Newsletter
During Ride's original run the band ran a newsletter, you can read them all here, and often on the back of the newsletter were designs of t-shirts for sale at the time. The images below are scans of some of the newsletters between 1990 and 1994. Now don't bother sending in a cheque for any of these, you'll only end up dissappointed!
Below is an email sent out to all subscribers of the band's mailing list in April 2015. Tomorrow Never Knows - April 2015 Last time we played there, in May 1990, it was the humble Co-Op Hall. It's been through a number of name changes since - Oxford Venue, Zodiac, Carling Academy - as well as a lot of structural changes resulting in two live music rooms worthy of gracing any city in the country. As the Co-Op Hall it played an important part in developing the opportunities available to local Oxford bands and came along just at the right time for us. We'd sold out the 200 capacity Jericho Tavern for the first time in June 1989 and with the Co-Op Hall opening up as a 500 capacity music venue just 9 months beforehand, it meant that there was now another opportunity for local bands to aspire to. So it seemed only right for our first show in 20 years to be taking place in the room that had been so key to us. We'll be back there this Sunday (April 5th), just ahead of our tour dates in California which take in two Coachella Festival appearances as well as shows in San Francisco, Pomona, San Diego (dates below) and.... ...we are happy to say, a return to The Roxy in LA on Wednesday April 8th. Well you didn't really think that the first time we would be walking on stage to play together in the US would be in front of thousands of people at Coachella, did you? The Roxy too has a special place in our past as we played two shows there in 1991 on the co-headline tour we did of North America with Lush. Moreover, one of the shows was recorded and released a few years back by Rhino/Warners as part of a special 2xCD 20th Anniversary Edition of Nowhere. They say good things come in threes... ..and so here are the details of the third club show we'll be play in the coming months. After the New York show at Terminal 5 in June sold out so quickly, we decided we would try and squeeze another show into our schedule in the New York area. Et voila. We have booked the Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn on Monday June 1st. By the way, the Oxford show is an early one as we have a plane to catch the following morning! We reckon we'll be on stage just after 8pm and there will be no support act on that show. In LA we have Eagulls supporting and in Brooklyn we have Penguinsrising (there's almost as theme developing here). All shows have a limit of two tickets per person. Hurry, hurry, hurry - these shows will sell fast. The Oxford show is on sale now LA goes on sale at 3pm (PST) today Brooklyn has a pre-sale that is live at Noon (EST) today, with the remainder on sale at Noon (EST) on Friday (3rd) If you don't manage to get tickets for the LA show then each of the other Californian shows this month have some tickets still available: Monday 13th: The Warfield, San Francisco - tickets Tuesday 14th: Fox Theater, Pomona - tickets Thursday 16th: Humphreys Concerts By the Bay, San Diego - tickets And if all else fails, you can catch us live on air on for a Morning Becomes Eclectic session on KCRW on the morning of the LA Roxy show (April 8th). Fancy a little taster from rehearsals? Here's (some of) Seagull. signing off with a little bit of trivia for you... The Play EP was released 25 years ago tomorrow (April 2nd) and later that week entered the charts at number 32, becoming our first Top 40 hit.
Below is an email sent out to all subscribers of the band's mailing list in March 2015. Tomorrow Never Knows - March 2015 Rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing... gigs, gigs, gigs... Things are hotting up here in the Ride base-camp as the shows draw ever nearer. In fact it feels like California is racing towards us now as the weeks and days tick by. Good job then that we’ve been busily rehearsing for the last month or so, knocking everything into shape before we make our final preparations over the next 2 weeks. This is when the team finally comes together and the lights literally get switched on. We’ll be surrounded by roadies again!! For some of us it’s also been a busy month buying, borrowing and trading new equipment (toys), pictures of which some of you will have seen on Twitter. What you (hopefully) won’t have seen on Twitter though is the set-list. Yep, we know which songs we’re going to play. Mainly covers of early Floyd and Neil Young songs with a bit of 70s Italian film music thrown in for good measure. You won’t be disappointed. So, we are almost ready and the excitement is slowly turning into a nervous, hysterical anxiety. This is really going to happen!! By the way, if you ever find yourselves in Shepherds Bush then do yourself a favour and treat yourself to a Mr Falafel. We officially recommend either the 10 Supreme+ or 11 with extra Halloumi cheese. Stick to the medium size is again our official advice on this. In addition to the Primavera Barcelona (29th May) and Field Day (7th June) events we’ve been invited to play a number of other festivals over the summer which include the following :- Coachella California, US - 10th & 17th April Shaky Knees Atlanta, Georgia, US - 10th May Primavera Porto, Portugal - 6th June Best Kept Secret Holland - 19th-21st June Melt! Germany - 17th-19th July Fuji Rock Japan - 24th-26th July OFF Poland - 7th-9th August Øya Norway - 11th-15th August Electric Picnic Ireland - 4th-6th September Details of tickets can be found on www.RideMusic.net We hope to see some of you there. So, our first show has come and gone already with Andy and Mark performing at the 100 Club in London. The duo played a full acoustic set in aid of the Warchild charity who set up a series of gigs during the week leading up to the Brits raising over £500,000. This is something we were immensely proud to be part of and we hope to continue our relationship with the charity going forward. Back to the US. We are delighted to share the news that ASH will be supporting us at Terminal 5 in New York. This comes 21 years after we played together in Belfast. We are also excited to confirm that Eagulls will be joining us for all the Californian shows (apart from San Diego) this April. Monday 13th: The Warfield, San Francisco - tickets Tuesday 14th: Fox Theater, Pomona - tickets Thursday 16th: Humphreys Concerts By the Bay, San Diego - tickets While we’re in LA we’ll be playing a live Morning Becomes Eclectic session on KCRW on April 8th. No chance of sitting by the pool in the sun then, seems it’s all work!!
