3 posts tagged “stan ridgway”
On August 13, 2007, I met Stan Ridgway after his show in Minneapolis. You might say this meeting was a long time coming.
My first encounter with Stan was back when his band Wall of Voodoo hit MTV hard with "Mexican Radio." Most people remember that song, but far too few people followed him after that. For the record, that wasn't when I became a Stan Ridgway fan. Next time I noticed Stan, he had recorded "Don't Box Me In" with Stewart Copland for the Rumble Fish soundtrack. Loved the song, but that still wasn't where I became a Stan Ridgway fan.
My real curiosity with Stan's work spiked when Rolling Stone gave a glowing review to his first solo album, The Big Heat. I don't remember what it said, but it made me want to run out and by the album. I was, however, in college at the time, so buying a record (yes, vinyl) was a sizable investment.
There was a book and record store close to the VA Tech campus called Books, Strings, and Things. I stopped in there regularly to browse. One day, The Big Heat was sitting in the front of the bin facing the door. I held it and admired it and put it back. This went on for a few days, before I actually bought it
I was floored — the stories in the lyrics, the odd chord progressions, Stan's odder voice, the cool twists to the rhythms. I was a fan.
Flash forward to 2001: My friend and colleague Chris Strouth, who was managing Stan at the time, comes up to me one day and says, "Do you know anyone who would like to write liner notes for a Stan Ridgway album." "Me," I replied. "I was hoping you'd say that," Chris says.
I ended up writing the liner notes for the re-issue of Stan's Black Diamond. Even better, Stan, whose work I'd long admired, liked the notes.
Instead of recounting my thoughts on the album, I'll just cut and paste the notes:
It’s not without a certain sense of irony (and fear) that I find myself penning these liner notes. As a critic, I’ve avoided talk of Stan’s work for years, finding no words to intelligently discuss his quirky sounds, bizarre characters, or singularly peculiar voice. Other writers seem to have faced similar difficulties, bestowing upon him some of the most contrived labels in the history of rock criticism. (“Maverick art/roots-rocker” remains my personal favorite, an eloquent phrase with little to no meaning.)
After all the babble about his “noir” imagery and “sonic textures” has been set aside, one important point remains criminally overlooked: Stan is, perhaps unknowingly, part of a tradition. He is one of the last true balladeers — part of a lineage that stretches back through colonial times and across the Atlantic to the British Isles.
It could be said that balladeers are four-minute novelists or, perhaps more accurately, four-minute journalists, and I couldn’t think of better descriptions of Stan. In the span of a song, he captures the richness of a character and the essence of a situation with deceptive simplicity. In prior times, when oral tradition was the means for transmitting news and stories, that simplicity was essential. Now, it’s a lost art.
Being a character in one of Stan’s songs is a thankless job; there is no glamour for these people. They are black diamonds, though they bear little resemblance to the valuable 489.07-carat gem put up for auction in France earlier this year. They’re more like the other type of “black diamond,” coal, which fueled the industrial revolution, creating great wealth for some, black lung and poverty for others, and violence all around. They are gritty, dirty, and oddly beautiful characters. Some are historical, some fictitious, and some … well … only Stan knows.
On this disc, there’s “Wild” Bill Donovan — founder of the OSS (predecessor of the CIA) — who shaped history through such brilliant, erratic, and questionable means, that his legacy still defies decisive judgment. There’s an ex-con, a “nobody,” whose revelation, “Behind every fortune … there’s got to be a crime,” proves a turning point as irrevocable as an act of war. And there’s a moving eulogy for Tennessee Two guitarist Luther Perkins, for which Stan boldly takes on the character of Johnny Cash. Should writing and singing a song from Cash’s point of view fail under the weight of pretense? Probably, but my money says this song could even bring a tear to the eye of the Man in Black.
Stan originally released Black Diamond in 1995. It quickly fell out of print due to a series of record industry mishaps that are far-too-common, far-too-complicated, and far-too-boring to recount. This reissue would be significant if only for filling a gap in Stan’s remarkable catalog. But it does more than that — it resurrects an extraordinary cast of characters and stories, a significant treasure of black diamonds.
— Bill Snyder
Minneapolis
August 2001
Stan doesn't tour that much, and I was out of town when he came through that year. So, until a couple of weeks ago, I'd never seen him live. I'd spoken with him on the phone, but never met him. It was an amazing show. And it's always a pleasure to be able to write about art you admire.
So, before ending this post, I'll leave you with two songs: One from the album for which I wrote liner notes and the title track from the album that hooked me.
Since I just saw Stan Ridgway Monday night:
Stan Ridgway said it all for me:
I wanna take a two week vacation, 26 times a year.
