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(Ride - A wall of magnificent noise)

1991 tonight. Ride, live at The Town and Country in London via the BBC. Ride were one of those bands who, along with Blur, The Charlatans, The Stone Roses and many others epitomized the resurgence in British music of the early 90s. Although they never really caught on in the States, Ride were a milestone group in achieving that all-encompassing wall of sound that was influential in other bands from the same period and even today. They had perfected it. This particular concert has most all their early material, just prior to their first album and for me, it was a pivotal point in their development as a band. Although they changed personnel and direction after a while, it's this period of the band that has always stayed with me as their best and most adventuresome. Listening to this concert again after almost twenty years, (oh god . . .it's been THAT long ago?) I realize just how powerful they were and how fresh it still sounds.

There are some things that just never seem old to me - Ride in 1991 is one of them.

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(The Stone Roses - Suddenly, music got jettisoned out of the doldrums)

I can't believe it's been 20 years since The Stone Roses released their first album. Up until that time music was going through a period of ennui. The 80s were coming to a close and things were getting a little complacent, musically. The Reagan Years could have something to do with it. MTV was busy converting the taste of most mainstream music into who was pretty and who was not - and that determined who would get a video made and who would languish in musical limbo. Radio saw the writing on the wall and playlists became tightly regimented, as corporate takeovers and mergers made freeform a thing of the past.

But then things took a brisk change. Seattle started pumping out Grunge and the UK started pumping out Madchester. And music suddenly took a turn for the better and The Stone Roses appeared.

As movements go, this one didn't last all that long. But it's presence and influence have been felt even to this day. And the first Stone Roses album, from which this cut This Is The One, is featured tonight, has become a classic, and is still fresh twenty years later.

You know you're on to something when you can make it sound timeless without much effort. And The Stone Roses are timeless.

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(The Hollow Men - footnotes to history or at least a lot of questions)

I would imagine the people (at least in the U.S.) who have heard of The Hollow Men might fit on the fingers of one, maybe two hands.

Together from 1985-1991, they were actually part of the Manchester, or Madchester scene that gave birth to bands like The Charlatans, Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and many others. They released several singles, but only one official album, Cresta which was issued in the U.S. on Arista, but you'd never really know it. This track This Dark City, comes from the posthumous album "Twisted" issued in 1994 on the indie label November Records and only released in the states, after the band had been broken up for three years. It consisted mostly of unissued tracks, left off the first album, demos and some live material. But even with that hodgepodge of material, there are some undisputed gems and IMHO, this is one of them.

As is so often the case, some bands make it and some don't - you can never really put your finger on the reasons. And some things are just a mystery.

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(The Charlatans (UK) - still very much alive and kicking)

Since I mentioned them last night during my Catherine Wheel entry, I thought I should include the headliners from that 1995 gig, The Charlatans (UK) - or just The Charlatans if you're overseas.

As much as everyone talked nonstop at the time about Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets and the rest of the Madchester scene in the early 1990s, The Charlatans have to be mentioned in the same breath. It's something of a misnomer to consider them Britpop, because they have many more layers than just one you could identify. Testimony to that fact, they are still recording and gigging around, and are just as popular as ever. Even though the band have gone through a number of personnel changes over the years, they are still fronted by Tim Burgess whose distinctive vocals are fresh as ever.

I thought I would refresh your memory with a cut off their second album, actually two cuts since they fade into one another. Weirdo and Chewing Gum Weekend.

And if you've never heard of them before . . . . . where have you been?

The Mirror:

At least 21 gigs have been planned for the UK and there are talks of a US date – possibly the Coachella Festival in California. The gigs will coincide with the re-release of the band’s self-titled debut album.

Best known for the very simple whimsical dirge "I Wanna Be Adored", but with a host of other great whimsical dirges to back it up, Manchester's The Stone Roses are finally reuniting, and for all the right reasons: "The rest of the band were really up for it, especially when they realized the amount of money on the table," said a source close to the band.

But who can blame them? The real forefathers of Oasis deserve dividends on the neu-Britpop wave that crashed ubiquitously in the nineties deserve a cash-in. We'll see if the Coachella rumors actually turn out to be true.