Ride 'Nowhere' Poll

Pound for pound, the 'Today Forever' EP alone is better than (the 8- or 11-track) Nowhere,
I think I agree with this. The singles and b-sides from Going Blank Again are also better than the lp. In my opinion, of course.

Pound for pound, the 'Today Forever' EP alone is better than (the 8- or 11-track) Nowhere, easily.

Yep.

'Taste' narrowly edging out 'Polar Bear' and 'Vapor Trail' for me - good memories from a study abroad year in Canterbury - I came back to the states and basically thought US rockist guitar bands sucked for a good couple of years.

"Seagull" is still one of the only songs I can think of that channels The Byrds and Hawkwind so explosively at the same time.

Yeah, that's a good way to describe it, Mackro. Did you ever witness it live?

Pound for pound, the 'Today Forever' EP alone is better than (the 8- or 11-track) Nowhere, easily

I can't agree with this at all. I found it disappointing at the time, apart from 'Unfamiliar'.

I saw Ride on the "Today Forever" tour, with Slowdive as the support band. That was March or April 91. It was like shoegazing heaven. Ride were awesome live, and it was a dream set list (except for the lack of "Here and now"). Those strobes during the noisy bits of "DBD"! The sheer sonic assault on "Seagull"! Fantastic night. Slowdive in comparison were a poorly mixed sludge of reverb and noise.

Yeah, I saw them then too. I'm pretty sure it was March. I saw them in Kilburn and they were absolutely amazing. I saw them six times in total, but that was the best one.

I saw Ride only once in early 1991 on the Nowhere tour, when they co-headlined with Lush on their Gala tour. This was at the Roxy in West Hollywood. Lush was the headliner that night. I was there mainly for Ride, who were great, but I stuck around for Lush and thought they were better that night... Ride were great, but they pretty much had their performance style in place for the entire set. Lush was a bit more memorable and dynamic.

Anyway, yes, saw them.. awesome.. etc.

dreams burn down. today

-- Alan, Tuesday, 27 May 2008 12:07 (2 days ago) Bookmark Link

haha, if we were counting the Today Forever EP then these would be my TWO inseparable choices! No dice, though, so DBD it is.

'kaleidoscope' just because the alternateen station where i grew up started off just being on at night and they would play the entire album and 'kaleidoscope' was the first song from the album i ever heard on the radio. greg st james said he liked it, i was impressionable then.

i sense electricsound seething over this entire thread

by no means! actually i haven't sat down to listen to this album in a loooong time. i should dig it out of the crates

well you should be!

I used to love Ride, but their impact on me has diminished over time, which is quite not-nice. :(

Anyway "Dreams Burn Down" for its fuckoffwallfonoise guitar.

If there was to be a Going Blank Again poll I'd also vote for LTAB, UNLESS of course the four extra tracks on the CD reissue made the cut, in which case Howard Hughes all the way. I actually think GBA is very good throughout, though, and considerably better than Nowhere. I appreciate that this makes me faintly batshit. It really helps that all four extra tracks are fucking strong.

Its between decay & here and now for me

I have a signed copy of GBA, i bunked off school the day it was released and went down to tower records :D I was pretty disappointed with gba at the time tho

Polar Bear all the way.

Finally voted Kaleidoscope, as, like many others, it was the first one (shortly followed by Taste) that I fell for. Polar Bear was the ditherer.

i much much prefer GBA. i would still much prefer GBA over Nowhere even without LTAB. i am also batshit. apparently.

GBA is better, I think, because the crisper production and more upbeat songwriting style gives the album a more overtly psych-rock, less overtly shoegaze aesthetic, which I think suits Ride down to the ground. Nowhere's great but it doesn't set about kicking your ass nearly so much, it tries to winsomely charm you into submission. Ride, on those first two albums at least, were always better at their most confident.

crisper and less thin. GBA is a chunky farmhouse soup, nowhere is a distinctive and tasty, but thin broth.

There are some very average songs on GBA. The opener and the closer (OX4) are good. Time Machine is ok, but the rest is average jangle, really. Ride were atrocious at lyrics weren't they? A better place for them to go would have been the 'grasshopper' intrumental on the LTAB 12", which is like the Cure gone pomp prog, and lasts about 5 hours. It's much more interesting than the lightweight fodder on the rest of GBA.

GBA is one of those albums where i know and look forward to every track.

There are some very average songs on GBA. The opener and the closer (OX4) are good. Time Machine is ok, but the rest is average jangle, really. Ride were atrocious at lyrics weren't they?

