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A Friend of mine excuses her purchase of an "I Killed Laura Palmer" T-shirt as a strategic bit of forward thinking. In 10 or 15 years, she reasons, long after the worms wiggling beneath pop culture's short memory have digested Laura back into obscurity, it'll be the perfect piece of retro-kitsch.
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Because when you get right down to it, Red Kross are sweeter than Cheap Trick, a little more goofy, and they rock harder. Rampaging Third Eye tunes like "Shonen Knife" (for and about the Japanese band of the same name and another Kross-cool point of reference) and "1976" (in which Hecker sings an uncanny Paul Stanley impersonation) create an appropriately gritty context for gentler songs like "Where I Am Today" (U2 and REM sleep in late, then write a poem about each other) and "I Don't Know How To Be Your Friend" (Joni Mitchellism as cause celebre). For verisimilitude, they even bring in Susan Cowsill some harmonies. Maybe they don't quite get away with lyrics like "Take me on a tour of the bugbblegum factory/I want to see where love is made," but it's hard to imagine anyone else coming so close.
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