Happy birthday Stan Ridgway.

Wall Of Voodoo’s “Mexican Radio” is one of those songs that immediately makes an indelible mark in your consciousness. Everything about it was fresh when it hit the airwaves in 1983. And for those of us who actually listened to the Mexican stations, the song recalls those late-nights nodding out to the reverberating weirdness that would glide across the border and coil inside the transistors of our cheap plastic radios.  

I’m on a wavelength far from home
I feel a hot wind on my shoulder
I dial it in from south of the border

 
Dick Clark navigates the placid but strange waters of Ridgway’s consciousness in this 1983 clip from American Bandstand.