Green on Red

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Green on Red were an American rock band, formed in the Tucson, Arizona punk scene, but based for most of its career in Los Angeles, California, where it was loosely associated with the Paisley Underground. Earlier records have the wide-screen psychedelic sound of first-wave desert rock, with occasional impulses toward pop mitigated by the limitations of shambolic vocalist Dan Stuart. Later records suggest a kind of broke-down American Rolling Stones. Others have called them the bastard children of Neil Young.

[edit] History

The band began in 1979 as The Serfers, a four-piece made up of Stuart, Jack Waterson (bass), Van Christian (drums, later of Naked Prey) and Sean Nagore (organ), quickly replaced by Chris Cacavas. In the summer of 1980, the Serfers relocated to Los Angeles, where they changed their name to Green on Red (after the title of one of their songs) to avoid confusion with the local "surf punk" scene. Christian returned to Tucson and was replaced by Lydia Lunch sideman Alex MacNicol.

The band issued a self-released red vinyl EP, sometimes called Two Bibles, though its first widely available record was an EP issued in 1982 by Dream Syndicate leader Steve Wynn on his own Down There label. Green on Red followed the Dream Syndicate onto Slash Records, which released the album Gravity Talks in the fall of 1983. San Francisco-based guitarist Chuck Prophet joined for the 1985 Gas Food Lodging (Enigma), after which MacNicol was replaced on drums by Keith Mitchell (later of Mazzy Star). That same year, Stuart collaborated with Steve Wynn as "Danny and Dusty" on the album The Lost Weekend (A&M).

A major-label deal with Phonogram/Mercury followed, with the EP No Free Lunch and the album The Killer Inside Me, produced by Jim Dickinson at Ardent Studios in Memphis. The band split up afterward; Cacavas began recording albums under his own name. When Stuart returned to recording, with the 1989 Here Comes the Snakes, it was essentially as a duo with Prophet, using hired backing. Three more albums were released before the pair called it quits, after the 1992 Too Much Fun. Stuart essentially quit music afterward; Prophet maintains a career as a solo artist and semi-celebrity sideman.

However, in September 2005, the band reformed in "golden era" line-up, Stuart, Cacavas, Prophet and Waterson, with Jim Bogios filling in for Alex McNichol (who died in the meantime) to play a one-off show as part of the celebrations for the 20th anniversary of the Hotel Congress in Tucson. This was followed up by a show in London on 10 January 2006 (ostensibly to complete their aborted 1987 European tour), with more shows promised later in the year (and a second "Danny and Dusty" album rumoured to be in production). Whether the reunion is permanent or temporary, fans of 80s Americana will be coming to pay homage to one of the greatest and least celebrated American guitar bands of all time.