'We try to make the music the personality and keep ourselves quite anonymous.' Andy Bell, Ride
If you watch or read any early interview with Ride you see the truth of this. They are well spoken, shy, bland even. They were one of the bands that emerged from the great English tradition of going to Art School as a route to avoid the mundane pre-planned existence mapped out for them otherwise. They broke very big for an indie band at the turn of the nineties. More than any other Creation band they walked the walk, selling lots of records and shifting from small clubs to arenas within a matter of months. Their early records particularly still stand up. It's the sound of speed, Mod, youth. The sound of the home counties. As the years progressed they became less interesting, they tried to ape their growing record collections too much, a cardinal sin. They seemed to come to want to be in 1967. A similar thing happened to other groups around them, notably Supergrass. Lead Ride pair Mark Gardener and Andy Bell began to work against each other rather than as a team and within a few years they were gone. Bell ended up in Oasis then Beady Eye. Shame! The fact that they had so little to say except to evoke the feeling of joy, youth and sound eventually told against them. Remember them by their first three eps, first LP Nowhere and a great lost single Twisterella from Going Blank Again their second album. Watch them playing on their early videos, (this for instance), and their full blooded forward momentum is just a rush!
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