Cassette Monday: Phaseshifter was the fifth album by Redd Kross, released in 1993 by This Way Up. Apparently This Way Up were a subsidiary of Mercury Records, because I received the cassette you see in the second photo above by virtue of my being on Mercury’s promo list in 1993. When I was in high school, I did two issues of a fanzine that was basically an outlet for my boredom—and, I suppose, my nascent dreams of growing up to be a writer. I lived in the middle of nowhere and had no shows to go to, but I was aware enough to send copies of my fanzine out to Maximum Rocknroll and Flipside in order to get reviews. This led to 20 or so mailorders, which I slowly filled over the course of a year or so. Other than handing out a few copies to school friends, that was the sum total of my distribution. But it was enough to get me noticed by a major record label, who sent me promo copies of all of their alt-oriented releases for at least two years. I doubt that sort of fly-by-night effort would be rewarded in similar fashion now; the rise of the internet has made zine culture implode, and I’d guess that record companies don’t have the budget or the desire to do that kind of hardcore trawling for press. In the wake of the grunge explosion, though, with every label in the country trying to find the next Nirvana, things were different, and I became very familiar with the generic format the covers of every Mercury promotional cassette followed. You’ll see more of them here before this project is through.
Redd Kross had quite a history by the time this album was released, having formed in 1979 as part of the same suburban LA scene that produced Black Flag and The Circle Jerks. The band was founded by brothers Jeff and Steve McDonald when they were 15 and 11 respectively, and on their first EP, Annette’s Got The Hits, the band’s lineup was completed by Greg Hetson and Ron Reyes, who’d go on to play in The Circle Jerks and Black Flag, respectively. Jeff (guitar/lead vocals) and Steve (bass/backing vocals) kept going after they left, revamping the band’s lineup almost completely between each album. At various times, they played with former and/or future members of Samiam, Pearl Jam, The Bangles, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, and French techno group AIR. Redd Kross’s sound evolved through as many phases as their lineup, going from bubblegum-punk to hippie-tinged pop and finally, on Phaseshifter, arriving at a distorted power-pop sound. The lineup for this album, in addition to Jeff and Steve McDonald, included Eddie Kurdziel on lead guitar, Gere Fennelly on keyboards, and Brian Reitzell on drums. That lineup of the band would stay together for another studio album, 1997’s Show World, before Kurdziel’s death of a drug overdose led to a decade-long hiatus. Today, Redd Kross are together again, with the same lineup they had on their 1987 album Neurotica. They released a live DVD, Got LIVE If You Must, in 2008, and are reportedly working on a new album.
