NEW 2005. Smell that smoke? Wall Of Voodoo mastermind Stan Ridgway's electro/experimental noise combo, Drywall - IS BACK. With fellow fire-chiefs Pietra Wexstun & Rick King, a sizzling slab of sonic sedition. 15 choice cuts. Burn baby ..Burn.

15 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Modern Rock, ELECTRONIC: Experimental



Details:
Taking a summer break from his solo endeavors, (last year's acclaimed "Snakebite") Wall Of Voodoo mastermind STAN RIDGWAY and DRYWALL, grill up 15 new firey favorites....

Along with fellow "fire chiefs" -
PIETRA WEXSTUN, (vocals keyboards, classic synths, analog electronics) from Hecate's Angels.
RICK KING, (guitars, snake slide, 9 string Kingo) from the West Covina cult band BEE vs MOTH.
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Some early critical reaction to Drywall:

"A strange look at a strange land by a strange man.." -- Boise Weekly

"They're selling pure gold with this record! . . . Not only does Ridgway make a great carnival barker at the gates of Armageddon, but the music here is some of the strongest he's ever done." -- Santa Fe New Mexican

"Ridgway has transformed himself into a decidedly offbeat version of Johnny Cash and Captain Beefheart, Rod Serling and Tom Waits all rolled up into one." -- LiveDaily.com

And the Listeners have spoken!:

"It's hard to have a grand experiment and expect everything to go right. Leave it up to Stan and crew to pull this off without harming anyone. When you first listen to this you should set aside an hour and two minuets and listen to it all the way through and experience all of its Luscious Glory. This is much more than a CD, it's an event. And if the song "Something's Gonna Blow" doesn't make you want to do the funky monkey something's wrong with you."

"Both lyrically and musically Drywall weave a complex vision of America. Easily Ridgway's best writing to date, this is a loud, raging indictment of the festering America Dream. BARBEQUE BABYLON is a must listen for anybody interested in the original."

"I'll be humming all these tunes in the 21st century concentation camp. As usual I'm totally blown away from Drywall. I love the voice of "reason" that weaves in and out of the material, he's on to somethin! All the songs are GREAT. Come back to Jersey, I'll get you a pair of Yankee playoff tickets."
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CD Review by Steve Terrell / The Sante Fe New Mexican

- "RIDGWAY BACK TO NEW TRICKS" -
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As a solo artist, Stan Ridgway is nothing short of an eclectic, eccentric musician.

He draws from all sorts of musical sources -- garage rock, horror movie soundtracks, crime jazz, and more. His most recent solo album, last year's Snakebite, showed a fine knack for rootsy country and blues.

Lyrically, Ridgway has a skewed outlook and a soft spot for losers, loonies, small-time crooks and society's dregs. Most of his songs are sympathetic to his characters. He grants them dignity and many of his songs seem to offer a ray of hope for those struggling beneath the underbelly.

But when Ridgway records as the front man of his band Drywall, all bets are off.


And, after a ridiculously long recess, Drywall is back with Barbecue Babylon, "The Third Installment of the Trilogy of Apocalyptic Documents."

Drywall is Ridgway, his wife, keyboardist Pietra Wexstun and guitarist/bassist Rick King.

(For those keeping score, the first installment was 1995's Work the Dumb Oracle, which contained some of Ridgway's most intense songs -- "Police Call," "Bel Air Blues," "Big American Problem." The second was The Drywall Incident which was mainly instrumental tracks.)

Like Work the Dumb Oracle, the songs on the new album are darker, harsher, more extreme both musically and lyrically than Ridgway's other work. Rays of hope don't last long in Drywall Land. And except for a few stray moments, forget about kindness or dignity.

And, yes, the world of Barbecue Babylon is apocalyptic. Corruption is everywhere. A desperate spirit of lawless has settled over the land. Thievery and murder abound, but the government has gone even more insane than the populace. To play on a few song titles here -- It's a "Land of Spook" run by people seemingly intent on achieving a "Wargasm."

Life is cheap. Love is tawdry. Paranoia thrives. ("The AARP is after me," sings one sad Ridgway narrator.) Doom is always just around the corner.

Luckily, Ridgway's twisted humor still abounds.

Not only does Ridgway make a great carnival barker at the gates of Armageddon, but the music here is some of the strongest he's ever done.

