Green On Red - BBC Sessions Album Review

Green On Red
BBC Sessions
Album Review

This album contains 19 tracks, recorded between 1989 and 1991 for such luminaries as Andy Kershaw, Richard Skinner, Bob Harris and Johnny Walker. Perhaps tellingly, the name of John Peel is absent from that list, a fact recognised in a somewhat tart and probably unnecessary sleevenote.

For the uninitiated, Green On Red played the sort of country blues rock that people like to call "Americana". While being a staple of gig listings and festival bills for a few years, it's fair to say they never sold truckloads of records, and eventually split in 1992, reforming for a couple of gigs in 2005 and 2006.
Their Wikipedia entry calls Green On Red "one of the greatest and least celebrated American guitar bands of all time", but I can't help feeling that that description overstates the case. To me, this compilation seems very rooted in its time - there's hints of what Mercury Rev would be doing later in their career, but without the oddness or invention. For a band that started out as a punk outfit, some of this is very bland and predictable - sub-Rolling Stones riffs without Jagger's preening and posturing. Neil Young might also be a convenient reference point. On a wet Saturday afternoon in twenty-first century northern England though, it seems irrelevant - perhaps it would make more sense on a baking hot day at an outdoor festival in Phoenix or Tucson.
As time passes, it becomes apparent that Green On Red have basically two modes of operation: acoustic, countrified numbers and more bluesy electric numbers that rely on Stones-esque riffs with hints of Pink Floyd in the lead guitar work and organ playing. And that's pretty much your lot.
To be frank, I'm not quite sure what the point of releasing this record is, unless it's to allow the hardcore fans to throw away their home-made cassette recordings and replace them with a shiny new CD. It's a useful precis of their career for sure, but I can't see many people who aren't already familiar with the band's work splashing out hard cash on this.

Jon Watkins