Ride : Carnival of Poll

I loved "only now" at the time and still find it lovely.
My other favorite at the moment is "crown of creation".

"where it comes from" "you can't always get" rip off is so silly/obvious that's is fun !

It's awful! They could at least have given the kids a tune to sing.

ahah, yeah, it's a really "wtf were they thinking" song !
and it drags...

It's between Moonlight Medicine and From Time To Time. The former is pleasingly murky, but the latter has nice guitar and is just all-round lovely so I vote for it.

Moonlight Medicine is good. A nice Ride album opener.

I was in a generic station cafe the other day where How Does It Feel To Feel? was playing as muzak. Seemed a bit unlikely. It must've been the original because it sounded a lot wimpier than Ride's version (I know!)

i like this album

I like From Time To Time even with its comically uninspired solo

It's a good record, halfway towards being an excellent one - Andy's songwriting is mostly pretty poor I feel. Like the one before, it doesn't really sound like anything else, at least unlike anything not from the 70s and wearing plaid.

It's unfortunate that it came out in an era when nobody could've been less interested, but that kind of perversity in judging the zeitgeist entirely wrong eventually worked out for Tusk.

Birdman. In a stunning departure from 'Nowhere' era Ride they rhymed 'sky' with 'eye' NOT 'high'.

I think. Gah now i'm gonna have to play it to make sure.

It's a very good album for the summer.
I have the chorus to "crown of creation" stuck in my head right now.

what were the singles ? apparently, the b-sides were good/better than most album tracks ?

Birdman, I Don't Know Where... and How Does It Feel, I think in that order. The b-sides were unremarkable as I recall it - mostly vaguely experimental soundscapes and instrumentals. I guess they're pretty much unfindable now, though someone did upload Rolling Thunder #2 for me recently, for which I was very grateful.

"I don't know where" was a single !??
ahah.

I'm guessing Andy was wearing the trousers at that point.

Here's a link to Rolling Thunder #2: RIDE - GOING BLANK AGAIN POLL

'something's burning' dates from then i think (ie Carnival Of Light era)

I would imagine it would be very easy to find the singles, since you can't give away CD singles these days. I have all of them and will probably attempt to sell them soon but it seems a bit futile.

for "Birdman" : both the brassy, horn-laden (think early '70s Stones before they stunk) "Let's Get Lost" and the pure pop, golden-hooked "Don't Let It Die" (the only song here by Mark Gardener instead of Bell) are sharp tracks, blustering brilliance and confident songs that don't rely on their former shoegaze haze. Great EP.

http://www.allmusic.com/album/birdman-mw0000924765

Oh yes! The Birdman single was great, Don't Let It Die especially. For some reason I thought those tracks were from phase 2 of their career.

And the Stones only ever got better, that review is all wrong on that point.

ahah. OK, I have to find these tracks then !

oddly enough given the general bad mood of the group at the time, live versions of these songs are pretty hot. i recall being excited by the prospect and the opening track, then growing colder as the album as a whole just kind of stood there. i need to revisit properly

I never saw them, but they always had a reputation for being fantastic live

the live light disc was released at some point i can't quite recall after the original release. a friend at wrpi had passed both on to me in promo form, but i think it was a standard, commercial release first search result on it: http://carnival-of-light.blogspot.com/2011/11/ride-live-light.html

'Moonlight Medicine'. Jon Lord RIP.

so I've listened to birdman's b-sides.
well, not particularly impressed I must say.
maybe they'll grow on me !

listening to the album yesterday, I think they could have dropped the last 4 tracks and the album would have been just fine !

so Tarantula poll is next?

ouch, never heard it but it's supposed to be REALLY bad !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vmm7uCFImHg

oh all this heavy riffing is hurting my shoegazy ears...

have you checked carnival, yet ?

I love Black Nite Crash! For years I didn't know the source of the lyric, "See the girls coughing, looking underfed. When they go to sleep they dream of being dead." But thought it was totally brilliant. Still do.

The video of "I Don't Know Where It Comes From" cuts the more annoying parts of the album version. I saw it on a video compilation long ago without connecting it with Ride, and always thought it was some pretty decent 60's revival power pop band...

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/wm-A10302B0000122891K/ride_i_dont_know_where_it_comes_from_official_music_video/

Wait, what's the source? xp. I'll be disappointed if it's just Dylan.

Boring clarification: I'm American, so Ride are a teeny tiny footnote. I meant that I'd read of the lyric somewhere, but didn't know who it was by for a long time (until I ponied up $1 used for the dreaded final album).

The album's pretty horrible as I recall, other than Black Nite Crash, but there's another excellent track from that era called 'Slave' - which I think was either a b-side or some sort of bonus track somewhere. It'd be kind of hilarious/tragic if it was one of Mark's and got nixed for no other reason.

