![]() I toyed with the idea of going but by the time I’d thought about it properly they were sold out where had these tens of thousands of Ride fans come from? I convinced myself that they wouldn’t be any good they are middle-aged men who couldn’t hope to recapture the intensity of those early years… but then I saw some of the footage. Until they announced last year’s come-back tour. I bought their subsequent two albums, the confusing and trippy Carnival of Light, and the half-hearted Tarantula but I’d written them off as a band I’d ever see live again (and to cement my point the band announced their split in 1996). I still went to see them (including another trip to Brighton, and two nights at Brixton Academy – which was recorded and released on lazerdisk) but for me they’d lost the raw energy of those early performances, they’d lost the beauty of their packaging and I kind of lost interest. In 1992 they released their second album, Going Blank Again. I’ve written about that elsewhere in this journal. They released several 12″ singles and an album of that early material, Nowhere – the sleeve designs, printed on ‘inside out’ uncoated stock made an impressive package and gave Creation their biggest chart success before a new Manchester band called Oasis (with whom, Ride’s guitarist, Andy Bell played as bassist for a few years after Ride split up).Īround that time I was producing the artwork for a t-shirt printing company and through some lucky introductions I got to design a couple of the band’s t-shirts. Through the next couple of years it did start to happen. They were going to be huge.Įxcept, in the days before internet, it took a long time for bands to become huge. I saw them half a dozen times in two months at the end of 1989, playing progressively bigger gigs before the launch of their debut 12″. Newly signed to Creation Records, I can remember excitedly going into college with a VHS recording of their appearance on the cult indie music show, Snub TV. Why weren’t there more people there? A few months before, it had seemed like all the stars were aligning for them. It was an amazing gig but I remember feeling a little sad, driving home. There were maybe 30 of us in the room –a few locals, the two ubiquitous Japanese girls, who seemed to be at every Ride gig, and two car-loads of us who’d driven down for the day. ![]() ![]() They shuffled from one end of the room to the other, plugged in and unleashed such an assault on the senses that I can still remember that feeling now. I first saw Ride play in Brighton at The Richmond – a small room above a now closed pub. They were floppy-fringed boys with no chat and no stage presence which was OK because there wasn’t a stage.
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