''The Green Album'' is the debut album by English

rock Rock most often refers to: * Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids * Rock music, a genre of popular music Rock or Rocks may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...

musician

Eddie Jobson Edwin "Eddie" Jobson (born 28 April 1955) is an English musician noted for his use of synthesizers. He has been a member of several progressive rock bands, including Curved Air, Roxy Music, U.K. and Jethro Tull. He was also part of Frank Zap ...

, released by

Capitol Records Capitol Records, LLC (known legally as Capitol Records, Inc. until 2007) is an American record label distributed by Universal Music Group through its Capitol Music Group imprint. It was founded as the first West Coast-based record label of note ...

in 1983. It is officially credited to Eddie Jobson and Zinc, Zinc being identified in press releases as a backing band consisting of Michael Cuneo (guitars), Jerry Watts (bass), and Michael Barsimanto (drums); however, none of the members of Zinc played on more than half the songs on the album, and only four tracks feature the entire group. Because of this, ''The Green Album'' is widely regarded as an Eddie Jobson solo album, similarly to how ''

Runt In a group of animals (usually a litter of animals born in multiple births), a runt is a member which is significantly smaller or weaker than the others. Owing to its small size, a runt in a litter faces obvious disadvantage, including difficulti ...

'' is considered a

Todd Rundgren Todd Harry Rundgren (born June 22, 1948) is an American multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, multimedia artist, sound engineer and record producer who has performed a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of the band Ut ...

solo album despite being credited to Runt. Jobson, a former member of

Roxy Music Roxy Music are an English rock music, rock band formed in 1970 by Bryan Ferry—who became the band's lead vocalist and principal songwriter—and bassist Graham Simpson (musician), Graham Simpson. The other longtime members are Phil Manzanera ...

, had also previously played with

Curved Air Curved Air are an English progressive rock group formed in 1970 by musicians from mixed artistic backgrounds, including classical, folk, and electronic sound. The resulting sound of the band is a mixture of progressive rock, folk rock, and fus ...

Frank Zappa Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American musician, composer, and bandleader. His work is characterized by wikt:nonconformity, nonconformity, Free improvisation, free-form improvisation, sound experimen ...

U.K. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

, and Jethro Tull. The album contains Jobson's first (and only) lead vocal performances. It also features ex-

Gentle Giant Gentle Giant were a British progressive rock band active between 1970 and 1980. The band were known for the complexity and sophistication of their music and for the varied musical skills of their members. All of the band members were multi-inst ...

guitarist Gary Green on some tracks. The album features a mostly synthesizer based

synthpop Synth-pop (short for synthesizer pop; also called techno-pop; ) is a subgenre of new wave music that first became prominent in the late 1970s and features the synthesizer as the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s a ...

progressive rock Progressive rock (shortened as prog rock or simply prog; sometimes conflated with art rock) is a broad genre of rock music that developed in the United Kingdom and United States through the mid- to late 1960s, peaking in the early 1970s. Init ...

sound and is a

concept album A concept album is an album whose tracks hold a larger purpose or meaning collectively than they do individually. This is typically achieved through a single central narrative or theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, or lyrical. Som ...

of sorts, with the lyrics centring on a somewhat Orwellian dystopian future where everything is tinted green. The songs were heavily inspired by the

Yamaha CS-80 The Yamaha CS-80 is an analog synthesizer released in 1977. It supports true 8-voice polyphony, with two independent synthesizer layers per voice each with its own set of front panel controls, in addition to a number of hardwired preset voice set ...

synthesizer. Demo versions of "Resident", "Easy for You to Say", "Listen to Reason" and "Green Face" have been leaked to the public. "Nostalgia" and "Walking from Pastel" were included (in different arrangements) in UK's last tour and have also appeared on bootlegs.

Release and promotion

A videoclip for the single "Turn it Over" was recorded. The bass on the videoclip was mimed by bassist Doug Lunn, who doesn't actually play on the album. The album was first re-released on CD in 1992 by One Way Records. In 2014 it was re-issued in Japan in the

Super Audio CD Super Audio CD (SACD) is an optical disc format for audio storage introduced in 1999. It was developed jointly by Sony and Philips Electronics and intended to be the successor to the Compact Disc (CD) format. The SACD format allows multiple aud ...

format.

Reception

Allmusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

gave the album a mixed retrospective review, deeming it "an honest effort of when-prog rock-meets-synth pop", but criticizing the lyrics as uniformly poor. They commented that the album seems to run out of ideas in the second half, but were pleased with the first half, marking the tracks "Green Face" and "Resident" as "two of the best synth pop songs produced in that era."

Track listing

Personnel

* Eddie Jobson – keyboards, lead and backing vocals, electric violin, drum machine (7),

vocoder A vocoder (, a portmanteau of ''voice'' and ''encoder'') is a category of speech coding that analyzes and synthesizes the human voice signal for audio data compression, multiplexing, voice encryption or voice transformation. The vocoder was ...

* Nick Moroch – guitar (2,3,8,9) * Michael Cuneo – guitar (2,9,11,12) * Gary Green – guitar (11,12) * Cary Sharaf – guitar (7) * Jerry Watts – bass (2,5,9,11,12) * Alon Oleartchik – bass (3,7,8,11) * Michael Barsimanto – drums (2,3,8,9,11,12) ;Production * All tracks arranged and produced by Eddie Jobson * Engineered by Clay Hutchinson, Eddie Jobson, Ray Bardani (backing tracks), Ron Cote, Paul Mandl, Richard Hilton (assistant), Dave Wittman (second mixing engineer on 9), Barry Harris (assistant mixing engineer on 9), Gary Helman (assistant mixing engineer on 3,4), Ray Niznik (assistant mixing engineer on 5,7,10,11)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Green Album (Eddie Jobson album), The 1983 debut albums Eddie Jobson albums Synth-pop albums by English artists