This month’s M.I.A jewel: fugitives on the lam, hardboiled ear-movies and a ghostly Marine.

Across the tracks: Stan Ridgway turns up the heat in 1986.

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Stan Ridgway

The Big Heat

IRS, 1986

BARSTOW-RAISED Stanard Ridgway fronted LA eccentrics Wall Of Voodoo, whose malarial MTV hit Mexican Radio promised great things in March ’83. But two months later at Steve Wozniak’s US Festival folly in San Bernadino – a few hours before The Clash’s last gig with Mick Jones – Ridgway played his final show with the group.

“I felt the band had been taken over by the record company,” says Ridgway today. “They put us on the road for nine, 10 months, and then said, ‘Do it again’. Everybody was pretty burned out, and I felt a lot of weirdness because of my status as the singer, you know – ‘Who does he think he is?!’ There was lots of dysfunction and things just weren’t fixable. I remember going to the label and saying, I think we need a break. And I just got crickets.”

Ridgway resigned from the group, but he could not so easily leave Miles Copeland’s IRS imprint, who weren’t pleased he’d walked from Wall Of Voodoo. Consequently, recording sessions for his first LP stretched over two years, though his first name release would be Don’t Box Me In, a co-credit with Police drummer Stewart Copeland from the soundtrack of Francis Ford Coppola’s film Rumble Fish in late ’83.