Anyone know how many bought this? Came out a month before Definitely Maybe.

'Birdman'. I've never really been too fond of this album.

i really have no idea what i would vote for and have listened to this quite a few times. have a few days to figure it out.

their late career always had me guessing if they really wanted to make boring trad rock records all along(hurricane #1 would seem to say yes) or if they were strictly jumping on the boring not very rock rock bandwagon about to be spearheaded by oasis and ocean colour scene.

Only The Strongest Will Survive is pretty good songwriting, and a mile above anything similar attempted by Andy on these last two albums.

keythhtyek - maybe they just ran out of ideas or grew older and developed more boring tastes. I mean, I don't like the kind of music I did when I was the age Ride started out (though I would like to think my tastes have become more interesting, for all that others may disagree).

On the subject of the poll, I voted for From Time To Time, but was really tempted to throw a vote to I Don't Know Where It Comes From, if only for the Shite/Night rhyme. Birdman is also good. Generally I do not like the ballady tracks like Only Now and Crown of Creation. They are drippy.

Hey I seem to be in more of a RAWK mood today so perhaps I will listen to this again and try to pick my favourite song. I remember loving at least half of it when it came out, because it sounded like The Church and I was a massive Church fan back then.

Oh, this is so gonna be you did the right thing, you drove 10,000 (10,000) Rides away (Rides away...)

still not feeling the b-sides for "birdman".
and still think the album would have been better if it had stopped after "how does it feel".

Funny, I think Only Now is lovely now, when I was unimpressed at the time. I think I just hated the intro so much, but the harmonies on the chorus are really quite incredible.

I do always remember, though, every time I listen to this record, I'm like "yay! this is GREBT!!" for the first half, and then the second half it falls off a cliff of unlistenable badness.

(I am going to resist pointing out that Loz and Mark wrote the first half and Andy wrote the second half because that wouldn't be fair.)

Oh god Crown of Creation, what a waste.

It's such a lovely little choon, cute arrangement, lovely Byrdsy folk-rock but then the lyrics are just like DIE DIE DIE UGH GET IT OFF GET IT OFF JUST MAKE IT STOP.

"You are the Crown of Creation, I wanna be your relation, I'm getting off at your station."

DIE DIE DIE PLEASE GO BACK TO SMOTHERING ALL YOUR LYRICS UNDER WELTERING SHEETS OF BLISTERING GUITAR NOISE SO I DON'T HAVE TO LISTEN TO THIS SHIT!!!!!

ahah. yeah, I don't care about the lyrics but find the music very sweet.
as for "only now", as I said upthread, it was my favorite at the time and it still is.
love the strings arrangement.

Yeah, the arrangement of Only Now is just so lush. I just wish I could cut the first 1:05 off the song because then it would be awesome, but I guess you need the build for the bigness of the chorus to work.

I don't think I'd heard Let's Get Lost before. This is actually kinda awesome. And the lyrics aren't particularly winceworthy, either.

At the End of the Universe is also awesome. It has jazzy drums and a Greenwoody organ solo on the middle 8. Why did these get left off the album when considering the wibble that did? This is inexplicable. It's like a band determined to ruin everything that was good about them. I will never understand what Ride did to themselves.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

never did play this so i voting "From Time to Time" but not sure if that is the real choice.

i moved to San Francisco in 1995. everything was so new and exciting that i didn't pay attention to every detail. so one night a few of my friends and i go to a certain part of the city. we have fun, drink and are just roaming the city. all of a sudden i hear Ride songs live and it's coming from this place called Slims. so i stood outside and listened to a couple of songs before we were off to our next adventure. at that time i knew moving to San Francisco was the right move.

i still miss living in that city every single day.

I have no desire to listen to this record again either, so I'm gonna vote Crown Of Creation because I remember loving the Mark Goodier Evening Session version.

I can't remember if I voted in this or not, now.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I meant to vote in this.
The inner sleeve of Carnival of Light is my favourite Ride thing, just them playing in a garden, and Loz is on a throne and Steve has an MTB next to his Hartke rig (Hartke! The dorkiest bass sound ever) and there's a bowl of cereal somewhere and Andy Bell is rocking out in the most in-front-of-the-bedroom-mirror way ever. Mark's just being Mark. When I was 19 I thought the inner-sleeve of Carnival Of Light was what being in a band was all about. Of all the bands I love I think Ride are the only ones where I really wish I'd been there at the time. I'd only need to be a year or so older, and not lived in a backwater, and not been so feeble. I don't want them to reform.'

+1 for Natural Grace.

That's excellent, I need to see this sleeve again