Below is an email sent out to all subscribers of the band's mailing list in February 2015. Tomorrow Never Knows - February 2015 Here's a little update for you all. Not too chatty this time - a bit more of an info-blast... Firstly here's a handy pocket-sized list of all the currently confirmed shows: Friday 10th April: Coachella Festival, Indio, California SOLD OUT Monday 13th April: The Warfield, San Francisco TICKETS STILL AVAILABLE Tuesday 14th April: Fox Theater, Pomona TICKETS ON SALE NOW Friday 17th April: Coachella Festival, Indio, California SOLD OUT Friday 22 May: Barrowland Ballroom, Glasgow SOLD OUT Saturday 23 May: Albert Hall, Manchester SOLD OUT Sunday 24 May: Roundhouse, London SOLD OUT Tuesday 26 May: Paradiso, Amsterdam SOLD OUT Wednesday 27 May: Olympia, Paris TICKETS STILL AVAILABLE Friday 29 May: Primavera Festival, Barcelona TICKETS STILL AVAILABLE Tuesday 2 June: DanForth Music Hall, Toronto SOLD OUT Thursday 4 June: Terminal 5, New York SOLD OUT Saturday 6 June: Primavera Festival, Porto TICKETS STILL AVAILABLE Sunday 7 June: Field Day, London TICKETS STILL AVAILABLE There are a couple more in the pipeline that we're hoping to confirm in the next few weeks so keep an eye on our Twitter and Facebook. Full rehearsals start in earnest at the beginning of March. Any requests? The ticket lottery for Andy and Mark's War Child acoustic show at the 100 Club in London on Thursday 19th is still open for a couple more days. Enter now if you want to stand a chance of getting yourself a pair of tickets. The band have just done a series of interviews for a new edition of the Ride fanzine The Network as well as a photo session with the legendary (and extremely wonderful) Piper Ferguson. We're starting to have a think about what merchandise to put together for the tour dates. Any old favourites that you'd like to see reissued? Any cool items that you'd like to see a RIDE logo emblazoned across?
Below is an email sent out to all subscribers of the band's mailing list in January 2015. Today is the 25th Anniversary of our debut EP On 15th January 1990, the RIDE EP featuring Chelsea Girl, Drive Blind, All I Can See and Close My Eyes was released on Creation Records How could we have ever thought that we'd be here 25 years later writing (an email) to you all about all the amazing things that lie ahead for us - and hopefully all of you - this year. When we all met up, as we regularly have done over the years, at the end of September we kicked around the idea of playing a handful of shows together again. We wondered what might be possible and where this idea would take us. We have received offers from promoters to reform consistently over the last 15 years but the right opportunity and the right offer never seemed to coincide. But this time we had the right offers (great festival headline slots for Primavera in Barcelona and Field Day in London) and we each had a nice tour-sized gap in our diaries. As great as playing festivals is, we also wanted to be able to play our own shows and to try and reach as many places as we could in the time available. This is why we put together what is quite a crazy schedule covering 6 countries in 9 shows - made crazier by adding in Primavera Portgual between New York and London a couple of weeks after the initial announcement! The reaction to the reunion news in November last year knocked us sideways (and knocked over our website!). We had planning to launch our new website for a while and had been working on it on and off for about a year. When we decided to reform for these shows we suddenly had a deadline to hit for making the site live. At 3am on the morning of the announcement we flipped the switch and then at 9am, when the news broke, it promptly fell over. More offers came in from all around the world and our diaries opened up, as if on cue. We couldn't resist the chance to play at Coachella festival even though it meant getting ourselves gig-ready for April rather than the end of May. As the (already sold out) Coachella festival is repeated across two weekend - 10th and 17th April for us - there is the opportunity to add a couple of our shows into the gap in between. The San Francisco show at the Warfield goes on sale on Friday at 10am (PST). Tickets available from here. If the reaction to the other North American shows is anything to go by then it could be sold out by the time you go to bed on Friday night. The UK dates in Glasgow, Manchester and London all sold out within half an hour but there are some tickets left for each of Amsterdam and Paris. These cities were special places for us first time around and so if you were disappointed not to get tickets for one of the UK shows then do consider hopping over the channel for one of these gigs. It'd be great if we can put a huge "SOLD OUT" sign across the whole tour. Talking of huge, did anyone see that banner that went up in Barcelona on the day before the tour announcement? That really was enormous.
