"He got the high sign so he jumped the bus..."

Tuesday night, I saw Stan Ridgway play a show in "celebration" of CALL OF THE WEST, a fine album he made back in '82 — when he was front man for Wall Of Voodoo.

My best friend James rode the AmTrak down from NYC for the show — he and I saw Wall Of Voodoo together back in '83. (I wrote a blog thing about that show a week or so ago.) If Stan was gonna pay homage to his truly great album, we thought we'd pay homage to our truly great evening from back in June of '83.

To be honest, we were both a little scared. Would this taint our fond memories of the old show? Would it live up to the materpiece that is CALL OF THE WEST? (In one of those arguments people tend to have at parties when adult beverages are present, I once loudly proclaimed CALL OF THE WEST the absolute Best Album Of The Eighties. And in the clarity of the next morning, I realized I was probably right.) Would Stan be another one of those Rock N Roll guys who'd got all old and dumpy and crummy?

We shouldn't have worried about that crap. Stan and his crack band played with some of the arrangements a bit, especially on a deconstructed "Factory," while others got a more reverant treatment. In between the CALL OF THE WEST tunes and a few other Wall Of Voodoo things were songs from Stan's solo work — and a really creepy cover of Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit." A good show.

With CALL OF THE WEST, Wall Of Voodoo got it right. It sounds as crazy, creepy and fresh today as it did then. I bet I've heard that album hundreds of times — and I marvel at it every time. It's certainly something worthy of a celebration. (Now that I think of it, their DARK CONTINENT is a masterpiece, too.)

NOTE: In a blog somewhere, someone recently wrote about Wall Of Voodoo and CALL OF THE WEST. Stan chimed in, saying "Sadly, two WOV members are gone to Heaven. Sometimes the price is high for things like this." That would be Marc Moreland and Joe Nanini. RIP, fellas.