OTM. Really childish lyrics on GBA (e.g. Not Fazed, Making Judy Smile), plus an overdose of the 'oooooh...oooooooh' thing (which was OK when it was just on Polar Bear and Taste, but very wearing when it's on virtually every track).

Plus vocally, they did often sound like teenagers with blocked noses.

"the Cure gone pomp prog" is a very unfair description of Grasshopper xp. It's great. I found another instrumental once called 'Coming Up For Air' which is pretty fine too. Teasingly, the one I have is marked 'part 7 of 8' - are there seven other parts out there somewhere?

poor "Paralysed"

One track I love that's not been getting love is "Decay"

Ismael, I think the Cure going 'pomp prog' is a great idea, and I didn't intend it to be a criticism. It's something Ride should have done more of. The 'ahhhh ahhhs' on GBA really date them to that time. Grasshopper is like something very few bands have attempted. Proggy as anything, it sounds like it should be a soundtrack to an extremely bleak Lukas Moodysson film.

Grasshopper isn't pomp prog, it's shoerave. Honestly, it's structured like a dance track, extended breakdown and all, just done with psychedelic shoegazey instrumentation. Those screams are the very essence of rave.

's ok xp, I just react badly to any mentions of: a) the Cure; and b) prog. It made me imagine Loz and Steve dressed up in wizard outfits and full clown make-up - not a good look in my view. Agreed 100% that it would make a great soundtrack, ideally to something like 'Badlands'.

Anyway, back to my question: what is 'Coming Up For Air', and why do I only have one-eighth of it?

Is this what you're talking about?
http://www.rideox4.net/coming.html

Dreams Burn Down was my favourite song in the world when I first heard it, but Vapour Trail has stuck with me closer for some reason. A really hard decision but VP edges it (I may create a sock puppet to vote for DBD tho).

I'm really bummed that I apparently don't have this on my iPod right now.

I'm bummed out that I don't have fucking Grasshopper on my iPod right now!

I'm really happy cos I just so happen to have a mix CD on me which ends with "Grasshopper" so I'll be playing in on the way home from work tonight.

That's the one xp. I didn't even know about this reunion! Or did I? That would explain why Mark and Andy were on the radio together reminiscing I suppose. It saddens me that I'm never going to find the other seven parts - they must be like the very tip of the long tail.

Well I'm just hoping someone's got that Coming Up For Air EP up on slsk because it's going for plenty of money now.

I've got a great mix cd of the Today Forever EP and the Going Blank Again B-Sides. I listen to that way more than either Nowhere or Going Blank Again.

I bought the Ride box set on a whim when I came upon it unexpectedly at a record store. It's just the "best-of" (kinda crap) and a "demos + unreleased" (almost completely unredeemable) and their Reading '92 set (really awesome). I'd like to think that the live disc is a pretty good representation of the best of their concerts. It beats the hell out of "Live Light," that's for sure.

My favorite Ride song will always be "Like A Daydream," incidentally.

Structure of "Grasshopper" reminds me more of "Interstellar Overdrive" - massive riff at beginning and end, improv/breakdown in middle. It is a fantastic track. They should have followed this direction instead of copping out on "Carnival of Light". That still feels like a lost opportunity even now to me.

I voted for "Nowhere", I like the way it rises and falls like a swell on the ocean.

Yer damn right they should have followed that direction.

I voted for "Nowhere", I like the way it rises and falls like a swell on the ocean.

this ^^^

glad someone else voted for this track!

First, to clarify: Going Blank Again is a stone cold classic from start to finish.

Apart from "Making Judy Smile," which -- frankly -- is kinda crap.

One day Grasshopper will have its own thread. Maybe even its own poll, where you name your favourite segment like the one a few months back for Revolution 9. Right now I'm digging the breakdown around 10:00, all these aimless little half-melodies until Loz takes it by the scruff of the neck and they crash back into the riff at the end. I love this track.

You mean, where the drums drop out altogether? Yeah, that's obviously the best bit. No poll required. The Interstellar Overdrive comparison is a good one, although the medium of each track is very different. Pink Floyd's wasn't so much a groove as a completely psychedelic voyage through perceived musical dimensions. Ride's song is a kinetic self-propellant.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Coming Up For Air EP...wow....

Wouldn't mean a thing without Loz. Oh no you better believe it.

If he killed me with those drumsticks I don't care. Who could possibly care?