https://www.reddkrossfilm.com

This is strangely interesting.

I only checked it out because Steve Poltz recommended it, and I trust him implicitly. But to be honest, I’m not a big Redd Kross fan. Actually, I’m not a fan at all. Oh, I’m aware of the band, but I couldn’t pick their music out of a playlist. They were another one of many Southern California bands that meant something locally, but never blew up on the national scene.

Having said that, this is one of the few documentaries that I believe will bring attention to the band, that will burnish their image and career.

Assuming people see it. Which is the hardest thing to do today, to get the attention of an audience. You’ve got no idea how valuable ninety minutes is to someone today. They have so many opportunities for their time, their attention, it’s hard to even get people to dive in, never mind stay in.

But I did stay in. Poltz got me to check it out, but I stayed in because…

The movie depicted a bygone era. When you formed bands, when bands were still a thing, when there was a musical culture, a musician culture, and you believed that someone from your ilk, your little scene, might break through.

So, Redd Kross start out as punks.

And the funny thing is kinda like the Ramones, not everybody knows their music, but they know Black Flag’s name. And the Circle Jerks.

And there was a scene. Sure, punk may have had its epicenter in Orange County, then again it flourished at the Masque and the Hong Kong Café in Los Angeles.

So the McDonald brothers, the mainstays of Redd Kross, are from Hawthorne, California. They go back home and…

Their original homeland has been turned into a freeway, the 105.

This is bedrock California history. Somewhere in here is the essence of the Southern California mentality. Unlike the east coast, no one is worried about going to college, they’re not concerned with SAT scores, they’re just watching television, going to the beach, living their lives…the future may be on the horizon, but no one is really thinking about it or preparing for it.

I think it’s the weather. It’s never too cold and it hardly ever rains and you’re never cooped up inside, you feel a sense of freedom.

Furthermore, chances are your parents immigrated here, so there’s a tradition of breaking with roots, taking chances.

And then there’s the nihilism of punk, which was a reaction to society…

We don’t even get that backlash anymore. Maybe in the manosphere, but all those people are sad and angry and licking their wounds, whereas the punks believed that they were tuning forks, that a lot of people were on their page, that maybe they were the mainstream, not the underground.

And what I like is the inclusion of all the players, not just the musicians, but the bedrock, formative people. Not only the parents, but the kids they went to school with, the woman whose 8th grade party Redd Kross played at. They got booed, but unlike a band today, they laugh about it. They’re a weird combination of straight and hip, outsider but leader. This is not New York, where you’ve got to dress in black and wear sunglasses at night and smoke cigarettes, no, you can wear your Chucks and some cartoon t-shirt and…

Eventually Redd Kross evolves from punk to what one might call power pop, and this is where the music gets interesting, but don’t think because I’m intrigued that this film is not hagiography… Oh, you’ve got people from the scene waxing rhapsodic how great Redd Kross are. How they influenced Axl Rose and grunge and… Fine, but there’s a reason why some acts make it and some don’t. I mean the brothers aren’t quite sour grapes, but the film makes Redd Kross out to be gods, and they are most certainly not.

But what is missing from this film, which I couldn’t stop thinking about, was how did these guys SURVIVE! Not only them, but all the talking heads in this film…

So many are stuck in the past. Sexagenarians, septuagenarians, and still dressed in the clothes, the look, of yesteryear, their twenties. It’s almost like they couldn’t give up and wasted their entire lives. I’m sure they wouldn’t see it this way, but I do. At what point do you bite the bullet and pivot, realize it’s not going to work out for you and do something different?

Now I’m sure some do or did. And a bunch die. And some weren’t going anywhere so fast to begin with.

But… There was an entire scene, a subculture, not quite the art students of your high school, but misfits, and people who wouldn’t buy the b.s. of life. They all formed bands and gravitated to each other. And the funny thing is there was no hierarchy, like in regular life, where it’s usually about money or education or some other delineation of status, no…they were all there together, the little engine that could, playing music, getting high.

I mean even the guy in Redd Kross gets hooked on drugs and goes to rehab. I mean that’s a cliché, right?

Wouldn’t happen to me. But maybe that’s just the point. I grew up on the east coast and my parents prodded me to succeed from birth. We were prohibited from watching TV during the day, and my mother wasn’t too thrilled about us watching it at night either. We knew we were going to college from the moment of consciousness. We didn’t necessarily have to be somebody, but we had to get established, so we could pay our own bills, so our parents didn’t have to worry about us.

Which is why the people I grew up with and went to college with didn’t set the world on fire. We weren’t programmed for it. We were programmed to play it safe, to buy insurance, whereas the McDonald brothers and the people in this film…I’d basically say they were oblivious to the structure of everyday life, the bills and the obligations.

Now deep into this movie we find out one brother is married to Charlotte Caffey, who’s got a good income stream from the Go-Go’s. And the other is married to Anna Waronker and…

I still don’t know how they survived.

And the band has highlights. Everybody who ever tried to make it in Hollywood does. In this case, one brother is dating Sofia Coppola and the band is flown by her dad up to Napa for the weekend, private, when most people didn’t know that’s what was going on at the Van Nuys Airport, the rich and famous flying in and out.