The opening tune "Goin' on Down to the BBQ," is a deceptively upbeat tropical romp with shaking maracas and a happy organ that sounds like it might break into "Tequila" at any moment. The song sounds like a darker version of Joe "King" Carrasco. "Tammy Got a Knife with a razor blade/ She brought her baby with a burnt teddy bear/ Lost her finger on a midnight swinger/ Cook it up and like it medium rare."

But after the cops break up the backyard party, Drywall goes straight for the Bizarro world with the acid jazzy "Fortune Cookies." A honking sax soars over the techno rhythms as Ridgway declares, "Fascist state television, it's a blast ... that's the way the cookie crumbles."

On "Big Weird Thing," against a throbbing electronic sonic backdrop punctuated by sampled voices and sinister clanking bells, Ridgway goes into a berserk rant. He sounds like the celebrated crank Francis E. Dec (Google him, if you dare) or one of those frothing preachers and political crackpots that David Byrne and Brian Eno sampled from short-wave radio broadcasts on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. "It's a whitewash! Disintegration! Surely something that just seems to rot and fester ... Show me these things and I shall salute it."

On Barbecue, Drywall sounds more like a band than they did on Dumb Oracle. Wexstun, whose voice is a proven delight on her own albums (released under the name Hecate's Angels) gets two solo spots on this album. The most impressive is "Bold Marauder," an old Richard & Mimi Farina song that's appropriately sinister and, yes, apocalyptic for a Drywall CD:.

"For I will sour the winds on high and I will soil the river/And I will burn the grain in the field and I will be your mother/And I will go to ravage and kill and I will go to plunder/And I will take a fury to wife and I will be your mother/And death will be our darling and fear will be our name ..."

Pietra's also out front on "Something's Gonna Blow" (with Stan providing unison baritone backup.) This one, with its rolicking garage-rock backup, reminds me of the Farinas also, their more rocked-out tunes like' "House Un-American Blues Activity Dream" (or maybe Frank Zappa's "Trouble Every Day.") Drywall's tune is a bitchen funky-chicken dance about economic decay.

There's a secret hidden track featuring the voice of the president of the United States of America. Ridgway surely remembers The National Lampoon''s infamous cut-and-paste manipulation of a Richard Nixon speech ("I am ... a crook ..."). He's done the same shock-and-awe editing here for President Bush.

"Every year by law and by custom we meet here to threaten the world," the president says, backed by an ominous Mid Eastern sounding Drywall instrumental track, interrupted every now and then by applause. "We must offer every child in America three nuclear missiles ... We are building a culture to encourage international terrorism ... I have a message for the people of Iraq: Go home and die.' "

There's one notable calm in the madness of Barbecue Babylon, a cool, almost jazzy little finger-popper called "Buried the Pope." Ridgway released this surprising reverent tune as a free internet download just days after Pope John Paul II's death.

"A world choked up with lies and politician doublespeak/ Nowhere to get the truth sometimes, but some will always seek/ Now you can criticize it, run it down/ Maybe religion's not your dope/ But it's hard to argue solid about a man of peace and hope/ That's the day they buried the pope."

But the funeral is just a short respite for Ridgway's outrage. Elsewhere he has nothing but contempt for the large and in charge. In a sweet, almost western-sound waltz called "Robbers & Bandits & Bastards & Thieves," he sings, "Hey nothing' is new, this story is old/ Some will always steal tin and then sell it for gold ..."

That's not the case for Ridgway and Drywall. They're selling pure gold with this record.

Steve Terrell - The Sante Fe New Mexicam

http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/31766.html

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STAN RIDGWAY AND DRYWALL
"BBQ BABYLON" - redFLY records
PRESS RELEASE 8/15/05

The long wait is over. The Third Installment in "THE TRILOGY OF APOCALYPTIC DOCUMENTS". Its now available and finally HERE for PURCHASE..
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the short bio - Stan Ridgway and Drywall "BBQ Babylon"

Taking a summer break from his solo endeavors, (last year's acclaimed "Snakebite") Wall Of Voodoo mastermind STAN RIDGWAY and DRYWALL, grill up 15 new firey favorites for summertime, including a brand new spin on the Richard and Mimi Farina 1960's folk classic "Bold Marauder" - in addition to 14 original new songs that are sure to stoke your flame!

Along with fellow "fire chiefs" -
PIETRA WEXSTUN, (vocals keyboards, classic synths, analog electronics) from Hecate's Angels.
RICK KING, (guitars, snake slide, 9 string Kingo) from the West Covina cult band BEE vs MOTH.

PLUS a furious, curious cast of spurious musicians, angry amd mad punk rock rebels, deep gothic seditionists, un-named celebrities and special guests! Ventriloquists!

