Customer Reviews

Call of the West

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This album is cool and in listening to it you are thereby cool as well. By reading this you are either already a fan looking for yet another review lauding the praise of this album or are unacquainted with the band and are curious. If the latter, in all likelihood you've heard "Mexican Radio" and you're thinking of buying this just so you can put the actual song to the vague memories you have of the tequilla saturated night you heard this. If this is so, I was like you (minus the tequilla...I was a young un when this was released). Though "Mexican Radio" is still one of my favorites from this release I was thoroughly impressed by this album as a whole. In fact, there are no weak songs at all. It's simultaneously quaint and timeless. Quaint in that the drum machine sounds ancient and clunky and that the synths sound like the toy synthesizer you always wanted as a child. Timeless in that the lyrics are hilarious and depressing at the same time. The American dream and all its pitfalls and dead ends are portrayed for the myth that they are with no short amount of irony and tongue in cheek humor. Anyone who's lived in a small town will definitely appreciate this, unless its your buck toothed cousin Leonard who thinks moving to LA and buying a rubber swimming pool for the kids sounds just dandy. This would do well as the soundtrack of a John Waters film. And lest you think this is an electronic album the twangy (saddle up cowboy!) guitars will surely appease you. Be cool and lets ride into the smog choked sunset.

Like most everyone, I bought the album for Mexican Radio. And few can deny that this was a wonderful hit. But after listening to the album in detail it dawned on me that the songwriting is especially strong in some of the lesser-known hits. The harmonica on Lost Weekend is especially atmospheric -- you can feel the hot air passing through open windows of a car driven by a couple after losing their life savings gambling. Factory also hits on the "dead-end life" theme, telling the story of a factory worker whose life has lurched into the mundane, yet is too complacent to even realize it. Call of the West continues the theme, describing how, despite dreams of grandeur, most are destined to sell appliances at the local ... The loser is a common theme in rock, especially when losing is romanticized into a blue-collar, down-on-your-luck, falling-off-your-barstool theme, a la Bruce Springsteena and most Southern Rock. But Wall of Voodoo sang about a different kind of loser, whose circumstances are neither tragic nor newsworthy. There are no suicides, drinking binges, drug busts, or love triangles in these songs. Just sad existences by those that will never amount to anything and are too caught up in their own petty existence to realize it.

"Mexican Radio" is one of my all-time favorite songs, I must've heard it a 1000 times and it still hits me fresh. "Factory," "Call of the West," "Lost Weekend," "Spy World" and "On Interstate 15" are the other standouts, and they are ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL for any self-respecting pop fan.

The whole record has an eerie mood that's quite timeless--full of cheesy sounds and surreal narratives at every turn, glued together by a bizzare underlying humor. In fact, on the strength of this one record, Stan Ridgway was recruited by Francis Ford Coppola to collaborate with Stewart Copeland on the fantastic soundtrack for "Rumble Fish."

I remember screaming along to "Mexican Radio" with a carload of fellow teenagers in early 1987 listening to the shortlived WXXP in Pittsburgh. I bought the album for the "...barbequed iguana!!" but soon found that every song on the album became a favorite. I can quote every word to every song even now twelve years later. The feeling of alienation and being lost in a sickening depraved West that barely had anything in common with TV matched my own feelings about life at the time. I was nineteen and seriously ******* up. Wall of Voodoo was a bitter cynical comfort that helped leech the pain of the world's snakebite on my soul. Oh yeah, it was funny too. One of the best albums I ever owned. The cassette tape didn't leave my car 'till the early '90's when it wore out...

This IS it !!!!! If you are an European (like myself), and want to know what America is all about, (both above and below the surface), you get it here - served with a blink in the eye, a smile, alot of fun, and some frustrations. It is all their - blended nicely together.
Wall of Voodoo is phenomenal in American music. Not many other US artists can create such an precise look and perspective on their homeland and the western culture in general. And always served with a surplus of humour !!
The song "Call of the West" is perhaps the finest rock/pop song ever crafted. Big words, but it is hard to beat.
Overall, the lyrics (actually more accurate: full-blown stories) are second to none and the music was perhaps 20 years ahead of its time - mixing rhytm-machines, keyboards, electric guitars in a great mix !
Get it. I will make your life a little richer (which is actually alot)
and a whole lot cooler !!

I bought the LP version of "Call of the West" when it first came out. Pumping it through an upper level Technics turntable/Shure cartridge, Kenwood amp and Soundcraftsman EQ back then, digital CD is better. Oh, technology!!! NO, the LP is NOT for sale.

