escorted by “my big brother,” Jeff.
And as the brothers faced off during Shapiro’s guitar solo for the obligatory Paul Stanley-Gene Simmons synchronized headbang, it was both nostalgic and adorable to see them, at 60 and 57, still rocking out like they undoubtedly first did in that childhood bedroom.