Below is an email sent out to all subscribers of the band's mailing list to mark Going Blank Again's 20th anniversary. Wishing Going Blank Again a very happy 20th birthday Yes really. It was Monday March 9th 1992 when the band's second album made its way onto the shelves of record stores all over the world (technically the release date was Tuesday March 10th in North America, but let's not split hairs). Nowhere (and Smile in certain territories) before it had been released on different dates across a 6 month period as various international record deals fell into place, but Going Blank Again was the first global release. And very exciting it was too. Leave Them All Behind had just become the band's first Top 10 single in the UK, resulting in a second Top Of The Pops appearance and a sold-out hometown show at the Oxford Apollo in February. In fact, the week Leave Them All Behind entered the charts at 9, Jesus and Mary Chain were at 10 and Primal Scream were at 11 - it felt like the gatecrashers were taking over the party. The Going Blank Again UK tour had started a week before the album's release in Cambridge and rolled through 20 towns and cities before finishing up with two nights at Brixton Academy. It was a hectic schedule compounded by the Twisterella video shoot at Granada Studios in Manchester on one of the few "days off" and a series of in-store record shop signing sessions - with the one at Tower in Piccadilly, London lasting for nearly 4 crazy hours. But the dates themselves were lit up by having The Verve as the support act on the first half of the tour and Mercury Rev for the second half. This made the whole tour that extra bit special. Mercury Rev’s 50-minute, 2-song set in Brighton was a memorable highlight! The UK tour was followed by a very brief run of shows in mainland Europe (Netherlands, Germany and the debut Ride show in Spain) before a 7 week tour of North America with Slowdive in support for the first half and Pale Saints on the second half. Then it was on to Japan and Australia, a defining Reading Festival show and then a fuller European tour in the autumn (with the Family Cat and Moose sharing the support slots). In all, there were 102 shows between February and October - the most extensive set of tour dates that the band ever did. Now this isn't just a history lesson, there is some actual news in this newsletter... First up is news that Going Blank Again is getting a release on vinyl in North America for the very first time. In the same packaging as the original UK, European (and Australian, if i remember rightly) releases with a gatefold sleeve, the double-vinyl release is cut (like the original) at 45rpm to enhance the quality audio. And it sounds bloody fantastic. I'm not sure what the exact availability of the release is going to be but there is a link here with more information: http://analogueadventures.com/2012/03/04/ride-going-blank-again/ This follows on from last year's Nowhere vinyl release in North America alongside the 20th anniversary 2xCD edition which is still available from the Rhino website (as well as other outlets): http://www.rhino.com/shop/product/ride-nowhere-20th-anniversary-edition [this is the LP link: http://www.rhino.com/shop/product/ride-nowhere]. We are trying to get stock of the 2xCD edition over here in the UK so that we can sell them through our Ride shop (more about that very soon...) as I know that the shipping costs for a lot of you from the States has been a little prohibitive. Since the last newsletter about a year ago, there have been some nice nuggets of press. Links to various online interviews that the band members did for the Nowhere reissue are posted up in the Ticket2Ride.it forum. There are a number of Australian and American interviews and reviews listed there. Also Uncut magazine in the UK did a special feature on the Ride EP in their May edition last year – the story behind the record, basically. It was written by Michael Bonner who had, many years, ago written a feature on the band for Lime Lizard magazine (how many of you can remember that wonderful publication?). It’s great when these things come back round. Time for some movie-related news. In the last newsletter we mentioned the Upside Down documentary of the story of Creation Records. This was given a full UK TV broadcast last autumn and has stirred up a new round of interest in all things Creation. The uplift on Ride’s profile was compounded further by the release of an Oxford music documentary called Anyone Can Play Guitar. Both films feature Ride quite heavily and Mark has been involved in the promotion of both across the world over the past 2 years (Mark also composed the incidental music in Upside Down). There are a couple more screenings of Anyone Can Play Guitar lined up and at this one in London on April 24th Mark will be playing a short acoustic set: http://www.wegottickets.com/event/158945. Last year a book documenting the history of the legendary Riverside venue in Newcastle was published and this featured various Ride recollections of the show they played there in 1990 on the Play EP tour. Well, the book is now being made into a film and Mark has recently done an interview for that. One more bit of film news, there’s a major Hollywood production of cult book Perks Of Being A Wallflower being released this summer (with Oxford’s own Emma Watson in one of the lead roles). If you’re familiar with the book then you’ll know that Vapour Trail features on a compilation tape (alongside other classics) that forms a pivotal part of the storyline. We’re keeping our fingers crossed, but it looks like the track will also be used at a key moment in the film. Maybe it will finally be a hit… Now time for some “un-news”… We have had to put the planned Vinyl Box Set on hold for now. We missed the opportunity to release it around the time of Nowhere’s anniversary and there