More of a neutral background would be a good start, something like the Kima Ventures site where white-on-red is used as a bold title versus the whole page text.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/01/28/color-theory-for-... is the knockoff answer, but you should get the input of an actual designer - I've used yellow-on-red AND the <blink> tag before, both at the same time.