Green on Red
Gas Food Lodging

Do you know what is the most American thing there is? It's not the apple pie; it's not even Hollywood. I believe that the most American thing is ultimately solitude. Forget about New York, the coasts, the metropolises; the United States is also much, much more. They're also the Great Lakes, the Appalachians, the nothingness of Wyoming, Iowa, North Dakota. Or, if you prefer, Arizona: a sparse number of urban clusters surrounded by a barren desert dotted with cacti, the Colorado Plateau, and tumbleweeds rolling in silence. Tucson is the second city of Arizona: this is where the Green on Red come from.

They debut in the local punk scene; in '80 they move to Los Angeles, where they connect with Steve Wynn and get involved in a little game called Paisley Underground. Their first album, "Gravity Talks" (1983), is a classic of the genre. But within two years, things change: the guitar prophet, Chuck Prophet, joins the group and begins to share the spotlight with the superb keyboardist Chris Cacavas, who until then had been the absolute master of the musical part; and with the coming of the prophet, who is also an exquisite songwriter, the garage sound starts to become a memory, the psych component diminishes, while country and blues surface. Or maybe, as the founding father Dan Stuart says, it was just a matter of time: the more you play, the soul of the roots conquers you and makes you its own. In '85, Green on Red releases "Gas Food Lodging".

Already the splendid opening, "That's What Dreams", is enough to give an idea of what this forgotten gem will be: a straightforward, genuine guitar riff that smells of vast spaces, of endless distances; Cacavas's hands paint a timeless languor scenario, while the harsh and painful voice of "Big Daddy" Stuart begins to sing an America hidden from us, an America of failures, of disappointed, marginalized people, psychopaths. But these desperate ones grit their teeth and keep fighting, because that is the salt of life: guess I'll be poor for the rest of my life, it's better than giving up the fight. And if every now and then you want to console yourself, that's what dreams are made for.

The country-blues of "Black River" is another blow to the soul: Stuart's melancholic singing, reminiscent of some Dylan, comes afloat from a glass of whiskey, while Cacavas’s ruined harmonica, and then his keyboard, make us bow our heads on a saloon table. It's done, we're now embarked on this dusty highway that now skirts the Doors (that organ), now the Rolling Stones, now Neil Young; a highway even darker towards the end, finishing with the first three stanzas of the gospel hymn "We Shall Overcome." One day we shall overcome; one day, say the Green on Red, all this delirium will end... maybe.

Music from the depths of the heart. Music in resonance with the strings of the soul. Music that, while wounding, soothes.

"Gas Food Lodging": gasoline, food, a bed to sleep in. Nothing else is needed to travel far, to vanish into the nothingness, to try to find an answer: because life itself is a journey, and like every journey, its meaning is not at the end; its meaning is the journey itself.