Search and Destroy: Ride

Destroy: "Birdman" and everything that follows. This is what comes from hanging around with Alan McGee. Don't let it happen to you, kids.

destroy: everything else. And I mean EVERYTHING. Especially solo records & spinoffs.

x0x0

Destroy: All of Carnival Of Light and Tarantula, even if Carnival has that funny Stones ripoff one.

DESTROY: TARANTULA was largely crap. CARNIVAL OF LIGHT hasn't aged particularly well either. The lyrics to "Birdman" were deploarable.

Half of Carnival of Wife is lovely in a Byrdsy, "we wanna be The Church" psychedelic way, the other half is... well, listenable.

All copies of Tarantula should be thrown on a pyre and burned. With rotting foot & mouth cow carcasses piled on to disguise the smell.

I'm trying to think of anyone on creation, with the exception of Momus, where you could say the lyrics were actually good , as opposed to passable at best, and often pretty terrible. I'm drawing a blank so far. Any suggestions?

x0x0

However, for some reason I associate Felt w/cherry red...perhaps my memory is fading, or something....

Thx, anyway.

x0x0

On the other hand, responses to this question: very sound.

As for good lyrics that stand up well, easy. One J. Cocker of Pulp does the trick, while Ian Curtis is scarily good at times (scarily not so good at others, but "Atmosphere" and "Transmission" forgives many sins).

Adolescent bands should have adolescent lyrics. (I don't care if they were in their 20's.)

Search for like a daydream.

Also, close my eyes, vapour trail, polar bear, taste.

Destroy songs on Going Blank Again that I can't remember cos it was stolen.

hurricane #1 were almost the worst thing ever, i haven't heard animal house. funny enough ride is artist of the week on the local college station.

I still think "Leave Them All Behind" is a good, funny single - it's the shoegazer equivalent of U2 stadium button-pushing, for certain, but better to push some buttons than to not even bother.

'Twisterella' seems to be straightforwardly good. The debate about 'LTAB' is more interesting. It was indeed heralded as a big breakthrough, and it was indeed a limited 3-chord thrash - though I have always been impressed by what how many variations they managed to play on those 3 chords. I feel kind of ambivalent about this song: it's so inane, yet so vast and enjoyable. I think Tom's got it right.

But it's after these tracks that things start getting really great. 'Vapour Trail', open-chord intro and string outro and all! 'Dreams Burn Down', with its vast crashing drums and twinkling guitar figure! 'Leave Them All Behind', the rainiest dreamiest song that side of 'The Rollercoaster Ride' (christ, who needs the flipping Clientele?). And pushing on even further, we arrive at 'Unfamiliar' and 'Sennen', and 'Taste' - 'Taste'! as perfect a 3:15 as I can imagine! - and even the extraordinary pinnacle that is 'Like A Daydream' itself, all drama and edge, simple descents and winsomely droning voices and a rip-roaring, hold-on-to-your-fringe lead guitar burn-out at the end.

COR!!!!!!!

OK, the epilogue to this movie is a bit of an anti-climax: 'Drav Bland' doesn't really live up to what's just preceded it. But this band's career really does mark the most bizarre lurching from perfection to lumbering pointlessness. Somebody ought to explain it some day.

'Leave Them All Behind' was funny because they actually thought they were making some kind of epic record, finally getting into their what-will-they-release-next Beatles stride, and bless the NME for going along with it.

'Taste', as with most of their records, is an irritating whine. God, that voice. And that stupid mouth of his. And his stupid floppy hair. What a chump!

Nowhere and Going Blank Again have been reissued with songs from Today Forever and other eps as bonus tracks!

Yes, you have a case re. 'Today Forever', but I think I have to go with Stevie T and back 'Like A Daydream' above all; 'Taste' too. 'LTAB' is too self-parodic (cue another old thread).

Reissues sound good. I could do with them. Nowhere CD always had 3 extra tracks, though.

Considering that my sister ended up "borrowing" these permanently, a good excuse to re-purchase. I love enablers.

Other people did 'that sort of thing' better, stronger, more interestingly or at least earlier.

If they were a teen girl pop icon they would be Billie rather than Britney, if they were a Britpop band they would be Shed Seven rather than Oasis. If they were a prog record label from the 70s they would be Dawn rather than Vertigo. If they were a gay sea they would be... (thats enough "if they were" s - Ed)

If I had to make a list of the top ten Creation artists they wouldn't feature, despite having to rope in a few similarly 'uneven' outfits to make up ten.

I found the enthusiasm from the other folks here curious, I had assumed they were well on their way back to obscurity.

