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All Music Guide:
One of the most unique singer/songwriters in American indie music, with an unforgettable adenoidal vocal delivery that makes him sound like a low-level wise guy in one of those old Warner Bros. gangster films of the '30s and a lyrical obsession with the themes of pulp crime novels and film noir, Stan Ridgway is a true original. From his early days with quirky Los Angeles new wavers Wall of Voodoo to his even more intriguing solo career, Ridgway has created an impressive, if at times somewhat inscrutable and increasingly bleak, body of work.
Born with the euphonious name of Stanard Q. Ridgway in the desert town of Barstow, CA, on April 5, 1954, and raised in Los Angeles, Ridgway claims to have been a budding ventriloquist who spent his first night in jail at the age of 12 for stealing street signs. Ridgway also had a childhood fascination with folk music, pestering his parents until they bought him a banjo at the age of 14. Ridgway's love of folk music, though it may seem odd considering his later career directions, shows on his occasional covers of artists like Johnny Cash and Tennessee Ernie Ford, but other artists ranging from Kurt Weill to Peter Gabriel-era Genesis were also big influences on the budding composer.
Ridgway formed Wall of Voodoo with guitarist Marc Moreland, bassist Bruce Moreland, keyboardist Chas T. Gray, and drummer Joe Nanini during the 1977 punk explosion; interestingly, however, the group originally formed not as a punk band but as a composers' collective that hoped to write and perform music for low-budget films. Nonetheless, the group was eventually swept up into the local post-punk new wave scene, where its combination of Ennio Morricone, Lefty Frizzell, and crime novelist Jim Thompson was loved and hated with equal passion. Following a brittle, art rock-ish self-titled EP (with a brilliant synth rock cover of Cash's "Ring of Fire" that brought the group much notoriety) in 1980, the band released two albums, 1981's Dark Continent and 1982's Call of the West, an excellent concept album about the lives of the disenfranchised in their native California. Lyrically dense, almost novelistic songs like "Factory," "Lost Weekend," and the title track revealed Ridgway to be among the most gifted lyricists of the day, while the inescapable hit "Mexican Radio" was huge on MTV and the suddenly new wave-friendly Top 40 airwaves. However, at that career peak, the band split in two backstage after a disastrous appearance at the 1983 U.S. Festival, with Ridgway and Nanini departing.
Ridgway immediately reappeared in the fall of 1983 with "Don't Box Me In," a nervous-sounding collaboration with Stewart Copeland of the Police from the film Rumble Fish. However, it wasn't until early 1986 that Ridgway's first solo album, The Big Heat, finally appeared. The lyrics of songs like "Pick It Up and Put It in Your Pocket" and "Drive She Said" are even more elliptically novelistic, like Donald Barthelme stories set to music. The seven-minute closer, a story song called "Camouflage," was a surprise Top Five hit in the U.K. Ridgway continued his slow but steady work habits after The Big Heat's release, waiting over three years before releasing the even darker-hued follow-up, Mosquitos.
Surprisingly, Ridgway's third album, Partyball, was out less than two years later; if anything even bleaker lyrically than any of Ridgway's previous efforts ("Jack Talked Like a Man on Fire" is his creepiest character study yet), Partyball is leavened by five brief instrumentals showing that his fascination with movie music has continued. In fact, Ridgway's first film score, for the low-budget indie Future Kick, was also released in 1991. (Ridgway's other film scores have included Melting Pot, Speedway Junky, Desperate But Not Serious, Error in Judgment, and The Keening; the Australia-only release Film Songs collects six of Ridgway's pieces of film music.) Ridgway left IRS Records after Partyball's release, and the label responded with the 1992 compilation Songs That Made This Country Great, which also includes Wall of Voodoo material. Ridgway self-released a companion video volume, Showbusiness Is My Life: The Video Collection 1977-1982 (titled after Ridgway's usual on-stage farewell during his Wall of Voodoo days), in 1995.
Through the latter half of the '90s, Ridgway also collaborated with his wife, Pietra Wexstun, and ex-Rain Parade drummer Ivan Knight as the noise rock experimentalists Drywall. A fourth solo album, 1996's Black Diamond, was a surprising detour into cocktail-style jazz reminiscent of Henry Mancini's '50s and '60s film scores. Even more unexpectedly, Ridgway's next album was 1998's The Way I Feel Today, a completely straight collection of 19 pop standards from the '30s and '40s with full orchestral backing. Released in 1999, Anatomy, with a cover illustration recalling the famous Saul Bass poster for the film Anatomy of a Murder, doesn't sound much like Duke Ellington's score for that film, though similar themes of justice and dishonor percolate through Ridgway's always impressive lyrics. Two closet-cleaning releases, 2001's live Poolside with Gilly: The Partyball Tour 1991 and 2002's Holiday in Dirt: New Tracks and Rarities, were self-released by Ridgway and sold through his website. An all-new collection of songs, the introspective Neon Mirage, arrived in 2010.