has been too much other stuff to deal with since to allow us the time needed to put something worthy together. OK. You’re probably asking what all this “other stuff to deal with” actually is. Well the UK recording rights have reverted back to the band once again after being in the caring hands of Ignition Records for the last 10 years. They have done a fantastic job since 2001 and we wouldn’t have been able to release the 3xCD Box Set and the Waves BBC Session album without them – not to mention keeping all other 6 catalogue albums in stock throughout this period. We’ve now decided to release the catalogue directly ourselves through Absolute Distribution. This means that we’re putting together amended artwork for revamped CD releases. There are no changes to the tracklisting, just a slight change of artwork layout and format (they’ll be available in gatefold softpacks). The work on these is nearly done, which means that Smile, Nowhere, Going Blank Again, Carnival of Light, Tarantula and OX4_The Best Of will be back in stock once again – both on our own Ride store (through OxfordMusic.Net) and at all UK retailers. We are also working on one more release and we have some other news to tell you soon. But that will have to wait until the next newsletter which we have scheduled for March 27th – the date is significant, we’ll leave the sleuths amongst you to work it out…
Below is an email sent out to all subscribers of the band's mailing list in the winter of 2003 with various updates about the band. Some nuggets of Ride news for you... First up; available from today is a special 20th anniversary edition of Nowhere on CD. This is being released in North America through Rhino Records' "Handmade" series of specially-crafted, online-only reissues. You should be able to order this from wherever you are in the world (even though the text on the order page says "Not available in all Countries") and, of course, it comes heartily recommended: http://www.rhino.com/shop/product/ride-nowhere-20th-anniversary-edition It's a 2-CD edition featuring the re-mastered versions of all the Nowhere tracks and Today Forever tracks on the first CD; this being the first time that these re-masters have been available outside of the UK (where they have featured as part of the catalogue reissues on Ignition Records since 2001). It's a relief in many ways for these re-masters to finally get a release outside of the UK as we feel that they stand up here in the 21st century better than the original 1990 masters. Back then the vinyl version was the focus of the album mastering sessions with the CD format being a secondary concern. Ironically, Nowhere is getting a release on vinyl in the USA for the first time ever! Here in the UK, vinyl was still (just) the dominant format in 1990 but the US had made the move away from vinyl a year or so earlier and so Nowhere got a release on CD and cassette only in North America (I never liked cassettes...). So it has taken 20 years for Nowhere to get its Stateside vinyl release but we're very pleased to see it out there at last. It is available through all regular retail outlets in the US (unlike the "Handmade" CD special edition which is just available from the Rhino online store) but here's the Rhino store link, anyway, for the vinyl as we know that they'll have it in stock: http://www.rhino.com/shop/product/ride-nowhere Whilst I'm talking about vinyl, we've noticed that there's a dodgy bootleg version of Nowhere knocking about on unscrupulous websites around the world. It purports to be a Japanese vinyl bootleg and although the audio is of decent quality the artwork and packaging is decidedly dodgy. We've tried to get to the source of this and have got the lawyers on the case - someone in Chicago seems to be the culprit. But the message is that if you want a nice piece of good quality Ride vinyl then go and grab the Rhino reissue - it's even got the "RIDE" logo embossed on the sleeve like the original UK release. Lovely. And just like the proverbial buses, after 20 years of not being available on vinyl along comes a third LP version of Nowhere. About this time last year the band sat around and discussed what they could do to mark the upcoming 20th anniversary of Nowhere's original release in the UK (15th October, in case you were wondering - the original US release being 18th December 1990). We decided to lovingly put together a vinyl Box Set featuring re-creations and re-mastered versions of each of the first three 12" EPs (Ride, Play and Fall) alongside the Nowhere LP and a 24-page book all wrapped up in a space-demanding box. The plan was to relaunch the Ride website with a refreshed design and added functionality around the 20th anniversary of the Play EP (in April) and then offer the Box Set out on pre-sale through oxfordmusic.net. Once we had the orders in, we would press up the required copies and ship it out to everyone for October 15th. Well things didn't quite go to plan... The website re-design stalled and then the request from Rhino came in to put together the 2-CD reissue. [Don't worry, I realise I haven't finished telling you all about that yet. Just be patient...]