Here we go with another review. This record is from the mid-eighties, but I didn’t discover it until a few years ago. In the mid-eighties I was in a “metal only” kind of mood. I still love metal, but I’ve recovered from the myopia that afflicted my youth.
Disc 1784 is…Gas Food Lodging
Artist: Green on Red
Year of Release: 1985
What’s up with the Cover? These stripes look like when your printer is low on one colour of ink. Replace the cartridge and this is probably just an ordinary sunset.
Also there is a a road sign advertising – as you might expect - gas, food, and lodging.
How I Came To Know It: I read about it in an article on Paste Magazine. Not a straight up review, but one of those “Top albums” articles that are always fun to read to see 1) what you already have 2) what you’d like to check out and 3) where you vehemently disagree.
In this case it was something called “Top 50 Alt Country Albums of All Time” As you can see, they’ve since updated the list to add 20 more albums, but the URL gives away the original scope.
Of the 70 albums on that list, I own 36, a number of which I discovered by digging into the list, so thank you, Paste Magazine!
“Gas Food Lodging” has proved nigh impossible to find on physical media so earlier this year I broke down and bought a digital copy.
How It Stacks Up: This is my only Green on Red album, so it can’t stack up.
Ratings: 3 stars but almost 4
“Gas Food Lodging” sounds grimy. Like an old car covered in dirt that once washed reveals that half the discoloration you thought was dirt is actually rust. Decay under decay.
Part of this is the arrangement, which has a heavy guitar focus, with plenty of reverb. The space is filled from the very beginning with a lot of sound and even though the songs are melodically simple, they tend to hang heavy in the air, like wildfire smoke or a dust storm.
The record is also infected with mid-eighties production that makes things jangle a bit, with very little bottom end. Unlike many other mid-eighties records though, here it is a feature, not a bug. It makes it harder to focus in on singer/guitarist Dan Stuart’s work less immediate on the first listen. However, dig in a little and you’ll be rewarded. Stuart plays in a gritty late eighties Neil Young style, fully committed to torturing the electricity out of the instrument.
Stuart’s vocals also suit the arrangements and production. He has that high wailing vibrato that I associate with college rock bands you might here at the student centre bar on a Thursday night. This is not a bad thing. It feels raw and unrehearsed, which is the energy the songs call for.
That narrative is of down-and-out characters and tales of an underclass being left behind by their own society. This is the soundtrack to homeless encampments, as heard from the window of a passing pickup truck, full of kids with empty stomachs wondering how close they are to the same fate.
One of the best of these is “Sixteen Ways” a song in the same depressing tradition of Dylan’s classic “Ballad of Hollis Brown”. “Sixteen Ways” ends bereft of hope, its narrator singing:
“I worked so hard for 40 years
I told myself I had nothing to fear
Then one by one they got shot down
The youngest one held a gun to his ear
“They ain't coming back
It's too late
They shot my babies but
They killed my faith”
In the depths of this tragic event, you are dug one step deeper into despair, past personal loss and into a dark and spiritually bereft hole.
Despite the record’s dark themes, it has a restless and anxious energy throughout that sounds like it will be painful but is strangely cathartic. Or put another way, it’s depressing, but you won’t mind.
Do I agree with Paste Magazine that this is a top 50 alt country album of all time (or even a top 70)? Reader, I do not, but I do agree that it is a solid record that still sounds fresh and compelling almost 40 years after its release, and that’s not nothing. What it does, it does very well, and like all good records, it gets better over repeat listens.
Best tracks: That’s What Dreams Are Made For, Fadin’ Away, Sixteen Ways, Sea of Cortez
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