You can't talk about this CD without mentioning the flagship song, "Mexican Radio." It's a fun song, plain and simple. What other lyrics of the time are better known than "I wish I was in Tiajuana, eating bar-b-qued iguana"? Some scratch their head, others don't have a clue as they look for a mystical, deep, dark meaning. Listen just to have some audio fun and you'll get it.

My single complaint is track 9, "On Interstae 15" -- it's too short at 2:44 - it should be twice as long. Sharing Mojave Desert turf with Stan to the west, I-15 connects Barstow with Los Angeles and A&M Records in Hollywood through Victorville. The song is great road music, especially out here in the open desert where there's mile after mile of sand and Joshua trees. I can imagine Clint Eastwood, Colt six gun strapped to his side, his trademark cigar stub clintched between his teeth, cruising I-15 in a Porche convertable doing 120 mph when I hear the song. Yeehaaaaaa!

"Call of the West" is a decent mix of tunes. It's as fun now as it was when it first came out, maybe even more so now that audio detail and clarity are much improved.

If you've heard the hit "Mexican Radio" (which I'm sure you have if you're looking at this), in a way it gives you an idea of what this album sounds like, but it's also kind of misleading. All the other tracks have the same sort of intriguing combination of twangy spaghetti western music and synth-based new wave. However, most of the record utilizes this combination to more moody and alienated effect than the quirky comical pop of "Mexican Radio"; aside from the equally uptempo and almost as poppy and funny "Spy World" and the bouncy Ennio Morricone goes dance instrumental "On Interstate 15", things tend to be considerably more bleak and paranoid.

The songs tend to work best when vocalist Stan Ridgeway is working the character study angle: The couple hopelessly chasing get rich quick scheme after get rich quick scheme in "Lost Weekend", the increasingly stressed and monotonous life of the disallusioned assembly line worker in "Factory", the naive young man looking to start a new life in the west who finds things considerably tougher than he thought, heck, even the comically confused tourist of "Mexican Radio"; all are very well fleshed out and believable. Songs that try to voice similar themes in a more general sort of way are a bit less effective, but even when there isn't much of a real hook, thanks to the band's previous history of soundtrack work there's always at least an intriguing mood to keep your attention. If you're looking for the lighter weight side of new wave, look elsewhere, but there's a compassionate, if bitter and wounded, intelligence to this material that's definitely worth a listen on it's own merits.

I'm sure we were all familiar with the infamous "Mexican Radio"
song, so for quite a few years I've known of Wall of Voodoo...however, a good friend actually turned me on to the rest of their music, and just five seconds in I was hooked. Naturally, I rushed out and bought CALL OF THE WEST.

CALL OF THE WEST has that great atmospheric (and dark) 80's new wave sound, blended with a real "Cowboy"/Spaghetti Western music element. It'll make you think of a cowboy Clint Eastwood fighting outlaws in a Sci-Fi old west. To top it off, each song makes you feel like you've been tleported into a strange David Lynch film. All in all, WALL OF VOODOO has created a perfect sound with this creative effort, and this currently tops my collection as my favorite CD. Looking for a real weird, atmospheric night drive? Pop Call of the West in the CD player and I guarentee you're in for quite a ride. Highly recommended.

Still holds up 25 years later.

Ridgway comes through Austin every year or two, and the songs that always play best are from this record. His solo stuff is good, but this was his masterpiece, an evocative sonic film noir journey through the blue collar nihilism of the American southwest small town trailer trash world.

Some hilarious lyrics on this record; I still recall this one all these years later: "I've brought the same piece of chicken in a bag to work every day for the last twenty years or so". And, to a robotic beat: "I'll do it tomorrow; that seems like a pretty good idea to me."
It's basically a Ridgway 4-track effort with hypnotically simple drum machine tracks and the band adding some groove.

Mexican Radio is far from the best track here, but it sure is a classic.
If you're an online bootleg collector, see if you can dig up a live WOV show from Toronto, radio feed, sometime just before this record came out. It's got some of this album and all of the first record, and it's funny and white-boy funky as hell ("Where's Giddy? I brought my broom!"). If you find it, look me up and let me know. I always loved it, and the Simple Minds show from the same period. I think they were both at the Concert Hall.

In any case, this album is well worth checking out.

This CD and group are without a doubt, one of the most original and tantalizing sounds to come out of the 80's. Not only is it New Wave at its best, but it's got that cowboyish thang going for it too! I was lucky enough to have seen Wall of Voodoo perform in San Francisco, back in 80's. I still have a vinyl copy of this CD. Even after all these years, their sound is still fresh and unique. All the songs are great, but my favorites are "Tomorrow," "They Don't Want Me," and "Call of the West." "Mexican Radio" is their signature tune that seems to be on just about every compilation CD of the 80's. So, this is the CD if you savor the flavor for something really different to try.