Stan Ridgway
Snakebite: Blacktop Ballads & Fugitive Songs
redFLY records
By Danté Dominick
 The
common review tactic of aligning the work in question with similar
artists or styles simply is not apt in the case of Stan Ridgway
and his latest release, Snakebite: Blacktop Ballads &
Fugitive Songs. It would be misleading (and far too difficult)
to list the styles of music employed on Snakebite, so
in lieu of hard-to-pin genres, let's examine an abbreviated list
of instruments credited to the musicians. Starting simple, there
are various guitars, drums & percussion, piano and bass.
Then there are the less conventional instruments, but ones we
are at least familiar with, such as harp, jawbone, French horns,
celeste, glockenspiel, melodica, autoharp, bamboo flute and tap
shoes to name a few. Then we have the third tier of, well, objects
not typically considered musicmakers: angry birds, underwater
bells, shovels & rakes, beer cans, sci-fi machine, trash
compactor, popcorn box, etc. and some things called oberhiem
and juno 106.
In the past three weeks I have listened to Snakebite
more than any other album and I'm still not sure what I think.
That's not true actually. I know I like it. Just surprised
I like it so much and deeply curious about whatever force it
is that keeps me popping the disc back in for yet another listen.
Stan Ridgway's music is well known to quite a lot of folks.
He enjoyed fleeting mainstream fame during the early, edgy heyday
of MTV and the subsequent decades as a solo artist have found
a legion of loyal followers. His avant-garde, industrial folktales
are well-thought, complexly layered gizmo soundscapes built atop
barebones acoustic folk. Ridgway is a media-age storyteller.
Snakebite is broken into three acts. Act One includes
twisted tales of human lives gone amuck, fodder for sensational
5 o'clock breaking news quirks. "King For a Day" follows
a man's cell-phone conversation with the woman whose auto he
just "stole" as he is chased by a battalion of police
and news crews. As the narrator gives "a message for your
mother/Out the window, can she see?" it is evident this
is the knockout ending to domestic deterioration and not a random
crime. The conclusion finds the singer crashing the car into
a house, "Daddy's home."
Act Two begins with the obscene gaiety of farifsa organ (?)
and glockenspiel (Pietra Wexstun) and "carny drums"
(Bruce Zelesnik) in "Runnin' With the Carnival." Here
Ridgway enlivens the fascination a country farm boy holds for
the traveling carnival, finding romance and pure charm in what
is truly grotesque, "Oh, the dogface boy lifts his leg out
in the pourin' rain/When you're travelin' with the carnival,
there really is no shame." The boy is so taken with the
Monkey Woman, Rubber Man, Bearded Lady and Siamese Twins that
he expresses, "I'm tired of totin' water, feedin' chickens
in a shack/I'm runnin' way with the carnival, an' never comin'
back."
The following number, "Our Manhattan Moment" mocks
cosmopolitan high-society, the juxtaposition of following the
dreamy-eyed boy in "Runnin' With the Carnival" with
this depiction suggests the daily lives your average, fashionable
urbanite are today's true freak show:
One night up in a penthouse suite
Your famous friends I got to meet
So nice to have my pinky painted blue
Not one to mince words, Ridgway strikes hard with the acerbic
conclusion:
These city streets burst at their seams
And flood the earth with people's dreams
But you're only concerned with some new shoe
So we'll amble through the bars
And count the pretty colored jars
I still wish that I could be as dumb as you.
The project starts to slow down at the onset of Act Three,
provoking thoughts that this generous platter of 16 songs should
maybe have been slimmed down. But Ridgway was simply saving
the best for last. The final cut, "My Rose Marie (a soldier's
tale)" clippity-clops along like the hooves of a lonely
horse and a remorseful harmonica playing a Dixie melody. This
five-minute song captures an entire movie score; on the big screen
is a poor chap whose honorable devotion is rendered pointless
when met with returned abandonment. A wonderful example of
Ridgway's ear for composing a score spiced with little touches
of woodwinds, brass, strings and keys at the perfect moments
to portray emotions with solid clarity.
But it is the preceding number, "Talkin' Wall of Voodoo
Blues Pt. 1," that will floor the longtime fans. Some 25
years later Ridgway lays down the painful truth about his heady
days in the band that is this song's namesake.
Yeah, I guess we blew it big time
Business got us bent
We played a show for forty grand
And the manager took every cent
Every goddamn cent
 Ridgway
is reminiscent of Warren Zevon who refused for years to play
"Werewolves of London." Like Zevon, Ridgway eventually
capitulated and re-commenced playing his signature song in concert.
But don't expect to hear "Talkin' Wall of Voodoo Blues"
at live shows. Most are amazed he cut this song at all.
This omission is easily forgivable as Ridgway is anything
but stingy with his performances. A recent evening at Austin's
Saxon Pub found the singer weaving through his recordings and
he performed noticeably longer than the scheduled time. The
swelled crowd hinged to the beginning of every number in an unspoken
competition to be the first to identify what song he was starting
to play. Slightly surprising is how jolly and chatty the singer
is considering his songs are often brooding and, uh, demented.
Ridgway routinely jokes with the crowd while seemingly modifying
the set list as desired because, "that's my prerogative
as Bobby Brown the philosopher says."
Fine with us.
There. I believe I just finished the first ever review of
Stan Ridgway that did not include the title *e****n ***i*
in it anywhere.
www.stanridgway.com
Contact Dante Dominick at dominick-at-rockzilla.net
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