A couple of weeks ago I saw Stan Ridgeway, the singer from Wall of Voodoo, on his "25th anniversary" tour (not a reunion of Wall of Voodoo, but 25 years since their album came out).

This show was HORRIBLE! One of the worst shows I've seen in the past 10 or maybe even 20 years. I liked Wall of Voodoo okay back in the day, I never was a huge fan, but my girlfriend wanted to see this show. It was a kick to hear him and his band do "Mexican Radio", and "Don't Box Me In" (a minor hit which he originally recorded with the drummer of the Police for a movie soundtrack back in the early 80s), but those were about the only highlights.

And actually "Mexican Radio" was ruined for me by the extremely loud volume and CRAPPY mix. I'm not one to normally complain about volume, but they were playing WAAAAAY too loud for the small club they were in, and when their playing hit a crescendo level, as in the last half of "Mexican Radio", the treble flattened out on the high end and got real fizzy and shrill and made my ears buzz really bad. The opening band played at half the volume and their mix sounded twice as good.

Stan Ridgeway didn't even have a bass player. The bass parts were all taped (at first I thought, "maybe the keyboardist is playing them on a bass synthesizer, even though it doesn't sound like a bass synthesizer", so I watched her hands...and she was NOT playing any bass parts!)

They played the bass tape so friggin' LOUD that they had to crank their amps way up just to be heard over the pre-recorded bass tape. Of course Stan Ridgeway never acknowledged that they didn't have a bass player, and acted as if everything was off the cuff with impromptu jamming, when of course it couldn't have been. (My girlfriend didn't even notice that they didn't have a bass player , wonder how many of the crowd didn't either?)

I mean, c'mon, how hard is it to get a bass player? And its not as though the bass parts would be too hard to learn on short notice, you know? I imagine a lot of the guys on this forum could learn them no prob with one or two practices. I know I could.

I know Wall of Voodoo was not a very guitar-oriented band, but there was only ONE guitar solo through the whole show! (unless he played more in the encore, we left as the encore began).

At least the opening band was good...they were an all cover band but they could play well. They did a really cool rocakabilly-countryish version of the Police's "Every Breath you Take"...sounded suprisingly good in that style.

Sorry for the rant, just wanted to warn any of you who might be thinking about going to see Stan Ridgeway.