1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 162. Creedance Clearwater Revival – Green River (1969)

 

I’ve been noting for a while that many tracks, or entire albums, are becoming increasingly harder to pin to a particular genre. Not that I like pigeon-holing things too much if I can avoid it, but increasingly the lines between genres are becoming more blurred.

So although this album could be classed as “country rock”, it’s not that way throughout. Yes, the track Tombstone Shadow is quite pure blues, while Lodi is pure country, but these serve to highlight the more marginal tracks. Wrote A Song For Everyone is a lighters-aloft slow rock classic, others like Commotion sounds quite rockabilly to me, with a classic walk down the bass between phrases.

There are two tracks on here that I know from films – Bad Moon Rising (which now I hear it again is a rockabilly number too) from An American Werewolf In London, and the title track Green River is another from the soundtrack to 1969. Which, for all I keep mentioning it, I don’t actually think I’ve seen, I just knew somebody with the soundtrack.

The album feels a little like it’s here to sate the ongoing country-rock tastes of Dimery’s contributors because although it’s good it doesn’t seem especially notable.