Wall of Voodoo was an American rock band from Los Angeles, California who were active from 1977 until disbanding in 1989. Though largely an underground act for the majority of its existence, the band came to prominence when its 1982 single "Mexican Radio" became a hit on MTV and alternative radio. The band was known for surrealist lyrics drawing on iconography of the American Southwest.
History
Formation
Wall of Voodoo had its roots in Acme Soundtracks, a film score business started by Stan Ridgway, later the vocalist and harmonica player for Wall of Voodoo. Acme Soundtracks' office was across the street from the Hollywood punk club The Masque and Ridgway was soon drawn into the emerging punk/new wave scene. Marc Moreland, guitarist for the Skulls, began jamming with Ridgway at the Acme Soundtracks office and the soundtrack company morphed into a new wave band. In 1977, with the addition of Skulls members Bruce Moreland (Marc Moreland's brother) as bassist and Chas T. Gray as keyboardist, along with Joe Nanini, who had been the drummer for the Bags, the Eyes, and Black Randy and the Metrosquad, the first lineup of the band was born, named Wall of Voodoo before their first show in reference to a comment made by Joe Berardi, a friend of Ridgway's and member of the Fibonaccis. According to Ridgway, "I've always been interested in Phil Spector and his wall-of-sound approach to recording. And Wall of Voodoo seemed to describe best what we were doing."
1977–1983
Wall of Voodoo released a self-titled EP in 1980 which featured a synthesizer-driven cover of "Ring of Fire." The second half of "Ring of Fire" features a dissonant guitar solo covering the theme to the 1966 film Our Man Flint. The band's first full-length album, Dark Continent, followed in 1981. It also reached No. 64 in the UK, and was their only Top 100 hit in the United States. As well, the video received considerable exposure on the newly formed MTV.
Bill Noland was added as a keyboardist soon after the release of Call of the West. Later that year, Wall of Voodoo split up and Andy Prieboy and Marc Moreland went on to solo careers.
Post-breakup
In 1989, a post-breakup live album entitled The Ugly Americans in Australia was issued, which documented their 1987 tour of Melbourne, Australia. (Additional performances from a date in Bullhead City, Arizona, were also included.) Stan Ridgway, Andy Prieboy and Marc Moreland all embarked on solo careers throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Joe Nanini released an EP under the name Sienna Nanini in 1996.
Two former members died in the early 2000s: Joe Nanini suffered a brain hemorrhage on December 4, 2000, and Marc Moreland died of kidney and liver failure on March 13, 2002.
On July 18, 2006, a Stan Ridgway-fronted Wall of Voodoo performed at the Pacific Amphitheatre in Orange County as an opening band for Cyndi Lauper. However, other than Ridgway, none of the surviving Wall of Voodoo members were included in this lineup: Joe Berardi and Voodoo producer Richard Mazda performed instead. Ridgway's album Snakebite: Blacktop Ballads and Fugitive Songs (2005), features the narrative song, "Talkin' Wall of Voodoo Blues Pt. 1," a history of the band in song.
A remastered coupling of Dark Continent and Call of the West was released by Raven Records on November 10, 2009. On October 2, 2012, Raven issued a companion two-disc set containing all three albums from the Andy Prieboy era (Seven Days in Sammystown, Happy Planet and Ugly Americans in Australia), all remastered, including three bonus tracks.
In 2015 Andy Prieboy stated: "We won't do a Voodoo reunion without Marc. So until he shows up, sorry, no reunion."
In late 2023 Andy Prieboy and Chas T. Gray launched a website under the name "Wall of Voodoo 2", announcing the upcoming release of recently rediscovered and previously unreleased recordings. These recordings consisted of live recordings, master tracks as well as demos dating back to 1983 when the group consisted of only Gray and Marc Moreland. The first set of recordings, The Lost Tapes Vol. 1, was released on November 25, 2023 and featured 11 tracks recorded live during their Happy Planet tour sometime in 1987. Museums: The Lost Tapes Vol. 2 was released on March 15, 2024, and contained 12 demos recorded by Gray and Moreland (as "International Voodoo") sometime after the 1983 US Festival performance. Roughly half of these tracks never made it on any album, the other half consisting of "Big City" and three versions of "Museums" from Seven Days in Sammystown and three versions of "Deep in the Jungle" (from the "Weird Science" soundtrack).
Musical style
According to Popdose, the band's sound was shaped by merging Stan Ridgway's "love of bebop and country music" with Marc Moreland's "affection for electronic pioneers such as Kraftwerk". According to AllMusic biographer Jason Ankeny, the band's lyrics were "cinematic narratives -- heavily influenced by Westerns and film noir". Ridgway's vocal style has been described as having a "droll, narcoleptic manner" and the band's music as "atonal, electronically based". According to Trouser Press, Wall of Voodoo was "Poised uneasily between machine music and rock’n’roll" and the band "embodied the conflict between old and new for the serious-minded: classy Halloween music that’s scary, but pleasantly so." Record Collector magazine described Wall of Voodoo as combining "western
Americana motifs with angular
art-rock to delicious effect. It
was as if stream-of-conscious
cowboy movies were being scored by a triumvirate of Sparks, Devo and Talking Heads." Ridgway said, regarding the band's style, "I've always been interested in Phil Spector and his wall-of-sound approach to recording. [The name] Wall of Voodoo seemed to describe best what we were doing." Reviewer Mark Deming called Wall of Voodoo a new wave band.
Band members
Final lineup
- Marc Moreland – guitar (1977–1989; died 2002)
- Chas T. Gray – keyboards (1977–1989), backing vocals (1982–1989), bass (1982–1985, 1987–1989)
- Andy Prieboy – vocals, keyboards, guitar (1984–1989)
- Ned Leukhardt – drums, percussion (1984–1989)
Former members
- Stan Ridgway – vocals, harmonica, keyboards, guitar (1977–1983)
- Joe Nanini – drums, percussion (1977–1984; died 2000)
- Bruce Moreland – bass, keyboards (1977–1982, 1985–1987)
- Bill Noland – keyboards (1982–1983)
Timeline
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Discography
Studio albums
{| class="wikitable"
! style="text-align: center;" | Year
! style="text-align: center;" | Title
! style="text-align: center;" | US
! style="text-align: center;" | AUS
|-
| style="text-align: center;" | 1981
| Dark Continent
| style="text-align: center;" | 177
| style="text-align: center;" | -
|-
| style="text-align: center;" | 1982
| Call of the West
| style="text-align: center;" | 45
| style="text-align: center;" | -
|-
| style="text-align: center;" | 1985
| Seven Days in Sammystown
| style="text-align: center;" | -
| style="text-align: center;" | 50
|-
| style="text-align: center;" | 1987
| Happy Planet
| style="text-align: center;" | -
| style="text-align: center;" | 83
|}
Live albums
{| class="wikitable"
! style="text-align: center;" | Year
! style="text-align: center;" | Title
! style="text-align: center;" | US
! style="text-align: center;" | AUS
- Museums: The Lost Tapes Vol. 2 (2024)
Singles
{| class="wikitable"
! style="text-align: center;" | Year
! style="text-align: center;" | Title
! style="text-align: center;" | UK