. It took most of our collective resources to pull the audio and visual content together in time. The vinyl Box Set plans had to sit on the shelf for a bit. But the plans are moving once again. We can't get hold of the web designer that we were working with and so we've hit a bit of a snag there. If any of you out there are trained in the art of stunningly-original-yet-functional web design then please do get in touch. The current www.rideox4.net site is looking a bit 2001 and badly needs a total overhaul. We've re-mastered all the vinyl contents of the planned Box Set (at Abbey Road, of course) and we're now finally working on the artwork. So hopefully we'll be able to let you know all about it in much more detail in a couple of months time. It won't quite be the 20th anniversary box set - more like 20.5th - but it will be fantastic. OK, back to the Rhino 2-CD set. So I told you about CD1 with its 15 re-mastered tracks, well CD2 is equally special. On the band's first US tour in April/May 1991 they played two nights at the Roxy in LA. The tour was a co-headline with Lush and so each band was flip-flopping the headline slot throughout the series of dates. With there being two nights at the Roxy, each band got to play one headline set and one support set. Luckily for us, the Ride headline set was recorded for broadcast on a local radio show. The engineer mixed the audio live and it was this mix that was broadcast on air. Also some of these mixes were used on a radio promo edition of the Kaleidoscope single in the US later in 1991 (which some of you may have in your collection). Part of the deal for the radio broadcast was that we got to keep the master tapes. They've been sitting on a shelf for the best part of 20 years but we knew that the show was a bit special and that one day it would get its rightful airing. Once Rhino suggested the Nowhere reissue we dug out the tapes, baked them slowly in the oven for three days (it's a technical thing...) and then transferred them onto a hard drive so that our old pal Alan Moulder could get to work on mixing them to their full glory. Alan oversaw a week of sessions wonderfully mixed by Catherine Marks and the results totally knocked us sideways. Not only was the performance quite amazing but the recording quality was better than we could have hoped for. Getting Alan involved with the mixing was just the icing on the cake - after all he'd worked on the mixing of the original studio recordings of pretty much all the tracks in the Roxy set and knew what they should sound like. With the audio being of such a high quality we knew that the packaging had to live up to its contents. So we dug through the archives and pulled together a set of photos from 1990/1991 that haven't been seen before. We tried to get away from a series of standard press shots and included a range of live shots alongside some more imaginative pics. This was all topped off by Rhino suggesting that we use a lenticular version of the Nowhere "wave" for the cover. You can probably tell, we're very pleased with it. And, so it seems, are others: http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15069-nowhere-20th-anniversary-edition/ The release has triggered a wave (see what I did there...) of press requests and so the boys have been busy talking to print, web and radio journalists all over the globe. We'll round them up for you as they get published but if you fancy listening to Loz live on radio from Perth, Australia tomorrow morning (Tuesday 8th February 10am UK time) then tune in here: http://www.rtrfm.com.au/mp3stream Aside from all this Nowhere news, the Creation Records documentary "Upside Down" has been completed and we were treated to a preview late last year. It is currently doing the rounds of various film festivals prior to a limited cinema release. You can read lots about it here: http://www.upsidedownthemovie.com/ Oh, and did we mention that a certain Mr Mark Gardener has written and recorded the soundtrack music for the film? For all up-to-date news on Mark's wirting, recording, producing and mixing activities then keep a beady eye on www.MarkGardener.com. Talking of which, you may also want to bookmark this site too: www.beadyeyemusic.com - Andy is back on guitar, something that will bring joy to you all I'm sure! OK, I think that's probably enough for tonight. Or maybe I can quickly mention that all sizes of the Nowhere T-shirt design are back in stock (we ran out of some sizes just before Xmas): http://www.oxfordmusic.net/product.php?link=new&id=1280
Below is an email sent out to all subscribers of the band's mailing list Christmas 2006. new Mark Gardener 7" | Ride Nowhere Xmas Catalogue | other stuff This will be the last burst of Ride-related news for 2006 and so we’ll take the chance to wish you all a Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year. Rounding off 2006 with some style, we’re happy to announce that Mark finally has a record scheduled for release in the UK. Although the “These Beautiful Ghosts” album has steadily made its way around the globe this year (North America, Belgium/Holland, Japan, France) through a series of licensing deals no suitable label has popped itself above the parapet to secure a domestic release in the UK. Early in 2007 the album will be released across other mainland European territories starting with Germany, Italy and Spain in February but there is still no UK release coming into view. So, for now, the UK will have to nibble on a limited edition 7” release on the nascent Sonic Cathedral Records label. Coupling the album version of “The Story Of The Eye” with Ulrich Schnauss’ inimitable remix of the self-same track, the 7” is set to be released on Monday December 11th. The single will be available in various London record shops from Monday (Rough Trade, Pure Groove, Sister Ray, Intoxica!, HMV Oxford Circus) but you can also order it here: http://www.oxfordmusic.net/product.php?id=648&cat=r This will be the second 7” release on Sonic Cathedral and follows hot on the heels of The Tamborines single “Sally O’Gannon” which just happens to feature Mr Gardener on backing vocals (http://www.oxfordmusic.net/product.php?id=647&cat=r). We weren't 100% sure about the idea of re-printing the Nowhere T-shirt design but decided to take the plunge a few months back and what a success they've been - many thanks to everyone who has bought one (or two… or more). The last few remaining ones available are here: www.oxfordmusic.net/product.php?id=43&cat=c Also the Nowhere album artwork prints have been very popular with everyone around the globe. These are