Ride Let's get lost from giles borg on Vimeo.
After their triumphant 2015 reunion tour, next week Oxford shoegaze legends RIDE are set to play their first live dates of 2016 in Brighton. The two sold-out shows at Concorde 2 on September 7 and 8 are warm-ups for their forthcoming appearance at Bestival, where they are performing on the bill with The Cure on the Saturday night (September 10) – a repeat of the scheduling from the Great British Music Weekend back in 1991, when RIDE were invited to perform at Wembley Arena at the personal request of Robert Smith.
The Brighton dates also have have echoes from the past. In 1993, RIDE were part of the Daytripper shows – two concerts held in the seaside towns of Brighton and Blackpool (March 12th and 13th), where they shared top billing with The Charlatans.
The film-maker Giles Borg has unearthed a previously unseen video of RIDE from the time of the Daytripper concerts, shot as a promo clip to accompany ‘Let’s Get Lost’, a B-side from the Carnival of Light era, which was mooted as a single in the US. The video cuts footage of the band – Mark Gardener, Andy Bell, Steve Queralt and Loz Colbert – hanging out in Brighton and Blackpool prior to the gigs, with footage of them performing. Although RIDE didn’t play ‘Let’s Get Lost’ at the Daytripper shows, the colour footage is taken from a gig at the Stodola Club in Poland on May 28th, 1993, which featured the song in the setlist.
Borg’s relationship with RIDE stretches back to their formative years. One of the first gigs RIDE played was supporting one of Borg’s bands, and he ended up spending a couple of years on the road and in the studio with the band, shooting a film about the making of their third album, Carnival of Light, that was never edited or released.
There are hours of unseen footage going right up to the recording of the band’s final album, Tarantula. When the band split in 1996, the film was shelved. It is unclear whether any more footage will surface as the bulk of it is on Beta SP (16mm), but Borg has fond memories of his time with the band. "Sadly the film never got finished, but we had some great fun along the way," he recalls. "The day after the gig in Poland, we went to see England play Poland [in a World Cup Qualifier], which ended with us all being chased down the road by the police."
Both RIDE shows at Concorde 2 next week are sold out, but there are still tickets available for Bestival from https://www.ticketline.co.uk
