First Night reviews
The Times January 12, 2006
Pop
Green on Red
David Sinclair at the Astoria, WC2
Never the most reliable team of performers in their day, Green on Red
have nevertheless turned out to be men of their word. Having failed to
play a show at the Astoria in May 1987 – the point at which the singer
and guitarist Dan Stuart was declared clinically insane and the group
fell apart – the group finally returned to honour the booking on Tuesday
night. They even played the same set of songs that they were planning to
feature 19 years ago.
With so much water having passed under the bridge, Stuart felt obliged
to preface the show with a lengthy and often comical monologue at the
end of which he apologised for „all this reunion s***“. This was nice,
but unnecessary. For if ever there was a band that always conducted its
affairs with a cavalier lack of concern for tactical or business
considerations, while performing music that came straight from the
heart, it was Green on Red.The band, which originated in Tucson, Arizona, pioneered a heroic brand
of Americana music before the term was even coined. They released a
succession of brilliant but commercially neglected albums in the 1980s,
which fused elements of country, blues and rock, while blazing an
erratic trail around the concert halls of Europe. Their shows could
either be a display of transcendental genius or a very earthbound
shambles.The core line-up of Stuart, keyboard player Chris Cacavas, bass player
Dan Waterson and guitarist Chuck Prophet was joined by Jim Bogios,
replacing the original drummer Alex MacNicol, who died last year. Older,
wiser and somewhat more wizened they may be, but the years rolled away
as they embarked on an opening sequence which included the perennial
drinking song Hair of the Dog. Stuart, all gruff snarl and gargoyle
eyes, spat out the lyric, while Cacavas leavened the mood with a jaunty
honky tonk piano part.Stuart was an amiable frontman but it was Prophet who stole the show
with a succession of elegant, dramatic and tightly scripted guitar
solos, most notably during the slow, bluesy Jimmy Boy and the soaring
finale of Sea of Cortez.While the danger and unpredictability that was part of their original
appeal had given way to a more seasoned professionalism, it meant that
the songs actually sounded better than ever. And when Stuart sang the
familiar chorus line, „Time ain’t nothing when you’re young“ from his
new perspective, there was a genuine surge of affection for these
unlikely survivors from another era. Let’s hope it is not so long before
their next outing.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,14936-1980585,00.html
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Captain Beefheart to audience: Is everyone feeling all right? Audience: Yeahhhhh!!! awright...!!! Captain Beefheart: That's not a soulful question, that's a medical question. It's too hot in here.