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Ride

by 14 Comments

Venue:

Glasgow Barrowlands

Date: 22/05/2015

Last time Ride played at the Barras, I was a floppy-fringed fourteen year-old with no chance of getting in to see my favourite band. And 23 years later, the setlist probably hadn’t changed much: Black Nite Crash was the only song featured from their last two albums, although I doubt anyone was much bothered. Some of the criticisms levelled at ‘shoegaze’ bands possibly still stick – they’re not the most dynamic performers, and there’s not a lot of chat with the audience. But the music is great. Vapour Trail and Twisterella are great jangly pop songs, and they seem to enjoy stretching out the noisier numbers like Seagull and Drive Blind. Loz Colbert is a brilliant drummer and drives the whole thing. Andy Bell keeps his Oasis-regulation parka zipped up to the neck throughout. Mark Gardener’s ever-present George Galloway hat suggests his floppy fringe has gone the same way as mine. They end with an epic Leave Them All Behind, and I head home like a giddy 14 year old again.

The audience:

Mainly 30 and 40 somethings, with a few younger faces.

It made me think..

I thought twice about going to this gig, and generally avoid reunion shows, but this was well worthwhile.

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Comments

    • I’d suspend your disbelief a bit, old chap. I think they’re actually better now than they were at the time – they’ve been sounding stupendous.

      (The only other band I can think of for whom that’s been true is Pixies – in their case I put it down to the availability of better amps than you could easily get in the early 90s!)

        • I’ve seen them a few times since 2004 – twice for the first two Brixton shows when they came back, and a handful since. They’ve been incredible every time – even after Kim went. They were great with Kim Shattuck at the iTunes Festival a while back.

      • Do you know what the trouble is @disappointmentbob ?
        It just makes me feel horribly old. I bought their first demo cassette at a scruffy little music shop in Banbury (a couple of them hail from there), I went to sixth from college with a lad who roadied for them and I reviewed a hometown gig for my university newspaper. All my yesterdays.

        Still, with that, I ought to give them a chance. I withdraw the above grumpy comment. Soufflé away!

  5. One of the great revelations I got when the internet was invented was that people outside the UK loved Ride, Slowdive, MBV etc and saw beyond the sniffy ‘shoegaze’ tag which was invented by the NME & Melody Maker…unfortunately this music is stuck with that tag much like Krautrock (another derogatory music press term that became a genre). Nevertheless it’s become increasingly apparent that these bands were doing something wonderful and of lasting value.

  6. Absolutely. In my former days as founder member of a forum that celebrates all things Fender Jazzmaster and Jaguar, I remember being struck by all these people absolutely world-bloody-wide who weren’t just into those guitars because of Nirvana and Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. It was MBV, Ride, Slowdive and – probably even more so – Swervedriver. Japanese, Eastern European, Aussie, American, Argentinian: all these people who connected with these huge swirling grooves that I thought were mostly forgotten by the small number of exclusively English fans I assumed they’d only ever had.

  7. What was the joke? Play Swervedriver backwards and your shoes gaze up at you. Anyway, I saw Ride in Oxford, no, really, hear me out, let me have my say, back when they started. They weren’t as good as I wanted them to be. Amazed they’re still going, but unsurprised they’re better at it.

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