| Gas Food Lodging | |
| Type: | studio |
| Artist: | Green on Red |
| Cover: | Gas Food Lodging (album).jpg |
| Released: | 1985 |
| Genre: | Rock |
| Label: | Enigma |
| Producer: | Paul B. Cutler |
| Prev Title: | Gravity Talks |
| Prev Year: | 1983 |
| Next Title: | No Free Lunch |
| Next Year: | 1985 |
Gas Food Lodging is an album by the American band Green on Red, released in 1985.[1] [2] It was the band's only album for Enigma Records.[3] George Pelecanos references the album in his novel A Firing Offense.[4]
Recorded in five days, Gas Food Lodging was produced by Paul B. Cutler.[5] Chuck Prophet joined the band prior to the recording sessions for the album.[6] The band incorporated a more pronounced country sound on many of the songs.[7] "We Shall Overcome" is a cover of the gospel anthem.[8] "Sixteen Ways" is about an old man who outlives his many children.[9]
Robert Palmer, in The New York Times, wrote that, "musically it's perhaps the most distinctive and accomplished of all the recent 60's-rooted albums"; he later listed the album among the best of 1985.[10] [11] The Ottawa Citizen determined that "the roughness lends the music a measure of down-homeiness, but its stories do not reflect down-home attitudes... This is a bleak view of the American heartland."[12]
The Sunday Times called the album "clanging road music, the driven sounds of Californian boredom."[13] The Omaha World-Herald noted that "the bleak power of a record like Gas Food Lodging [is] akin to New York art bands like Television or the Velvet Underground."[8]
AllMusic concluded: "Gas Food Lodging is too loose and deliberately ramshackle to support the title of masterpiece, but calling it Green on Red's best album will do nicely." Reviewing a reissue, Entertainment Weekly opined that the music could be labeled "garage Americana."