But stories don’t pay the bills.

So, the barrier to entry here is not low, you’ve got to pay to see this flick now, it’s not on a streaming service. Maybe it will be eventually, since the McDonald brothers are so weird, like the Mael brothers of Sparks, if not that far off the deep end.

And there are more great twists and turns, stories of growing up, but…

I don’t care if you’re a fan of Redd Kross or have never heard of the band. That’s irrelevant. The scene depicted in this movie, the lifestyle, the attitudes…they are completely foreign to what is happening in music today.

Today no one has a sense of humor, no one questions authority, they want to buy in, they’ve got no fear of selling out. But it used to be your identity and viewpoint were more important than money. You could have nothing and judge and people would agree with you. Now, if you’ve got no portfolio, if you don’t have a big bank account, you’re derided, if not completely ignored.

So, it was a time and a place. But it’s also a breed of people… Who still exist, but they’re not forming bands.

Today you make your music at home on your computer, oftentimes alone. A band is too hard to manage, and if you make it you have to split up all the money.

So you put your stuff up on YouTube, you spam everybody you know and then complain that you’re not successful.

Redd Kross were not about complaints. I’d say they were about music, but it’s more than that. They were about a sensibility, involving both emotion and intellect. They marched to the beat of a different drummer, and they were not the only ones.

In truth, this film is subversive, parents don’t want their kids to see it, for fear they’ll take it to heart and jump the track.

But everything worth paying attention to was made by people who jumped the track, from music to tech.

And isn’t it funny how so much of it came from California.

I won’t belabor the point, because today everybody thinks California is an unlivable hellhole, but what they don’t know is California is a state of mind, one of freedom and possibility, where you jump before you talk yourself down from the ledge.

Like Redd Kross.

I’d never even heard of her a month ago. But then I read she donated a million bucks to MrBeast’s TeamWater charity and…

Musicians don’t donate that much. Almost nobody does. And if they do, they want to let everybody know about it.

Where did Sophie Rain get all this money?

ONLYFANS!

That’s right, porn. But it’s not the porn of yore, some fly-by-night outfit in the San Fernando Valley that rips off performers as they get STDs. No, this sister is doing it for herself.

Steve Jobs famously said he was selling tools. That’s what a platform is. It allows you to distribute your wares far and wide. It does not guarantee you make any money. Peruse TikTok and you’ll find women testifying that they tried OnlyFans to crickets. They bared their assets, but no one cared.

You see selling yourself online is hard work.

But all the establishment can do is put down the influencers.

So I Googled Sophie Rain. She’s large-busted and attractive, but you can see this kind of star as you walk down Hollywood Boulevard, some who are famous, some who you hardly even recognize.

That’s right, Sophie Rain is not that special. Not that there’s anything wrong with her, but…HOW DID SHE MAKE SO MUCH MONEY?

To tell you the truth, I did not do a deep dive. But I do know enough about the sphere to be aware that influencers, successful OnlyFans stars, work harder than most musicians, all those complaining they don’t get paid on Spotify. Because these online stars realize that their success depends on themselves and themselves only. That they’ve got to work to bring in the bread.

Now not everybody can be successful on OnlyFans. You must be physically appealing. That does not mean you have to be classically beautiful, just that you must appeal to a segment of the public. And the segment doesn’t even have to be that big, you don’t have to reach everybody, far from it. Because if you have superfans, they will support you, just like the BTS Army supports the Korean group.

Most people are not fans of BTS and most people are not fans of Sophie Rain, even though the out of touch press will tell you they are. We live in a Tower of Babel society and no one wants to admit it, because that would mean their reach and power is less than they believe it to be, that they tell everybody else it is.

But the online influencers, their goal is different from the musical acts on MTV in the eighties. They don’t want or need world domination, and they don’t want any fame that doesn’t pay. It’s lowest common denominator, they’re doing it for the money.

Like so many performers in music today.

The only problem is it’s easier to make money, and more of it, online as an influencer or OnlyFans star. And you don’t have to spend all that time practicing your instrument.

So what does an influencer/OnlyFans star know?

That they have to constantly produce. Usually each and every day, multiple times a day. It’s a jungle out there, and if they don’t work, no money comes in.

And they’re willing to give a ton away free, to get people to subscribe, to partake.

And they’re congenial and responsive. You’ve got to be nice, you’ve got to act like a best friend, like a girlfriend, you’ve got to make people believe…and you’ve got to be SMART!

It’s not about having a manager or a label. Sure, you ultimately need an accountant, but you know your career is in your hands.

And you know not everybody makes it. So you’ve got to be special and, once again, hard-working.

I don’t hear this from “musicians.” They’ll spam you to pay attention, but why? They’re better marketers than players. And all they can do is complain that they can’t get paid.

But this is a sea change in America. It’s the nichification. The stars are smaller than ever before, but that does not mean they are not richer. And just because music was the easiest way for the unwashed, the uneducated, to make riches in the past, that is not the case today.

Bottom line is Olivia Rodriguez and even Miley Cyrus are competing, poorly, with the OnlyFans girls. They’re selling sex written by committee, whereas on OnlyFans, it comes straight from the heart, and the vagina.

