THE REDD KROSS CODE

I KNEW straight away that myself and Redd Kross were in for a torrid love affair. Let's face it, anybody who admits to being influenced by Kiss, Cheap Trick and the godlike New York Dolls is guaranteed to give you a great big stiffie and after spending 45 hot and sticky minutes with the L.A. band's latest album, Phaseshifter, I'm totally in lust.

"I discovered the carnal joys of music before sex," sniggers bassist and occasional Kross-dresser Steve McDonald, "although it didn't take me long to realise that the two enjoy a symbiotic relationship and I've been exploiting that ever since! If you're 10 years old and you suddenly see Gene Simmons on TV wearing all that make-up and spitting fire, you're going to be blown away and that's exactly what happened to me. The Beatles, the Stones, David Bowie, T. Rex and the Dolls were the other people I listened to back then and they're still a big influence."

While Phaseshifter is a hard bugger to pigeonhole, imagine if the Fab Four had been raised in eighties' Seattle rather than fifties' Liverpool, and you'll have some idea of the close harmony pop racket that Redd Kross have been making since adolescence.

"Actually, I was cutting records at 12, so it was more pre-pubescence than adolescence. My parents were a little confused and freaked at first but then they accepted that I wasn't going to be a straight 'A' student or get involved in the family business, and were pretty supportive. Being young meant we got talked down to but it was also the reason we got so much attention, so on the whole it was cool.

"There was a great buzz in L.A. at the time with punk taking off and Redd Kross were part of that scene. We'd watched Blondie and The Ramones getting it together in New York, X-Ray Spex and the Pistols were starting to filter through on import and we had our own local bands like The Germs and Black Flag which gave us something to aspire to."

For reasons that he admits "had more to do with what was going on in our groins than our brains," Steve and his guitar-playing elder brother Jeff also developed a passion for the Go-Go's and regularly donned false moustaches and stood on each other's shoulders to get into their gigs.

"It's hard to believe now," he reminisces, "but when they started, the Go-Go's were real tough scary chicks. Belinda, in particular, you wouldn't have recognised. She had cropped hair, used to wear torn-up old ladies clothes and had this permanent look on her face which said, 'Fuck with me and I'll kick your ass!'. We became good friends and, you know, she might have a 'sophisticated' image these days but she's still a punk at heart. Myself and Jeff have written a song called 'Goodbye Day' for Belinda's new album which is basically a throwback to that classic Go-Go's/Blondie pop thing and she got a great buzz out of it!".

While Steve settled for a professional relationship with his heroines, big brother Jeff had to go one step further.

"Yeah, he got married last month to Charlotte Caffey, so she's now my sister-in-law. And my mother-in-law, sometimes, but you'd better not print that because it'll get me into a load of trouble."

Normally, I'd be only too happy to oblige but, God darn it, the 'delete' button on my Apple Mac has just gone AWOL and the engineer says he won't be able to come round and fix it until a week next Thursday. Whilst we're gossiping, what can Steve tell us about Vicki Peterson of The Bangles?

"Vicki's absolutely brilliant - she was never an official member of Redd Kross but she did a couple of gigs with us when we were short a guitar player and her brother Dave was in the band for a while too. He was still living at home and we rehearsed in his mum and dad's townhouse - much to the annoyance of their neighbours who were continually complaining."

14 years, numerous line-up changes and an aborted major label deal later, Redd Kross finally seem ready to bid a fond farewell to cult status and become multi-platinum fucking huge. While I doubt that Steve would be adverse to a few extra zeroes on his bank balance, does he ever worry about the downside of being a flash bastard rock star?

"We've been in the business long enough to recognise the various pitfalls and, as of when they come along, I reckon we'll be able to deal with them. It's impossible to know how you're going to react to becoming public property until it happens but I can't see us suffering in the same way as Nirvana. Their problem was that they never had time to adjust - they went to bed nobodies and woke up the next morning the biggest band on the planet. I can understand that being difficult to handle."

And what about the cross-dressing we alluded to earlier?

"We're real men," laughs Steve, "but we've always enjoyed camping it up and letting the female side of our character run wild. One, it pisses the rednecks off and two, we look great in women's clothes!".