Copyright 1991-1997 by Larry Hastings. Free to redistribute, provided it is redistributed intact including this copyright notice.
Review of Stan Ridgway live at Slim's, Saturday 1997/03/27 by Larry Hastings He started things off by saying "Well, we just came up here from San Diego. We left our containers down there... we were waiting, but the ship never came. Now we're walking around, each with a five dollar bill and a roll of quarters in our pocket, trying to figure out what to do next." Ever topical, that one. He dedicated _Overlords_ and _Crystal Palace_ to the Higher Source cultists--"a bunch of people who recently left our planet". (For posterity: the Higher Source cultists had committed a mass suicide in San Diego earlier that week. They believed that their souls would leave their bodies, their "containers", and transfer up to a space ship traveling inside comet Hale-Bopp, to be implanted in the body of an advanced being on the next level of evolution. Each one of them were wearing brand new black jeans and Nike tennis shoes, and each one had a five dollar bill and a roll of quarters in their pocket. The money was apparently for "cab fare" or "a movie" in case the transfer did not go as planned. The mind boggles.) Speaking of _Overlords_, he noticed my T-shirt (an alien standing outside a silvery spaceship) while he was in the middle of that song. He almost laughed out loud. The big surprise for the live show was how much he'd changed around _The Big Heat_ and _Camouflage_. TBH was now a slow, groovy funk; _Camouflage_ had an almost entirely different progression, and sounded quite dark and moody. All in all, a great show and an enjoyable evening: * I showed up halfway through the second opening band's set. * I still got to stand exactly at the front center of the stage. Right next to the Dragon Lady (the short woman with the long fingernails who's always right up there with me). * Stan played a nice long set, as usual. Two encores; he had a third on the set list, but it was already quarter to 2, and I'm guessing that Slim's put the kibosh on the third, not Stan. (But, then, last time I saw him live, he skipped the third encore too...) * He played a nice mix of old and new, including the big hits that everyone wants to hear: Mexican Radio I Wanna Be A Boss Drive She Said Mission In Life He forgot most of the second stanza of _Mexican Radio_, but it was kinda cute. And he didn't play any of the really sucky tracks--well, he played _Wild Bill Donovan_, but it was much improved live. Not nearly so spare and dull. Plus: he played _Call Of The West_! Yay! The middle part was mostly the same, although he went off on sort of a tangent: "...get some DNA and start cloning! Yeah! That's what we need, some DNA and some lab equipment! You know, they're working on cloning Jesus right now. Jesus of Nazareth. Will he be a carpenter, or a leader of humanity? Well, we'll find out. They're doing all of them--Jesus, Buddah, Mohammed... pretty soon, they'll clone everybody, and everyone will have to live with themselves." p.s. Quotes rendered from memory, and are only approximate. ------------------------------------------------------------ Someone asked me in a followup posting where I'd been at the concert, 'cause they went too and they didn't see me. ------------------------------------------------------------ Like I said--I was up against the stage, dead center. I crept my way up there during the second opening band (the Tex Mex guys who only knew a song and a half, but had it down cold, and played it three or four times). And I stood there until the show was over. When he jumped off the stage to walk around during _Call Of The West_, I grabbed his left arm to help him to the floor. When Old Mister Johnson turned blue and started to choke, during _Can't Stop The Show_, he pounded the back of the guy to my left (who, incidentally, maintains the Stan Ridgway discography). The woman who lives in Barstow who would like to see him dead was the Dragon Lady, to my right. And he handed me Jackie Lazar after Jackie had been returned to the stage. _That's_ where I was. Incidentally, I was quite pleased to learn that Slim's has free earplugs--just ask at the bar. They're the standard nice foam ones. I stood front and center during the Tex Mex band, and was merely bored rather than in pain or bleeding from my ears. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Here's the set list, reproduced verbatim (typo and all): ----------------------------------------------------------------- SET LIST - STAN RIDGWAY QUINTET INTRODUCTION SEX CLUB THE BIG HEAT I WANNA BE A BOSS CANT'T STOP THE SHOW WILD BILL DONOVAN BIG DUMB TOWN STRANDED OVERLORDS LONELY TOWN CAMOUFLAGE DRIVE SHE SAID RUMBLEFISH MEXICAN RADIO MISSION IN LIFE ****************************************** 1. 16 TONS CALL OF THE WEST RING OF FIRE 2. PASSENGER CRYSTAL PALACE 3. GONE THE DISTANCE BEL AIR BLUES ONLY A HOBO JACK TALKED / LOST WEEKEND -----------------------------------------------------------------