Taken from Mosquitos promotional CD & press release - used with permission
What the **** is an MP3 sound file?

About Mosquitos

Stan Ridgway recently talked about the songs on Mosquitos, his debut on Geffen Records (released March 25, 1989) and his second solo album. Produced by Joe Chiccarelli and Ridgway, the album was recorded in 1986 and 1989 In Los Angeles. On Mosquitos, Ridgway is lead vocalist, wrote all of the songs, and at various times plays piano, keyboards, guitar, harmonica, tin cup, insects and, of course, ectoplasm.

If you are feeling brave you can dowload all the MP3s in one go by clicking here but the zip file is 2.5Mb! Alternatively just carry on down the page & load them as you go...

Heat Takes A Walk -- "The melody came to me as was driving through New Mexico one night. I'm very pleased with what Van Dyke Parks did with the orchestration, and like how it opens the record in a kind of wide screen way."

Lonely Town -- "Have you ever been on the way to someplace where everyone told you not to go? And then you find that all of those 'don't goes' just makes you want to go even more?" -- listen to Stan talk : LONELY.MP3 (440k)

Goin' Southbound -- "A group of urban mutants run a dilapidated warehouse in the desert that's a front for a web of crime. One person working there, I think, doesn't know if he should stay or steal from the till and take off." -- listen to Stan talk : GOING.MP3 (161k)

Dogs -- "This came out as a sort of 'karmic fable' for pet lovers. I think it was triggered by a memory of a nightmare I once had, about being trapped in jazz hell with the wrong clothes."

Can't Complain -- "It seems to me to be a meditation on Newtonian theory -- what comes up must come down. This came out of a series of complaints that I overheard a close relative recount."

Peg and Pete and Me -- "This grew out of a page of 'guilty sexual swill' I'd written just to loosen up. It took me about a month to decide If Pete wore a moustache or a very expensive toupee, if he had a dog or maybe a wooden leg. I think I was stalling for a pardon."

Newspapers -- "I wrote this after cleaning out my closet of old papers and garbage that had been following me from one move to the next. I'd saved things that I'd hoped would inspire song, but I'd never used them for anything at all. Ten years of trash equals one song."

Calling Out To Carol -- "I started this song on a friends old watersoaked piano he'd kept in his garage, while we were talking about old friends we hadn't seen for awhile. People from the past that you remember very well but haven't seen in years hold a certain interest, morbid or otherwise."

The Last Honest Man -- "I wanted a song to be included that didn't use any more than four chords. I wrote the words after watching too much television. Doesn't it sound like it?" -- listen to Stan talk : LASTMAN.MP3 (243k)

A Mission In Life -- "There are a series of bars in Hermosa Beach that line the ocean, that I have frequented with friends on overserved occasions. Each one has a kind of nautical theme; starfish in nets, aguariums, blowfish hanging from the ceiling, that sort of thing. This song, I think, is for those people that have a certain kind of idealism with skid marks on it."

ALSO...

VOODOO.MP3 (374k) : Stan talks about the formation of Wall of Voodoo and how the name came to be.

MEXICAN.MP3 (336k) : the ideas, instruments and creation of Wall of Voodoo's biggest hit, Mexican Radio.

COPELAND.MP3 (482k) : discussing Stan's contribution to the soundtrack of Francis Coppola's film Rumblefish in conjunction with Stewart Copeland.

SHESAID.MP3 (426k) : on going solo, the album The Big Heat and the song Drive She Said.


MP3?

MP3 is a high quality compressed sound file format, if I had not used it the sound files on this page would be massive! To download a player try MP3.COM where you will find all sorts of players (for all sorts of operating systems) and more in-depth technical gubbins.

All the MP3 files were created with Audiograbber and the Xing MP3 Encoder, which are both very good!


Attention Ridgnauts: All MP3s have been "remastered" July 1999 so if you visited here before you might want to download them again - no radical changes, just a slight but noticable increase in quality and as a result the file sizes have also increased by a "tad" !





Any comments, concerns, problems or praise to aoates@newsguy.com

Original text and graphics © Adrian Oates : all else © Stan Ridgway - used with permission

Last update: 3rd July 1999.