What's the music?

From DEEP JUICEY GOTHIC VOODOO - DIRTY INDUSRTIAL ZYDECO -, to DRUG ADDELED ELECTRO EXPERIMENTAL to GREASEY ART MONSTER JAZZ! Its ALL HERE on the Drywall pic-ka-nic table.

A totally rockin', rude marinade of musical mayhem...in the PARTY / PROTEST MODE. Right on! Louie Louie! Wooly Bully! and Burn Baby Burn! Thank you H Rap the B.

So start up that BBQ everyone, and be sure to bring all your strange weird friends! Everybody is welcome! NO ONE is turned away. The DRYWALL BBQ PARTY party is about to begin!

(You can listen to audio samples from the album at left)

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DRYWALL:

STAN RIDGWAY: vcs, guitars, harmonica, wood flutes, strum sick, kabob mandolin, angry meat, flopsweat and attitude.

PIETRA WEXSTUN: vcs, keyboards, accordion, autoharp, farfisa, juno, moog, theremin, marinade & incantations, shape shifter 251

RICK KING: vcs, guitars, bass, freeway fuzz, cub of string, slide snake, winecooler & tri-tips, hardware advice

and a cast of CUTLETS!

DRYWALL'S INFLUENCES AND INSPIRATIONS FOR THIS RECORDING
(a partial list....in no particular order):

Willie the Shake, Judy Garland, John The Baptist, Lenny Bruce, Herman Melville, Bill Stout, Edward R. Murrow, Rip Taylor, Walter Brennan, Mikie Rooney, Van Dyke Parks, Stan Chambers, Howlin' Wolf, The L.A. Free Press, Lord Buckley, Richard and Mimi Farina, Jimmy Durante, George Carlin, Soupy Sales, Charlie Parker, Muddy Waters, John Coltrane,Allen Ginsberg, Paul Winchell, Mary Baker Eddy, Harold Melin, Jerry Mahoney, Bob Dylan, Mad Magazine. J.B. Lenoir, Air America, Famous Monsters Of Filmland, The Gasser, Sandy Denny, Tomata Du Plenty and The Screamers, Orson Welles, David Lindley, Buster Keaton, Bill Frisell, Wayne Kramer and MC5, Ben Turpin, J.S. Bach, Ken Funsten, Mark Cohen, Bart, Knucklehead Smif, The 3 Stooges, Helen Thomas, Rod Serling, Ted Turner, Nina Simone, Hank Williams, Avery Pietralunga, Ethel Merman, Emmett Kelly, Rory Musil, Senor Wences, Audrey Meadows, Ktity Carlisle, Marlene Dietrich, Carlos Grasso, Fritz Lang, John Ford, Mark Ryden, The Marx Bros., Fairport Convention, Steve and Edie, Bozo Under The Sea ( the LP) , Breughal, Picasso, Eric Satie, Stravinsky, Debussy, Charles Addams, Al Capp, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Ben Franklin, Dave Alvin, Patrick Henry, Martin Denney, Miles Davis, Ennio Morricone, Sean and Tiki Riley, Kenny Burrell, Charlie Parker, Myron Cohen, Gregory Corso, E. Power Biggs, Leadbelly, Cisco Huston, Woody Guthrie, Dave van Ronk, Tom Rush, Kraftwerk, Judy Garland, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Brenden Mullen and the Masque, Greta Garbo, John Huston, Richard Burton, Hal Willner, Babs Gonzales, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, Marlon Brando, Spencer Tracy, Karl Malden,Brian Eno, The Beatles, John Waters, Ed Wood, Liam Clancy and the Clancy Bros., Steeleye Span, The Skulls, Taj Mahal, Charlie Musselwhite, Prof. Erwin Corey, King Pleasure, Albert King, Tony Randall, Nicolas Slonimsky, Frank Delia, Federico Fellini, Skip Heller. Nino Rota, Guilietta Massina, Cesare Pavese, Julie Christie, Elsa Lanchester, William Blake, Ed Sullivan, Judy Davis, James T. Hill, David Lynch, Vladimir Horowitz, Theloniuous Monk, , Nathaniel West, Roger Corman, Bertold Brecht, Kurt Weill, Gabby Hayes, James Coburn, John Steinbeck, Joseph Heller, Charles Bukowski, Blossom Dearie, Peggy Lee, etc...more to be added....check back...

http://www.stanridgway.com

http://www.cdbaby.com/drywall