Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 22:33:46 -0700 From: clark price Reply-To: drywall@primenet.com Organization: sr dis-information X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 (Macintosh; I; PPC) Subject: Ridgway at the ROXY / L.A. THIS SAT.! Stan Ridgway at the ROXY this Sat. Nite June 17th 9009 Sunset Blvd. near Doheny Hollywood Roxy box office / advance tickets: (310) 278- 9457 *************************************** Showtime for Stan: 10 PM There are two bands that play before Stan goes on so if ya like that sorta thing the doors open at 8PM....otherwise if ya wanna just see Stan and his Band...once again his show will start at 10 PM. ... if you wanna get a meal before the show there are lots of places right around the club. Parking directly across the street from the Roxy / 5 bucks. This has been a special service to our southern calif. dis-patch but everyone else has recieved it too. We just can't seperate the names out yet from our e mail list, so sorry to those that do not reside here in L.A. for this. see ya at the show.... ***************************************** AND Don't Forget!! RENO comin up next! JUNE 30th and JULY 1st @ The RENO HILTON in Reno NV A FREE SHOW! SR Plays in the famous "Garage" Casino Lounge!! Make it a weekend in Reno! / showtimes: 10 pm INFO and Hotel Reservations: (775) 789-2404 Clark and Agatha Price @ dis-info http://www.primenet.com/~drywall/ http://www.stanridgway.com/stuff THIS WEEKS ALBUM RELEASES in the UK REVIEWED BY ANDY GILL THE UK LONDON INDEPENDENT STAN RIDGWAY : "ANATOMY" / NEW WEST / UltraModern RECORDS ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- DESPITE NOT having an album released in the UK for far too many years now, Stan Ridgway remains one of America's best songwriters, a Dirty Realist storyteller whose observations of the sad, soft, underbelly of the American Dream unerringly focus in on the moments when hope sours into resignation, and idealisim into cynicism. His tales of little loser lives are characterised by a Jim Thompson world of grifters, carnies, and lowlifes making do and screwing up. their dropped stitches sketched in telling phrases that leave more questions begged than answered, as Ridgway employs straegies of concealment and revelation to keep the listener constantly revising their understanding of events. But however much is revealed, the mystery remains. What exacty do his characters want? What is their state of mind? What are their intentions? Most of the time, you don't really want to know: the protagonist of "Valarie is Sleeping", for instance, ponders what do do now he's disposed of poor Valaries's corspe, while the numbed soul of "Deep Blue Polkadot" seeks more extreme sensation to fend off anomie, musing that "Beauty in decay can be the only way / When you are not". The influence of such as Raymonfd Carver and Jim Thompson can be readily dicerned in Ridgway's writing, though the quiirky detail, wry humour, and odd narrative twists are, if anything, more characteristic of the Cohen Brother's films. And indeed, the sleeve design - a pastiche of designer Saul Bass's stylised credit sequence for Otto Premiger's ":Anatomy of a Murder" - gives clear indication of the cinematic sensibility which Ridgway brings to his lyrics and his music. Like Ennio Morricone, he has a good ear for the "visual" qualities of instruments, combining them in narratively pleasing arrangments which proceed by mood and texture as much as by melody: a whine of lonesome harmonica, a cold shiver of synthesised strings, a smattering of meloncholy Euro-cinematic piano. It's a versatile, flexible method which enables Stan Ridgway to come closer than otherwise possible to the heart of a song such as "Train of Thought", a deeply moving evocation of the limitations of memory: " All the world and history / Burns like a bad sign / And here within my reach revealed / The clouds part in my mind / I see the love that I sought / But then I lost my train of thought ". Wherever you stand on the great Keats / Dylan debate, that's sheer poetry. ANDY GILL / THE UK INDEPENDENT