As this writer looks forward to tomorrow's Redd Kross show at the (Cabaret) Metro, I am reminded of timing my move to Los Angeles in 1997, which I had painstakingly coordinated to coincide with Redd Kross's scheduled appearance at an annual music festival in the hipster mecca of Silver Lake, only to arrive at said festival to discover that Redd Kross hadn't just cancelled the gig, but broken up altogether.
I wasn't so much pissed as wondering why I hadn't expected such a possibility because, let's face it, when it comes to me makin' plans, if anything can go wrong, it will. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I wondered if I hadn't somehow caused the band's break-up simply by looking forward to the show and planning a cross-country move around the gig.
In the months leading up to my move, in fact, I had taken on a short-term warehouse position for a company that manufactured window blinds and would spend most mornings in the unheated loading dock freezing my nuts off. The only thing that kept me warm during those brutally frigid winter months prior to my move was blasting my Redd Kross CD's and dreaming of life in sunny California.
Often, as the power chords to "Jimmy's Fantasy" or "Lady In The Front Row" filled the warehouse, I'd wonder what Jeff or Steven McDonald were doing at that exact moment. Whatever it was, I thought to myself, it didn't involve freezing their nuts off and, quite frankly, sometimes that was the only thing that kept me going as my teeth chattered uncontrollably.
Of course, once I got settled in L.A. and began thinking about doing some live shows of my own, I thought who better to round out my new band than former Redd Kross guitarist Eddie Kurdzeil?
Getting a phone number from a mutual friend, I began the lengthy process of tracking him down.
After a few phone chats, I got him a copy of the tunes we'd be performing and hoped he'd like them enough to agree to work together. To my amazement, Eddie called out of the blue a day later and told me the tunes were some of the best he'd heard since his Redd Kross days and a rehearsal was set up for the following week.
A few days later, coming back from a late night trip to Kinko's to print up some fliers, I was listening to Rodney Bingenheimer on KROQ when the legendary DJ broke in between songs to inform us that Kurdzeil had died the night before from a cocaine overdose.
Once home, I was met at the door by my girlfriend, who'd been listening to Rodney's show, too.
"What's the name of that guy you got to play in your band?" she asked with cautious concern.
"Yeah, I just heard," I replied and she embraced me on the doorstep for what seemed like an eternity.
To this day, I remain absolutely floored by his untimely passing. The dude had been so fucking talented, injecting just the right amount of venom into Redd Kross's sound that I knew I would follow his career no matter where it led, whether he wound up being in my band or not, and now he was gone.
The weirdness didn't stop there.
Around 2003 or so, Steven McDonald formed his own band and played a gig at the Troubadour.
I showed up, got a seat in the upstairs bleachers and, mid-show, a woman attempting to take a seat behind me lost her balance and elbowed me square on the noggin, causing a laceration on my forehead that required stitches.
I watched a song or two from the bar area on the in-house video feed while waiting for my girlfriend to pull the car around. Hilariously enough, one of the songs I heard was an ace cover of Sloan's "The Other Man", which led me to swing by Tower Records to purchase Sloan's Pretty Together album on our way home from the ER.
"You're fucking nuts," my girlfriend muttered as I returned with yellow bag in-hand and slid the new CD into the player.
On one fateful day in 2006, she emailed me from work with a link to an article announcing Redd Kross's upcoming L.A. reunion show along with a message that read: "Maybe let me buy the tickets this time so you don't BREAK UP THE BAND!!"
I laughed so damn hard I scared the neighbors.
Even so, as much as I liked to joke about it, deep down, I couldn't help worry that something would happen to scuttle the reunion show. We even saw Jeff McDonald before the show talking to fans outside the venue and, for once, my gal knew better than to suggest that we say "Hello".
Once inside, we staked out a spot in front of the stage, at which point I began surveying all of the hanging speakers and trusses to make sure all were hung securely. "Do you want me to check to make sure all the power cords are properly grounded?" my girlfriend quipped.
"Yeah, could you?" I replied, only half-jokingly.
Minutes later, the band would hit the stage and proceed to pummel the standing-room-only crowd with a high-octane set that pulled heavily from my two favorite albums, Phaseshifter and Show World, and, almost ten years after I landed in L.A., all was finally right with the world.