Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 09:14:28 +0000 From: Andrew Norman (nja@LEICESTER.AC.UK) Subject: Re: Ride at Feb 13, 97 00:48:59 am Matt DeBellis wrote on Thu, 13 Feb 1997 (Subject: Ride) > A long time ago i bought a Ride CD single on a whim for like $2. > It was "Leave them all behind". only recently have i started to > really like it. It reminds me of Swervedriver with more MBV-ish > vocals and guitars. I had never heard Ride before i bought this > single. Is this single typical Ride sound? Also, a record store > near me has a bunch of singles cheap (they're from @ 1992), and i'm > wondering if someone can recommend buying them or not.... In 1990 Ride released two superb noise/pop EPs, "Ride" and "Play", one with a red cover and one with a yellow cover ("Chelsea Girl" and "Leave them All Behind" were on the red one, "Silver" and "Like a Daydream" were on the yellow one). These two were later reissued as an album, "Smile". Then "Fall", blue cover with penguins on, but you don't need to get that because all four tracks are on the CD version of "Nowhere", their debut album, which wasn't up to the standard of the first couple of EPs but is still OK. Then there was "Today Forever", which is also good. Next album was "Going Blank Again", which has some great guitar on it but is spoiled by truly awful lyrics, printed for the world to see. Preceded by "Leave Them All Behind", followed by "Twisterella", both OK. If the singles you saw were from 92, these will be them - and they are worth getting if they are cheap. Then comes "Carnival of Shite", in which their obsession with sixties pop turned them into a Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Titch tribute band, or possibly a Donovan for the nineties. "Birdman" was OK, most of the album was dippy hippy rubbish. Final album "Tarantula" saw a slight return to the heavier guitar sound of their first EPs, but it's still basically rubbish. When they started they were seen as peers of My Bloody Valentine, by the time they had spluttered to a finish they were a bad joke. -- Andrew Norman, Leicester, England nja@le.ac.uk Date: Wed, 10 Sep 1997 07:54:32 +0000 From: Andrew Norman Subject: Re: Ride and Felt Jason Cuadra: > I'm looking for CDs of Ride and Felt. Any suggestions? I like Ride's > "Coast is Clear". Do they have a "best of" collection? Ditto for > Felt.. Ride: the first two EPs (collected as the "Smile" album) were fantastic, the album "Nowhere" and EP "Today Forever" were good, after that they declined - "Going Blank Again" had some good moments, "Carnival of Shite" had one good song, "Tarantula" was an improvement but anything would have been an improvement by that stage. Andy Bell's new band Hurricane #1 are apparently quite good, but most of the people saying that are Oasis fans. No "best of" as far as I know, Creation only do "best of" compilations for their really important artists like Ed Ball. ---------------- Date: Wed, 10 Sep 1997 09:59:34 -0400 From: "James P. Crimm" Subject: Re: Ride and non-Ride Ride's best stuff is the earlier album "Nowhere" and EP "Smile". There is a Japanese best of called "Grasshopper" that is very good. Also, the second v full length one (title, I can't remember) is sort-of a best of, as it has some previously released stuff. Stay away from the later 2 long players until you decide that you want everything by them. The response is that some people *hate* this stuff. I like it, but it is not nearly as good as the early stuff. Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1998 19:36:22 +0100 From: Andrew Norman Subject: Re: What happened with Ride ? Drum Wolf: > > Jorge Suarez asked: > > > Hello once again. > > > > Hey... what happened with "Ride" ? > > Ride broke up two years ago, shortly after releasing their final album > TARANTULA. The individual ex-members are involved in various post-Ride > projects now, but I don't know the exact details about 'em. Andy Bell's band Hurricane something-or-other are dull Britrock and moderately big in the UK, Mark Gardner had another project going on before the one mentioned in an earlier e-mail. > As far as I'm concerned, *THE* Ride album to get is SMILE, at least if > you're in the United States; my understanding is that SMILE is actually a > Stateside repackaging of their first two British EPs. Fucking brilliant > dreamy wall-of-noise guitar feedback not unlike early Jesus and Mary Chain > or MBV. It's also available over here now - those first two EPs really are amazingly good, and were released at about the same time as Slowdive's first EPs. Like Slowdive, I think Ride blew their best material on their first releases and had problems with the debut album. > Their second U.S. disc and first proper album is NOWHERE, which contains > the song "Vapour Trail" that Jorge mentioned; I personally think it's > good but not as great as SMILE. It's a bit slower and gloomier than the EPs, was Robert Smith's favourite album of the year which gives you some idea what the mood was. "Vapour Trail", if I remember correctly, was the song which was released as a single in the USA with three tracks from the "Today Forever" EP added. That EP (UK version with no tracks from the album) was the last truly great thing Ride did. > I'm not a fan of their next two albums, GOING BLANK AGAIN or CARNIVAL OF > LIGHT. I found GBA to be a commercialized, MTV-friendly, schlockified > version of their previous stuff, while CARNIVAL OF LIGHT was a very > dramatic shift towards folkish psychedelic pop. I like some of the stuff on GBA, but they printed the lyrics on the insert and they are incredibly stupid even by the standards of indie rock lyrics, which took the shine off somewhat, and the production was cleaner. It was about this time that they (like all the other bands on Creation) started babbling about their love of classic sixties British rock, and "Carnival of Shite" sounds like Herman's Hermits trying to do acid rock. Ahead of its time only if you think Kula Shaker are cutting-edge. I did rather like "Birdman", the first single from it, but that was about the only half-decent track on the whole thing. > I like TARANTULA, their last album, although a lot of other Ride fans > don't. It doesn't go completely back to the early Ride days, but it does > have a lot more bite than the previous two albums. Well, it takes the Stones and the Who as an influence rather than being a piss-poor psychedelic pastiche, but it still isn't very original or very good. Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1998 12:06:34 -0700 From: Michael Scholtz Subject: ride/loveliescrushing the first three u.s. ride releases ('smile', 'nowhere' and 'going blank again') are all pretty terrific and similar to my ear, although there's a bit more energy in the early tracks collected on 'smile'. 'carnival of light' and 'tarantula' aren't horrible, but they are in a completely different style that could reasonably be tagged 'britpop.' in addition to the scattered singles and eps, there are two live releases; a u.s. promo-only 7-track from the 'nowhere' era (which suffers from flat vocals, and has been bootlegged by kts among others; see www.kissthestone.com) and 'live light' on the indie label mutiny, which is mostly 'carnival of light' material. the band's two singer/songwriter/guitarists, mark gardener and andy bell apparently just couldn't get along, hence the split. bell is writing and playing in britpop group hurricane #1 (coming soon to a cut-out bin near you), but for some inexplicable reason doesn't sing in the band. to me, his voice was one of the key components to ride's success.