Brothers Jeff and Steven McDonald helped put SoCal punk on the map in the late 1970s as teenage miscreants in Redd Kross, and now their unique tale is being told in the documentary Born Innocent: The Redd Kross Story, which will be screening throughout the U.S. in December and January. SPIN premieres the official trailer below.
The McDonalds learned their sensibility from Rodney Bingenheimer’s English disco glam-fakery circa pre-punk ’70s L.A.: hot children in the city loving Marc Bolan and David Bowie, running wild and looking pretty under their parents’ powdered suburban noses, or at least staying home rooting for the Runaways on ABC’s Rock N Roll Sports Classic once the Partridge Family were extinct.
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Indeed, what made Redd Kross so beloved—and so distinctive—was their eternally youthful, rainbow-streaked, Beatles-esque, Cheap Trick-influenced, ’60s-and-’70s-pop-culture-obsessed power-pop nuggets. From their groovy 1987 touchstone Neurotica to their underappreciated ’90s-era output, then up through their 2012 comeback Researching the Blues, Redd Kross have trudged on—shredding through their debaucherous and glammed-out “bubble-grunge” without losing a bit of the fresh-faced euphoria for which they’re known.
Born Innocent shares a name with a song from the group’s recent self-titled album, and follows the fall release of the memoir Now You’re One of Us plus tours of North America and Europe earlier this year. The film was directed by Emmy winner Andrew Reich, a lifelong Redd Kross fan who is best known as one of the executive producers of Friends, and boasts interviews with members of Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Sonic Youth, the Bangles, Black Flag, Dinosaur Jr. and the Go-Go’s.
“The film that inspired our newest double LP and our memoir is finally slated for a theatrical release. We are beyond thrilled and can’t wait for everyone to experience what Andrew Reich so lovingly and persistently crafted over the better part of the past decade,” the McDonald brothers tell SPIN. “Our lives for the world to see!”
“They believed in themselves, they didn’t follow trends and they were willing to be in opposition to the counterculture they were a part of when they felt it was becoming too hidebound and reactionary,” Reich says of the McDonalds. “I made a point of telling the story without any directorial narration or text or other interventions. I wanted the story to be told by the people who lived it as well as through archival materials. And I wanted the film to entertain and delight an audience. This is a band who never made it big, and the dominant cultural narrative would label that a failure. The film provides a counterpoint to that narrative. Redd Kross never had a hit or a gold record, and they are still one of the greatest success stories in rock’n’roll history.”
Screenings for Born Innocent begin Dec. 5 in Los Angeles, and many feature Q&As with members of the band. Click here for additional details.
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