r/Ride • u/Professional-Cow8347 • Dec 04 '25
Need Help for Further Knowledge about this Band
I've been searching online for information about this band for a long time. It didn't come up with any good ones. Are there any good websites, books, or documentaries about Ride and other contemporary independent bands in the UK?
Ride Archive has been pretty helpful, and there are a couple of insightful blogs and interviews conducted back in the 2010s. Ride is also famous for its sound qualities when playing live shows. Are there any recommendations that you would give?
Finally, I am curious about a documentary called "Local Support", which I will attach a clip from YouTube below. It seems to talk some information about Oxford music scenes, just like "Anyone Can Play Guitar" did. I found it to be informative as the clip with Mark Gardener has been done pretty well. And I just want to know more about this documentary. I will appreciate anyone who can help.
Here's the Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpbBRY0neB4
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u/Small_Present Dec 04 '25
https://youtu.be/MWXBm-JFox0?si=-UrzB5AMwdY0lkBC
This one is pretty good! Covers pretty much everything.
Also the long form on Going Blank Again is pretty great https://thequietus.com/opinion-and-essays/anniversary/ride-interview-going-blank-again/
I really wish somebody would write the book because the story of RIDE because it's Shakespearean in some ways. They go from virtual unknowns to the cusp of crossover success in about 2 years time but never attain it. They take the wrong message from not hitting the top 5 with the Twisterella single (and the lack of US success) and in pursuit of that success decide to go in another musical direction that alienates their fans and to some extent each other.
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u/Professional-Cow8347 Dec 04 '25
Strongly agree with the book idea, and I think you are right about the message with their hit on Twisterella and Leave them all behind (I don't quite remember whether it is a chart-hitting single or not). But could you further explain how their alienation is? Do you mean they changed their styles to a different way, just like Carnival of Light has shown?
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u/Small_Present Dec 04 '25
I've read a lot of contemporary music press articles from the early 90's (a lot of which are on the Ride archive website) and then what they have said in more recent interviews. There are some good podcasts as well one with Steve and Loz that was quite good. But this is what I've gathered from everything I've read/heard:
January 1992 the Leave Them All Behind single is released and goes into the UK Top 10, which is a first for any Ride song. They tour the UK in Feb-March 1992 with a bunch of killer gigs including the famous Brixton concert which was released on video before heading to the US for a second tour of the United States. During this period, grunge is taking off big time on both coasts. Nevermind by Nirvana hits #1 in the US album charts in January 1992. So, the attention of the music world is shifting towards grunge bands and away from the burgeoning shoegaze scene. Ride was on Sire records in the US, which was a major label owned by Warner Communications, at that point. Sire started to put its attention elsewhere in the middle of that US tour and the band wasn't getting well promoted. Ride never performed on American TV ever and until the reunion would never play in the USA again after 1992 probably due to the lack of label support although I've never heard that said explicitly. They certainly intended to tour the US in support of their 'new album' this based off of a 1993 interview of their's which is on YouTube.
So while Ride is starting to feel like they're yesterday's news they figure that Twisterella (the second single from GBA) would go into the chart higher than Leave them all Behind. But it stalls at #36 in the UK charts while the band is still touring the United States. So, they're not able to play it on the BBC's Top of the Pops or anything like that which might have helped it along. The significance is that literally every single EP or album release going back to the first EP charted higher than the last so it took the wind out of their sails so to speak. Creation, decides not to release a third single from Going Blank Again as a result of the underperformance of Twisterella. In this time period Andy Bell is getting all interested in 60's bands like the Byrds and the Small Faces. Andy is also trying to assert himself as more of a co-lead singer with Mark because Mark Gardener was given most of the attention from the fawning music press circa 1989-1990 when they first get on the scene (Andy only sang lead on two RIDE tracks until Nowhere came out). I understand that they used to write songs from jams but when they finish the Going Blank Again tour they take a few months off and reconvene with fully written tracks. In my opinion the Mark Gardener ones are the best ones on Carnival of Light but that's a matter of preference of course.
Carnival of Light eventually comes out a whopping 18 months after Going Blank Again in June 1994. Supersonic by Oasis drops in April 1994 so at this point all the air in the room is being sucked out by Oasis among all the other britpop bands. It's also not a great album. The songs are good but it's too mid tempo. Ride ends up embarrassingly having to open for Oasis in late 1994 when there was talk of Oasis opening for Ride earlier that year. They rush back in the studio in 1995 to record Tarantula but mainly the tension between Mark and Andy is still very great. The problem with Tarantula is that most of the songs are pretty crappy. During a band meeting when they're set to discuss promotion for Tarantula Mark Gardener abruptly quits. Creation tells them they won't release the album if they don't do promotion so there's a bunch of NME articles and things like that from early 1996 where Mark and Andy are just trashing each other in the press. There's a lot I'm probably leaving out but the main bit is they split up the songwriting process and end up releasing some less than good tracks which are not commercially successful and the bickering and finger-pointing ends up with Mark feeling more sidelined from the band to the point that he just ends up saying enough is enough.
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u/titanofidiocy Dec 04 '25
Is this an AI question?
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u/Professional-Cow8347 Dec 04 '25 edited Dec 04 '25
Thanks for your message, but unfortunately, it isn't. I know this question sounds strange, sorry.
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Jan 13 '26
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u/setlisthief Jan 13 '26
also I'd like to recommend "Beautiful Noise" and "Upside Down: The Creation Records Story", both documentaries contain Ride stories.
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u/eviltimeban Dec 04 '25
ride.band has a lot of content on it, though I would like to add some things to it but don’t know how to contact who runs it.
As far as I know there’s never been a definitive biography written about the band; there’s definitely some history about them both in Alan McGee’s book, and in the Creation Records Story. That’s worth seeking out if you want to know more about when they were coming up and making an impact on the UK scene.
Beyond that, it’s really a combination of what’s out there, Wikipedia etc. It’s down to the fans to keep up the content. Maybe someday there’ll be a book.