It's almost unfair, really. The New Radicals just released one of the year's catchiest and most interesting debuts, Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too, and the industry is still abuzz with talk about the new Hole, Marilyn Manson and Beck albums. By some coincidence, New Radicals architect Gregg Alexander disses the aforementioned artists on the group's catchy-as-brushfire debut single, "You Get What You Give." And they're not the only ones dodging the slinging mud. One disparaging verse goes, "Dust Brothers Beck Hanson/Courtney Love and Marilyn Manson/You're all fakes/Run to your mansions/Come around/We'll kick your ass in."

A rant against consumerism, health insurance companies and soulless rock stars, "You Get What You Give" has to be either the savviest or, given Courtney Love's retaliatory nature and Manson's easy access to the Howard Stern show, the most foolhardy rock & roll provocation in recent memory. "It's a snapshot of our times," Alexander says. "If people want to drive a car into me for it, then that's their prerogative."

The people who sculpt Alexander's image would love to see him billed as a flame-throwing, rock & roll renegade, someone with a Jim Morrison-like aura of unpredictability who spends a lot of time thinking dangerous thoughts. In reality, he is earnest and sweet, and is given to saying things like, "I really think we're priming for a philosophical revolution."

But when you break it down, the sentiments on Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too aren't all that novel: They are of oppression, Wall Street greed, the pervasiveness of pop culture -- something he's now become a benefactor of given his position as MCA Records' newest Great White Hope. "We're all guilty," he says with regard to his hypocrisy. "Music needs to start reflecting the times we're in. We're immersed in rock cliches, the 'I wanna kill my mom' sorta white kid blues. There's bigger issues on the horizon."

Alexander produced, wrote and arranged almost everything on Maybe. Better stated, the New Radicals are actually a revolving parade of musicians of which he is the sole permanent member. "I'm the one who needs to make sure [my vision] doesn't get watered down," he says. "But it's open. If someone's drunk mom comes onstage and wants to play congas with us, that's a possibility."

Raised in suburban Detroit by a plumber father and a Jehovah's Witness mother, Alexander was weaned on R&B, seminal punkers the MC5 and house music, most of which make their influence felt on Maybe. "This album is what happens when you have 8,000 messages flying through your head at once," he says.

After bolting from Detroit for Los Angeles, he toiled around London for a while, chilled in New York, and drove across the country twelve times, before ultimately forming the New Radicals and signing to MCA. "It's been a good experience so far," Alexander says of his major label adventures. "You do get thrown to the wolves, but they're friendly wolves. It's easy to over-interpret this, but at the end of the day, people hear you on the radio on the drive home after they just got their heart broken and they have a feel for your song, maybe. And that's really what matters."

ALLISON STEWART(October 22, 1998)