Wikipedia:
Stanard 'Stan' Ridgway (born April 5, 1954) is an American multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter known for his distinctive voice, dramatic lyrical narratives, and eclectic solo albums and was the original lead singer of the band Wall of Voodoo
Wall of Voodoo
The band was named Wall of Voodoo by Ridgway before their first gig, in reference to a comment made by a friend of Ridgway's while recording and overdubbing a Kalamazoo Rhythm Ace drum machine. While listening to some of the music that created in the studio, Ridgway jokingly compared the multiple-drum-machine- and Farfisa-organ-laden recordings to Phil Spector's Wall of Sound, whereupon the friend commented it sounded more like a "wall of voodoo" and the name stuck.
Ridgway's WoV music could fairly be described as a cross between early synthesizer pop and Ennio Morricone's soundtracks for Italian director Sergio Leone's epic western films of the 1960s. Adding to the music's distinctiveness was percussive and textural experimentation, i.e. mixing drum machines with unconventional instruments such as pots, pans and various kitchen utensils, raw electronics with interlocking melodic figures as well as twangy spaghetti-western guitar. On top of the mix was Ridgway's unusual vocal style and highly stylized, cinematic narratives heavily influenced by science fiction and film noir, sung from the perspective of ordinary folks and characters wrestling with ironies inside the American Dream.
Solo career
Ridgway embarked on a solo career in 1983, shortly after Wall of Voodoo's appearance and break up at the US Festival that same year. After collaborating on the song, "Don't Box Me In" with Stewart Copeland from The Police for the soundtrack to Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish starring Mickey Rourke, Matt Dillon and Dennis Hopper, he released his first proper solo album, The Big Heat (1986), which included the top 5 European (and UK) hit "Camouflage". This was followed by numerous other solo recordings: Mosquitos (1989), Partyball (1991), Black Diamond (1995), and Anatomy (1999), The Way I Feel Today (1998), a collection of big band standards, and Holiday in Dirt (2001), a compilation of outtakes and previously unreleased songs. Ridgway's album Snakebite: Blacktop Ballads and Fugitive Songs (2005), features the narrative song, "Talkin' Wall Of Voodoo Blues Pt. 1", a history of his former band in song.
Since the early days of Wall of Voodoo, Ridgway has been interested in making music for the cinema. A list of films for which Ridgway has written scores and/or original songs is included below. Ridgway's album Holiday in Dirt was a quasi-cinematic project, with the release of the album accompanied by a showing of 14 short films by various independent filmmakers, each film a visual interpretation of one of the songs on the album. A compilation DVD of the films was released in February 2005.
In 1994, Ridgway began work on a new project in the form of a trio called Drywall, the other members of the trio being Ridgway's wife, keyboardist/vocalist Pietra Wexstun of the band Hecate's Angels (who had previously worked with Ridgway on Mosquitos and Partyball), and former Rain Parade drummer Ivan Knight. In 1995, Drywall released its first album (first of a "trilogy of apocalyptic documents"), titled Work The Dumb Oracle. A short film directed by Carlos Grasso titled The Drywall Incident was released the same year. An extended, instrumental soundtrack album for The Drywall Incident was released in 1996.
Ridgway and Wexstun also collaborated and forayed into new musical territory, composing a suite of mostly instrumental and orchestral pieces to accompany an exhibition of postmodern surrealist artist Mark Ryden's paintings after being introduced by a mutual friend, Sean P. Riley, who toured with Wall Of Voodoo on their 1982 "Call Of The West - Tour Of Virtue" as the band's merchandiser. The album was released on CD in 2003 as Blood — Miniature Paintings of Sorrow and Fear in a unique 3-panel packaging design by the artist which quickly sold out of its limited pressing of 7,500. Ridgway plays banjo and harmonica in Wexstun's group Hecate's Angels.
Stan Ridgway and Drywall regrouped in 2006 to release the album Barbeque Babylon, the third "apocalyptic document" with the single "The AARP Is After Me". The new Drywall lineup features Rick King on guitars and bass and Bruce Zelesnik on drums and percussion. In 2008 Ridgway and Wexstun released "Silly Songs For Kids Vol. 1", a collection of children's songs that feature the duo and also saxophonist and woodwind player Ralph Carney.
Ridgway's most recent solo recording is Neon Mirage (2010).
Ridgway has also contributed to albums and projects by producer Hal Willner, Frank Black and the Catholics, The Flesh Eaters, The Divine Horsemen, The Ray Campi Quartet, The Fibonaccis, and Roger McGuinn.
