In 1987, Arizona country-rockers Green on Red were nearing the end of a long European tour. The penultimate date, in Athens, saw volatile singer Dan Stuart leave the stage in tears, en route to a mental breakdown. The final gig, in London, was cancelled.
Nineteen years on, Green on Red have reconvened to play the missing show, even down to the original set list. Times have changed, but these good ol' southern boys remain defiantly unreconstructed: Stuart apologises for the fact that the female wrestlers they had booked for pre-gig entertainment failed to make it through customs.
Formerly bloated heavy drinkers, Stuart and sidekick guitarist Chuck Prophet look slimmer and healthier now than they did two decades ago. Their music, though, is frozen in time: beery, bleary anthems of lewd, heavy-drinking men and the damage they do to their women and livers.
Not everything is so rough-edged. Death and Angels is as spectral and plangent as early REM, while the picaresque, world-weary The Drifter recalls Neil Young at his most keening. Stuart is a charismatic front man, gurning merrily through messy country-punk slop like Hair of the Dog. Prophet is an inventive guitarist within the narrow parameters of 12-bar blues, rendering No Free Lunch so camp that it borders on ragtime.
The band have no plans to reform, so it's just five middle-aged men playing for kicks and old times until a misty-eyed Stuart leaves, after two hours, sighing that youth is wasted on the young. It's a fittingly poignant end to a quietly moving night.