And the OnlyFans girls stay on brand, they know what they’re famous for, everything they do is an extension of sexuality/friendship. It’s not about selling merch, but planting yourself in someone’s brain…the goal is to hook men emotionally and string them along.

So… You sell one on one services. You have a bank of phone sex operators imitating/playing you…

If I was running a conference, if I was some music trade, I wouldn’t feature the pompous voices of brain dead musicians, I’d go deep on one of these OnlyFans girls.

And, of course, there are those not selling sex, the so-called “influencers.” But one thing is for sure, they’re selling THEMSELVES! They know it’s about identity, personality, whereas wannabe musicians think their bland, poorly-performed music, is enough.

Oh, don’t get your knickers in a twist with me ‘putting down” players. Really, I’m not even talking about the players, I’m talking about the infrastructure.

We keep on hearing major labels can’t break acts anymore. That’s because they consider a break what it was in the last century, something that reaches everybody and sells tonnage. No, today it’s all about bunts and doubles at best. If you’re swinging for the fences you’ve got it wrong. Sophie Rain doesn’t care that most people are not paying attention to her, she only cares that SOME PEOPLE are paying attention to her.

So, you can see the lineup for a festival and shrug your shoulders. Who cares about these acts? Meanwhile, the true headliners will only work on their own, knowing they can make more money only appealing to the fans they’ve already got.

All this is happening right under our noses, but everybody from the old days wants to deny it, they want to believe it’s the same as it ever was.

But it’s not.

Loyalty doesn’t pay.

You torch your reputation and then you’re kicked to the curb like a dog, promised some gig later, like an unnamed player in a sports trade.

Now the biggest news today is not Bondi’s firing, but Macron’s excoriation of Trump. Blasting him for not only undercutting NATO, but flip-flopping on his reasons for the Iran war and more. Seems like the rest of the world is no longer afraid of the president. I’d say he’s worn out his welcome, but it’s worse than that, he’s eviscerated two hundred fifty years of American good will. You used to count on America to support you, as a backstop, to do what is right. Now you know you’re on your own, and may be victimized by a tyrant.

Not that this is new in the rest of the world. Sure, antisemitism is a problem in the Republican party, but it’s this constant veneration of Viktor Orbán that upsets me. The guy is a dictator, who rigs elections, but it’s not only Trump who lauds him, Tucker went to visit him. If you’re playing the home game you’re scratching your head, this guy is the antithesis of America and its values.

Then again, if you’ve been playing the home game, it’s now three-dimensional chess, with so much going on it’s not only hard to get a grasp on it, it makes you want to detach.

Starting off with gas prices… Did you see that GM’s sales dropped 9.7%? Not hard to believe when your business model is based on selling overpriced gas-guzzlers. Meanwhile, BYD has introduced an electric car battery that can fully charge in ten minutes that has in excess of 600 miles of capacity. And the American car companies have shuttered most of their EV development and written off billions. Then again, Trump eliminated incentives, he’s against green energy. As for the government shepherding new technologies with investment…you drank Tang after the astronauts did, right?

And speaking of green energy, Trump paid a billion bucks to a French energy company to cancel wind farms. And that’s YOUR billion dollars, there was no talk of donor money here. Just like with Kristi Noem and her planes.

Yes, in light of the “Daily Mail” story about her husband, Noem gets a pass for her rumored relationship with Corey Lewandowski, but she toed the Trump line and was excised, it’s just a matter of time. Who are these bozos who haven’t seen the movie, who don’t realize it’s just a matter of time before they’re history?

Sure, it’s a triumph for the people that Bondi and Noem are gone… But were they so enamored of these government gigs that they not only cast caution to the wind, but their brains too?

So we’ve got a war, and all we hear about from Trump and Bondi is the stock market. As if the number reflects the general health of America when so many are living paycheck to paycheck. Meanwhile, if you’ve got any investments, it’s scary to look at the number…forget taxes, Trump is taking directly from your pocketbook.

And the corporations and the rich have benefited from the Great Big Beautiful Bill and…

At rallies we’ve got signifiers in the streets living in the last century, when Ukraine is holding Russia at bay with drone technology and elders can’t stop bitching about technology and social media. Sure, Bondi may have misread the room, but she’s not the only one.

So it’s kind of funny, we’re experiencing whiplash, seemingly each and every day. And those working the refs keep telling us that MAGA is not wavering, they’re firmly behind Donald Trump. Yeah, get them to say that while they’re pumping gas for their SUV… TikTok is riddled with disenchanted Trump voters, literally standing at the pump and decrying the president.

And the old wise men and women who think they’re in charge keep playing by pre-internet rules. As if the internet doesn’t exist. Do you know what the main problem with the No Kings rally was? NO PRESS! Unless you were looking for it, you didn’t see it.

Meanwhile, our country is fading away, while those invested in the system keep telling us to believe in it and Sophie Rain brings in over a hundred million dollars on OnlyFans.

Vocalist extraordinaire.

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/betty-lavette/id1316200737?i=1000758827609

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/81ac818c-d188-4f8c-9008-402234643bd7/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-betty-lavette