strictly limited to 100 prints and are available exclusively here: http://www.onlineexhibits.co.uk/shop/product_info.php?cPath=42_55&products_id=1020 Early in 2007, Mark will be playing his first ever shows in South America. He’s playing dates as guest-vocalist for rinôçérôse in Santiago (Chile) and Mar del Plata (Argentina) and while he’s there he’s going to take the opportunity to play his own solo shows. Ride never had the opportunity to play anywhere south of San Diego in the Americas and so this will really be a special occasion. The two dates are January 19th Galpon Victor Jara , Santiago and January 21st (venue to be confirmed), Buenos Aires. Before that Mark will be playing live at a festival in Huy, Belgium on January 13th with his full backing band. And following the trip to South America Mark will be playing solo at La Casa 139 in Milan, Italy on January 24th and then at a Sonic Cathedral Club special at the Oakford Social Club in Reading on February 25th. Mark is also hoping to play a show in Hong Kong in February but this is yet to be confirmed. Finally some words from the boys themselves: Hello. I hope everybody in cyberspace is well. There's not much news from me. I am currently writing and demoing songs which may or may not end up on the next Oasis record. Working on my drumming. In between, I run (and DJ at) a fortnightly Saturday night club in Stockholm called 'Bangers and Mash' which is worth a visit if people are passing by. It's at Marie Leveau, Hornsgatan 66. Erm... I produced an album this Summer, which will be released in the new year, it's called 'Fear and Love' and the band is Weeping Willows. They are Swedish but they sing in English. The best new guitar band I have heard in ages is The Lea Shores. Seen them twice now and if you get a chance you must check them out... they're from Shoreditch hence the name. That's about it from me... I expect to spend 2007 in the studio with the boys, with a bit of luck there might be some new Oasis music released this year. /Andy Hi to all. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! It’s been a busy year and all is set to continue into the New Year with more solo dates and guest vocal appearances with Rinocerose already in the book! At last these dates will take me to South America for the first time with shows confirmed in Chile and Buenos Aires. Meanwhile here in the UK I’m back in the studio collaborating on some more electronic projects along with the week-next booked in a studio in France with Robin Guthrie (Cocteau twins) which should be very interesting. I have also been putting on my producer head and have just finished producing a great local female singer songwriter called Chantelle Pike which is due for release early next year. I’m also starting to get some new songs together which will hopefully form part of another solo album that will hopefully be finished next year. The last great gig I attended was The Brian jonestown Massacre with The Morning after Girls playing later in the aftershow which all got a bit fuzzy in the end! Also to those still awaiting the DVD I’ve actually seen a rough cut and this will hopefully be finished and ready to go as soon as we have sorted out final edits and some ongoing song clearance issues. Once again I apologise to all and thank you for your understanding and patience!!!! All my best, Mark
Below is an email sent out to all subscribers of the band's mailing list in the winter of 2003 with various updates about the band. various bits of news hello all lots of bits of news (i'll try to be brief) RIDEOX4.COM the official website address has been nabbed by someone else and Ignition Records are currently trying to wrestle it back. In the meantime we've moved the site over to www.rideox4.net or www.rideox4.co.uk. I know that the site is desperately in need of an update but please bear with us as things are rather busy at the moment. BBC SESSIONS ALBUM The tracklisting has been agreed and we're in the process of sorting out the licence from the BBC and also getting the artwork and sleevenotes together. With a burst of energy this should see the light of day early in the Summer. It'll be 17 tracks culled from the 5 main sessions that the band recorded between 1990 and 1994 at the BBC studios in London and Manchester. If all goes well then it should be properly available worldwide (unlike the Best Of album which has been limited to the UK and North America plus any export sales). By the way, the Box Set has been re-pressed once again as it seems that demand is continuing to out-strip everyone's expectations - very pleasing! US RELEASE OF BEST OF The single album Best Of (with a four track bonus disc) has been picking up lots of nice press and radio support in the US. So much so that Mark is going out to the States very soon to do some promotion and to play some shows. The US release is on the mighty-fine First Time Records. MARK GARDENER GIGS Yes really. Mark is going out to the States to play an acoustic tour featuring about 70% Ride songs and 30% his new material. The first date is at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas on 13th March and then he makes his way around the country between the 1st and the 27th April. For a full list of dates as they get confirmed then have a look at Piero's Ticket To Ride Mark Gardener microsite. To warm up for the tour Mark is going to play a short(ish) set (about 30 minutes) at one of the regular Trailer Park nights run by Oxford's Truck Records. This show will be on Tuesday 4th March at the Cellar in the centre of Oxford. You can get tickets in advance online at www.wegottickets.com. PIERO'S MICROSITE http://www.mareasub.it/ride/mgmicro EXCELLENT ONLINE COMPILATION As part of the build-up to the US tour Mark has contributed a track to an MP3 compilation put together by www.excellentonline.com. Full details on their site, of course.
