Album Notes

New for you! A swingin' and surly sonic succotash from Wall Of Voodoo's frontman Stan Ridgway, singin' and croonin', cryin' and swoonin'. Mix up a high ball and join Stan and his big-band as he sings these golden greats of yesteryear! With two olives please...“I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day.” Here now in limited supply. Read on.
"This record is dedicated to the writers and original performers of these songs. Long may they sing!" - Stan Ridgway
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A swingin' and surly sonic succotash from Wall Of Voodoo's frontman Stan Ridgway, singin' and croonin', cryin' and swoonin'. Mix up a high ball and join Stan and his big-band as he sings these golden greats of yesteryear! With two olives please...

So, what's it like? Why, it is a sheer delight. Musically, the standards are brilliant big-band arrangements; they've got horns, and strings, and squonky little synthesizers lurking in the background (manned by ex-WOV member and Drywall producer Bill Noland along with Hecate's Angel Pietra Wexstun). Stan takes to singing those great old songs like a duck to water, as if he's been singing them all his life.

Stan Ridgway now at myspace.com: http://www.myspace.com/officialstanridgway

Ridgway Merch now online! Purchase here:
http://www.zazzle.com/ridgwaymusic

And be sure and read the listener reviews below!
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5 Stars ***** Reviewer: db morton
Well I never thought I'd be digging crooners, but incredibly Stan Ridgway has changed all that. I've been listening to The Way I Feel Today for the past six months or so. It never gets old. There is so much to get your ears around. Sonically, it's the most analog recording I've ever heard in digital format, yet it's got weird, alien synthesizers bopping througout. This record is fun, it's very well crafted and the sound...! Let me just put it this way; do something good for yourself and those around you and get this CD and play it LOUD, LOUD, LOUD!!! There's nothing else out there like it.
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5 Stars ***** Wow, a Communion Breakthrough: Transformation in the Secret School! Reviewer: Wittlee Streeebur
I heard Stan sang a good song, I heard he had a style. So I got his CD, to listen for a while. He sang as if he knew me, in all my dark despair... I felt he found my letters -- and read each one out loud. He was strumming my pain with with his fingers, singing my life with his words, killing me softly with his songs, in short, telling my whole life in his words.
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5 Stars ***** The Way I Feel Today is Outta This World! Reviewer: Doug Frank
One of the most smashingly-clever concept albums I've ever heard! Y'know, if Stan wasn't doing this showbusiness thing, I think he'd probably be investigating the subject matter of this CD full time... all the cases of ordinary folk being carried off and subjected to the kinds of stuff Stan's singing about. I guess it might be more interesting than showbusiness. You've got to be obsessed to stick in showbusiness...
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Read more reviews below....

The Way I Feel Today was a real out-of-the-blue left-turn for Stan Ridgway, especially coming only a few years after his work with "experimental noise combo" Drywall. On this limited-edition CD, Ridgway reinvented himself as a big band crooner, and enlisted a genuine Hollywood big band led by Robert McNeely to help him tackle a wide range of Sinatra-esque standards, regardless of their perceived campiness or kitsch value.
The upshot of all this is a (mostly) straight collection of songs by the likes of Cole Porter, Stephen Sondheim, and Rogers & Hammerstein which means that if the limited range of Stan Ridgway's deadpan film noir drawl fails to strike you as the ideal vehicle for conveying the sentiments expressed in "It Had to Be You," "Send in he Clowns," or "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning," then The Way I Feel Today is definitely not the album for you.
On the other hand, if you're a devoted Ridgway buff, you'll find some interesting and amusing performances here, especially when Stan tips his hat to narrative songs such as "One for My Baby" (which was a clear, if previously unacknowledged, influence on his own "A Mission in Life"), or when he exuberantly belts out strong novelty number like "The Coffee Song." Some fine, brassy arrangements from McNeely and the unquestionably heartfelt performances by Ridgway throughout. — Rudyard Kennedy