I have all Ride up until GBA, which I myself regard (in its new, bonus-tracked version) as one of the very finest records of the 1990's. Nowhere is excellent, but GBA is the more ambitious, the more tuneful, the more interesting, and above all the more enjoyable record. Not a single weak track (no, not even Making Judy Smile), and about 7 (count 'em!) absolute screamers, namely LTAB, Chrome Waves, Cool Your Boots, Time Machine, OX4, Howard Hughes, Stampede and Grasshopper. The other tracks are all memorable, brilliantly executed works of pop genius, the worst song (yes, Making Judy Smile) is better than ANYTHING most early 90's bands managed to do, and the whole thing rules supreme over the first half of that decade.

And as for that guitar entry 2:52 into Howard Hughes...don't get me started or I won't ever stop.

My top 5 Ride songs, in fact, would be...

1) Howard Hughes
2) Today
3) LTAB
4) Kaleidoscope
5) OX4

...not, I assure you, an easy choice, considering that there are a further 20 or so songs which I'd describe as near-perfect from their pre-COL career alone. I haven't actually bought their last two albums, because I don't want my happy relationship with Ride polluted by what all and sundry (Jim DeRogatis aside) allege to be gunk.

Having bought the first Chapterhouse, Spiritualized and Catherine Wheel albums recently, I can safely say that although those albums are very, very good, Ride had something timeless about them which will ensure my continuing interest and appreciation of them no matter where the musical climate heads.

Of course, in Spiritualized's case, timelessness was attained later on, but as for the other two bands I'm a little more skeptical as to whether they will have a great deal of staying-power in my aural consciousness. Ride are too good for such qualms. And GBA is the pinnacle of their greatness.

Yes! And as I stated on another Ride thread, there is a point where it gets quiet and the cymbals come back in and I swear it sounds like a voice talking in the distance. Of course, how cymbals can be misinterpreted for a voice I don't know. That track must be laced with something.

No, the sound isn't the greatest, but nevertheless I'm hypnotized by this 1990 version of "Seagull". I could swear this was before the Nowhere album had hit stores:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAub2DimTbg

And then there's the um...more representative of the kinds of gigs I saw...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J-tkATHem8

I have a fantastic version of Seagull on video somewhere (not from a gig, but from a live performance on an unknown TV channel). One day I'll summon the effort to put it onto a DVD and then work out how to upload it to the internet.

Search: Black Nite Crash. I own Tarantula and can't remember a thing about it other than this, which I still play all the time. It is blistering. I see it as their Samson moment, a last summoning up of their natural energy, pulling the temple down on them at the same time. Mark's hair must've fallen out about Birdman

Glad to see at least one vote for a tune from Tarantula. For years that was actually my favorite. It's a good sounding album, and no more inconsistent than all their other albums. I used to agree with the Trouser guide (probably Ira) that said Nowhere "is nothing," but it's grown on me lately. I see they removed that statement from the online guide, so maybe it grew on them too. I don't know about the 10 that Pfork gave the reissue, but it does seem like it's how they're supposed to sound. I'm also appreciating Carnival Of Light more, just sounds more Teenage Fanclub to me, and has some good tunes. I still think DeRogatis is crazy for claiming it's their best though.

Tarantula is still underrated (check out Andy's bludgeoning!), just like mid-90s efforts from Catherine Wheel, Swervedriver and Teenage Fanclub.

Sailing off into the career sunset, Ride ended its backwards run with just the kind of direct, unpretentious and easily likable guitar-pop album it always needed to make. Displaying maximum melodies and a minimum of distractions, the sensually rich Tarantula strips Ride back down to its roots and winds up sounding like a young Teenage Fanclub with more ideas and a different accent. Also the title track of an otherwise non-LP British EP, "Black Nite Crash" opens a solid chunk of fuzzy punk- pop decadence ("See the girls coughing, looking underfed/When they go to sleep they dream of being dead"); other than a little rhythmic variety (the Steppenwolf chords of "The Dawn Patrol" stand on a mild dance beat) and the Doorsy electric piano of "Ride the Wind," the album is relaxed and subtle, a stark contrast to Ride's previous try- too-hard missteps. Abutting the acoustic sparsity of "Castle on the Hill" (a tender ballad that could well be about the personal problems overcome by Creation creator Alan McGee) and the roaringly tuneful "Gonna Be Alright" is no hardship; for a change, both songs feel like the results of a single collected mind. With that, the band broke up.

I think I'd vote for Carnival as their best. Agree that Tarantula isn't the disaster that it got made out to be. I sometimes wonder how Black Night Crash would sound covered by the White Stripes. I've always gone with the theory that shoegaze bands who shed the shoegaze sound put out some of the most interesting albums of the 90's.

Live album in reissue is pretty good (though not $40 good), with amped up and harder edged versions.

Tarantula is still underrated (check out Andy's bludgeoning!)

for a second I'd hoped this was by Ride's Andy Bell, which would've been way more amusing :(