Below is an email sent out to all subscribers of the band's mailing list in the summer of 2002. new stuff hello I only realised today how large this email list had now got. The list is now bigger than it was in 1992. Scary in a way! anyway some big news at last... available to order on-line (where they will be exclusively available) are a new Ride T-shirt design and also the promised new EP - "Coming Up For Air". Click on the links through from www.rideox4.com. The EP features the band's brief reunion for the Channel 4 Pioneers programme last year. There are three tracks, the first two are "soundchecks" where the band are working out the basis of the track that they then later performed and then the full 30 minute jam (an excerpt of which has been on the website in MP3 form for a little while now). There are only going to be 1000 copies of this CD EP release and hence we're going to limit online orders to 4 copies per order. It's the first time the four band members have all recorded together since August '95 and so we're really proud that this can finally be released. Meanwhile the Best Of album, the Box Set and all the back catalogue have continued to sell really well here in the UK. For those of you outside of this country I hope that you've been able to get hold of the various UK releases on import. However soon in the US the 15 track Best Of CD will get a proper domestic release. Nice. The new T-shirt design is in response to lots of you pestering us for a new design (in the nicest possible way). We thought that a definitive Ride T-shirt was in order and so the design encompasses the Ride record sleeves logo that's on the front page of the site with a list of all the album releases. Classy. The old T-shirts have now nearly all sold out (just a few Going Blank Again long sleeves - very early nineties! - and a few Reading Festival '92 ones to go) which now means that my garage has become my own again. Both the EP and the T-shirts are being manufactured now and so orders will be mailed out when the stock arrives in about two weeks' time.
Below is an email sent out to all subscribers of the band's mailing list following the band's brief reunion in 2001 for a Sonic Youth tv show. tv news Just had a note from Channel 4 this morning that the Sonic Youth Pioneers thing that Ride reunited for last month is going to be shown next week! There was me thinking that we had loads of time to get a video clip and a sound clip up on the site before the expected transmission date in January... Anyway, the programme is on on 5th December at around 00:20 (I suppose technically that means that it's actually on 6th December - Mark's 32nd birthday as it happens!) and there'll be an interview with Mark and Andy and footage and sound from the 2 hour jamming session in London last month. We're still going through the camcorder footage and the sound recording that we made of the day and so we'll now see what Channel 4 show and then decide afterwards what to put up at rideox4.com. The sound recording runs to about 35 minutes in total and we're toying with the idea of making it available in some limited form. No fixed ideas yet but it would be cool to get it out into the world in some shape or form. Any ideas welcomed. Post them on the guestbook on the site. Other news includes a cover of Dreams Burn Down by Oxford alt-country popsters, Goldrush, this week on their Steve Lamacq session on Radio 1. It's probably going to be in Thursday's show. The missing interview questions from Steve on the ox4 site should be going live soon too. Also the Box Set is now available once more in the stores of the land. The re-pressing has arrived and you can get it off the shelf or off the web via the shop on the Ride website. Unless there is further substantial demand this will probably be the final processing of the box set. Most of the old stock of t-shirts have now gone. There are a few left of the Going Blank Again design and the Reading Festival design. Demand has been very high over the past few months and we're thinking of producing a new T-shirt for early next year featuring the Ride record-sleeve collage logo that is the header on the site. We'll keep you posted of course. Thanks also for joining up to this list. Would you actually believe that it is now larger than the list was back in 1994!
