Ride - In a Different Place (Dylan's Dumb iPod #2)

Good golly, if Ride isn’t one of the most fantastic bands in existence. Heavenly though it may be, a good lot of shoegaze (especially anything retro) is fairly indistinguishable…but Ride always managed to stay above water. Most nerds herald Nowhere as their zenith record and probably one of the genre defining masterpieces. Cool people love that wall o’ sound shimmer and they can appreciate that awesome cover art.

I’m sure there’s a gamut of opinions as to what this song’s about. Drugs (“blowing bubbles, lying down” sounds kinda gross to me) tuning out (“you and I were in a different time.”) and being impervious to weather (“Even if the rain falls down, and all the sky turns cold/ I will still be fine.”) Maybe it’s about the euphoric charge a youngster feels when foolishly falling in love or huffing keyboard duster (or that weird game we used to play where we’d pass someone out by cutting off airflow to their head. To get real extreme, when their eyes had rolled back and they’d lost a little consciousness, we’d run out the door and turn the lights off so the poor asphyxiate would wake up 12 seconds later completely disoriented…really dangerous. Don’t do it).
I’m a sucker for those drums because they sound like the kind of drums that God would play if he was mixing a Kyuss record and then playing it underwater. Swirling, kaleidoscopic guitars that chime and hiss and everything is just a beat or slower than you’re used to…dreamlike…or as if you’re walking as fast as you can through a swimming pool.

A dude in my American lit class (Junior year o’ college) used to wear a Ride Nowhere shirt. I was (am) painfully lonely so I tried to make conversation with him. It came to light that he was from San Diego (nothing wrong with that) and was into longboards and Fleet Foxes (plenty wrong with that). Forever alone.

What if stoner kids in middle school wore Ride shirts and not Sublime ones?

(Song by Ride from Nowhere. 1990 Sire Records).