IN Redd Kross, you have to understand, these things happen. Consistently strange moments of mystery.

"WE played In New York recently declares Jeff McDonald, the ultimate teenager and one-half of the core of LA's Redd Kross, "and this guy came up to me and said 'what's it like being compared to The Beatles and The Kinks' and I said I guess it’s really nice, I really love those bands' and he goes 'that's good, I have a gun and I’m going to use it".

IT happens. Stay cool. Besides, it you're going to let that bother you then imagine the vibes that that Japanese girl who silently follows the band across the world will give you?

"WE'LL book into a hotel and she’ll be checked in down the hall. She flies everywhere. We talk to her but she won't talk to us. I’ll make small talk but she’ll just shake and get too nervous and stand around and stare. I don’t doubt she’ll be there in Australia."

THE Redd Kross story is like a highly theoretical quantum mathematics equation which goes something like this: an incredible rock myth multiplied by twin songwriting tangents of 70s trash, and ‘90s troublegum with the velocity of optimum hipness will result in success growing at first slowly, but increasing it's mass exponentially.

OR as Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore put it in LA alternative style mag -Raygun: "The proudest day of my life was when I was compared to Jeff McDonald."

AT first they were called Red Cross. 1976, and with equal inspiration from The Beatles, Kiss and The Partridge Family, Jeff (age 13) and Steve (age 9) had picked up a guitar and bass respectively, recruited contemporaries of a like minded attitude and started in the garage.

IN 1978 they played their first gig, opening for Black Flag pre-Henry Rollins and released their debut EP. Come '81 and the debut album Born Innocent arrived under the moniker Redd Kross after threat of a lawsuit from the real Red Cross. Extensive touring, the odd film appearance and record company conflagration meant albums were for years few and for between. With the '80s being founded out by the classic covers of Teen Babes From Monsanto and their own Neurotica.

THE ‘90s began with Third Eye, their first album for a major label (Atlantic) and an excuse to tour excessively (including Australia in 1992) again. Pause to catch breath and we’re in 1994, Redd Kross are signed to This Way Up, one of the new breed of indie labels designed to promote and break talent with funding from corporate big brother, with a brand new CD Phaseshifter hitting the malls.

"WE’VE been making records for three decades and I've only just turned 30!" marvels Jeff, who on this day in February is still getting over the jetlag of flying back Into LA from a long tour of Europe. Prior to Which - even before Phaseshifter was released - they had supported The Lemonheads on a tour of America. All of this has combined to make Jeff believe that the future holds more for Redd Kross than just cult status and people appreciating their extraordinary beginnings.

"WITH The Lemonheads that was a huge tour and over here a lot of their fans are like 14 year olds and they were just responding to us as a band - which is great because there’s always people in the record industry who think they're in the know and they say ‘oh, Redd Kross are a good band but if they were going to be huge it would have happened by now'. Then we play to kids and they freak out and buy our records the next day. We know anything can still happen."

THE current line-up (a full Redd Kross family tree would be something to behold) has been together for almost three years now - comprising Gere Fennelly (keyboards), Eddie Kurdzeil (guitar) and Brian Reitzell (drums) - which is something of a record for the group.

"This group isn’t just a group of musicians to back up Jeff and Steve MacDonald, the band is a real band, we’ve got a great band. I almost feel like we’ve only been around three years. We don’t mind going somewhere new where no-one knows us because the second time we go back we see the results," Jeff declares.

OPENING with the powersurge of Jimmy’s Fantasy, Phaseshifter is Redd Kross' best amalgamation yet of 70s trash taste with hookladen songwriting, although it wouldn’t be right if there wasn't one cover, in this case Crazy World by Frightwig, which asks the perplexing question: Why does a missile look like a cock?, while guitars crunch and serenade.

"WE like this album so much that when we finished it I couldn't find anything wrong with it,’ Jeff enthuses. "Most bands get so sick of a record that there’s things they want to change. To my relief people haven’t thought that the album I liked the most wasn’t just plain weird."

"WE actually had to write the album really quickly. Usually because of our post problems with record labels wave had a lot of time to write and perform the songs, but this time we toured so much that we had to write everything in a couple of months. Then in the studio we produced it ourselves, which worried the label, and we only spent a couple of weeks on it. That helped actually because we had to work hard and not spend too much time worrying."

APPRECIATION of LA - along -with girlfriends, juvenile delinquency in high school and riffs - is a mainstay of Redd Kross songwriting. On Phaseshifter it arrives with Huge Wonder, which happens to mention the godlike presence of William Bailey, or as has better known W Axl Rose.

"We recorded it in this really cheap, dodgy studio on Hollywood Boulevard which is just fake glamorous with tourists looking at the stores on the sidewalk and crackheads and heavy metal runaways teenagers who try to be the next Axl Rose. Axl epitomises the kids on that street: he’s from the Midwest and he lived like that before fortune struck him."

SO, to put it tactfully, is this the moment when Redd Kross finally catch up with all the bands they gave a start to and who have now, ahh, risen up to their level much more quickly?

"Or beyond our level to be honest!" laughs Jeff.. "It doesn’t irritate me at all because wave always kind of been in our own world and we just make records that we dig. Sometimes when we put them out that music isn't fashionable and then three years later it is but we’ve already moved onto something else."

NOW add some soft orchestral music as Jeff explains how life has treated he and his brother: "When we first started I had no real aspirations of being on the radio or television, I just wanted to play and be popular in a scene of people. Then we started making records for bigger companies and visiting other countries and now you can be on the television or radio with this type of music, which I never thought would be possible."

"WHAT is considered popular music is changing and we're kinda doing what wave always done and it's coming around to us. A lot of time we think we’d love to be huge superstars and then when the possibility arises and we start to think it's slowly happening and it suddenly becomes scary!"

THOUGH what is even more scary to Jeff is the possibility that he won't be able to find the unintentionally hilarious Australian prison series Prisoner on late night TV when he arrives in the country.

"That last time we were there I was looking for it and on the last night in Australia I saw it at like two in the morning. Are you sure it's not on?"

AFRAID so.

"THAT'S pathetic. When we toured England we had these friends who follow us around hitching on tour - but we let them stay in our rooms cause they're so cool - and they had taped 12 hours of Prisoner for us. One day on the bus we had a 10 hour drive and we watched ten hours straight"

SO who is your favourite? The Freak?

"I LOVE The Freak," he coos, "but my favourite is (senior citizen) Lizzie. I'm a big Jude fan and Bea, Top Dog, Queen Bea. You watch that show for ten hours and those people become like your family. There were people in the bus who didn't know about it and they were like moaning and griping and after the first hour they were all completely addicted. It's the greatest ever television show of all time and it makes me love Australia even more."

Redd Kross support their very good friends The Hoodoo Gurus at The Hordern Pavilion, with You am I opening, on Friday April 15, proudly presented by Drum Media. Phaseshifter is out now on Phonogram.

By: Craig Mathieson