Below is an email sent out to all subscribers of the band's mailing list when the band briefly reunited in 2001 for a tv show. yesterday's moment of surreality So yesterday at the John Henry rehearsal complex in North London, Andy, Mark, Steve and Loz all turned up, set-up, plugged-in and put together about an hour's worth of un-rehearsed sonic jamming to accompany the forthcoming series of Channel 4's Pioneers. The show is about the influence of Sonic Youth and is effectively "presented" by Andy and Mark. They talk about Sonic Youth's influence generally to 90's music and specifically the influence on the then-fledgling Ride. As part of the idea for the show, the producer had asked Mark and Andy to play 10-15 minutes of guitar-based feedback which they wanted to film and use as a backdrop to the programme. It was Andy's idea that if he and Mark were going to get together to talk about Sonic Youth's influence on Ride then any "performance" to accompany the programme should feature all 4 ex-Ride members. Mark flew in from France for the day, Andy delayed his return to Sweden after the Oasis tour for a day and both Loz and Steve managed to juggle their existing commitments to make way for the day's filming. Everyone arrived about 11 and everything was set-up and ready to roll about Midday. Once the TV people had sorted their sound and camera positions out, the band started to work on a loose jam that they'd put together on the spot. It was a simple recording - one stereo mic for the drums, one bass mic and one each for Andy's and Mark's guitars. No vocals. It was truly amazing how quickly the whole sound slotted into place, that old adage about riding a bicycle was never more appropriate. There was a break while the sound levels and the overall mix were checked: and also while the lighting team sorted out their part of the equation. After a spot of lunch the band started playing about 1:30 with the cameras and the tape rolling until it came to it's natural conclusion about 2:15. Mark and Andy then filmed the interview and they all packed up and went their separate ways - Mark and Andy off to Heathrow for their respective flights, Steve back to Oxford and Loz back across London. It was very strange to witness how natural the whole event was and also how enjoyable and inspirational it was too. They talked about whether to base the jam on perhaps Grasshopper or even the middle section of Drive Blind but in the end a completely new piece of music came out of the day. There will some snaps of the day and maybe some camcorder footage up on the Ride site in the next couple of weeks or so - don't touch that dial.
Below is an email sent out to all subscribers of the band's mailing list following the release of OX4. hello this is just a quick note to say that the web shop that sits next to my office here in Oxford has just had it's stock in of the Box Set, the CD and Vinyl Best Of plus all the catalogue albums. It's the same web shop where we've been selling the remaining Ride T-shirts that had been filling up my garage for the past few years. There are only about 40 T-shirts left now and after those have gone that will be it, I'm afraid. So go off shopping to www.oxfordmusic.net if there's any gaps that you still need to fill. Also you've probably seen some of the reviews and interviews that have been going on around the release. Conveniently the Ticket To Ride site (linked from www.rideox4.com) and the www.creation-records.com/ride site (a fan's creation records site) have got a full list of all the recent activity with links and downloads of sound files so that you don't miss anything. Thanks to all of you who've signed up to the Ride email-list, it has been quite frantic both on the list and on the website guestbook. Things have been selling well: the Box Set, Nowhere, Going Blank Again and the Single Best Of CD have all had to be re-pressed already. It's been really exciting to walk into record shops and see the "ride" sections full once more. That's all from me but since I'm sat here with Andy at the moment I thought it only right and proper to leave him with the last word. Dave Newton Dear all: YARBLES!!! with love Andy Bell p.s. look out for the secret track!
Below is an email sent out to all subscribers of the band's mailing list to celebrate the release of OX4. today's the day... ...and so after three years of maybes and maybe-nots, the Best Of and accompanying Box Set finally make their way into the stores today. we have been overwhelmed by the reaction so far of people to the release and especially to all of you who have put such kind thoughts up on the OX4 website. the press reviews have been really encouraging and hopefully they'll be lots more to come. we think that the Radio 1 feature is on tonight on Steve Lamacq and there's interviews appearing here there and everywhere (nme.com, worldpop.com, dotmusic.com, coppernob, teletext, creation-records.com, TTROL). andy and mark are on xfm studio 68 this week (wednesday) and there's various club nights going on at the moment to support the release. hopefully something on TOTP2 soon too. so get down that record store and let's see that Best Of in the charts on Sunday. bye
Below is an email that was sent to all subscribers of the maling list following the launch of the new RIDE website to promote the OX4 Box Set. "Well you lot have been busy. There are loads of you now on the re-vamped mailing list and here's a little bit of news to keep you posted of what's going on. The reviews of the Best Of are starting to roll in. So far a 4/5 in Uncut and the same in Rocksound. And even a 5/5 in Record Buyer Magazine. The re-mastered etc. catalogue is now out in the shops in the UK (and I trust available on all reputable web retailers) and the Best Of and Box Set will hit the racks on Monday week (24/09). We're still working on a release outside of the UK but realistically this won't be until the New Year at the earliest. There are some articles coming up in The Guardian and the Sunday Times and also a piece soon in MOJO magazine. There's also going to be an interview up on NME.com imminently and both Mark and Steve have promised to finish their Q&A for the rideox4 website very very soon. The various club nights around the UK that are featuring the Best Of on special Ride nights are all listed on the website and we're hoping to run a competition soon on the site so that you can win free tickets to these events. Steve Lamacq has got an interview with Andy and Mark on his Radio 1 show next Monday and they'll also be loads of other radio and press bits and bobs around the release (maybe even a re-run on Top Of The Pops 2 on the telly). There's a feature on Ride on the www.creation-records.com site with exclusive interviews with the various ex-members and do always keep an eye on the Ticket To Ride Online site too - www.mareasub.it/ride. Please keep posting stuff on the guest book, as you will see Loz has posted there himself and all the band will try and answer any questions up there whenever they can. Must go."
