I'd Buy Anything By...Andy Prieboy

I have said previously in this blog that Andy Prieboy is my favourite musician. He's smart and creative and eccentric, and he writes in a style that nobody else does in pop anymore, a sort of extremely wordy musical theatre approach which must be hell to score (and also to remember). Since leaving the reformed Wall of Voodoo in 1991 he has only released two albums and an EP, and his most famous song came right at the beginning: this happy little number called "Tomorrow Wendy" which you may remember.



During that time he was writing and refining "White Trash Wins Lotto," an ambitious musical about the rise and fall of an Axl Rose-style character. Apparently this was a really stellar show, and he would perform it in small L.A. clubs with various talented friends, waiting for a record company to give him a really sweet deal.

But Prieboy has been burned by record companies before, and he wrote scathingly about them on his second album -- and in the book he co-wrote, "The Psycho-Ex Game" -- so I suspect that he'll never go in that direction again. Instead, for the last fourteen years, he's been silent...

...until now. His website has been reactivated and a series of virtual EPs have trickled out. Brand new songs, each and every one of them a masterpiece! If you've ever seen a bunch of drunk idiots harass a donut store employee, this song ("Hearty Drinking Men") will thrill you (careful, virgin ears...there's some cussin').



Prieboy's musical output is slow and deliberate and his records disappear into obscurity immediately after their release. For this reason, scour the used bins for copies of his albums ("Montezuma was a Man of Faith," "...Upon My Wicked Son," and the absolutely brilliant "Sins of Our Fathers"), and then go to his site and pick up whatever .mp3s you can. One of the new songs -- "Shine" even contains harmonica by Stan Ridgway, another of my "I'd Buy Anything" artists and -- more interestingly -- the man who Prieboy replaced when he joined Wall of Voodoo long ago.