Customer Reviews

Ride on

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

You & me, sailin deep,so Ride On Baby! Thats how this disc kicks off, rockin'! Izzy takes you on a free spirited journey, where you can see the colored wind blow, California.The other rockers like Primitive Man & Highway Zero hit you right between the eys.Like John Fogerty's Lodi,Izzy takes you to Needles,where theres nuthin'goin' on except great folksy acoustic guitar playing.Izzy keeps the disc interesting with the cosmic Spazed & Trance Mission. The real great song here is The Groper.Izzy pours great acoustic rythyms out of his blusey soul.All in all this disc keeps you entertained & keeps your toes tappin'.

The charm that izzy got is the story of this project. it is not a monster produced. it is the first kickdown on your motorcycle as you hit the highway. it have a live recoreding sound with almost no limits, you can only achieve this with great players like we have on this one. with a help of rick richards on guitar duff mckagan on bass and taz on drums izzy takes this music jam to a great highets . this is the perfect album for a sunny day ride on the highway . for those who come and look for gnr they may find something familiar but izzy is riding through the sunset in his own way with no compromise on anything staright and rough. listen to "primitive man" , "ride on" ,"here comes the rain " and "spazed" the heavy tunes on the record as the hard-rock-punk spirit is in the air . the great instrumental "trance mission " with the eastern touch in it you can almost touch sahara sands... the self street wise tale of " needles " the country groove of " the groper " and the ale- aerosmith " highway zero " complete these great ride with a feeling of more. this album is for those which the rock still in their blood. it got diffrent rhythms as you expect from izzy and the guy delivers it with joy you can hear it ! this battelship band invents herself for the third time. there will be always a place for this kind of albums on my collection the kind that izzy do the ones that you always come back to.

i am a huge fan of izzy. during guns, post guns. any izzy is good izzy. his first cd was a truly great album that even the rolling stones themselves could only wish they still had in them. that was a good album. his second disc 117 degrees was an even better album. this one Ride On falls short to me. i love it, but it could have been more. some of the tunes are great. the title track whips along like rock n' roll should. bouncy, a little cocky, and fun. spaced is cool tune reminiscent of rocks-era aerosmith. however highway zero sounds so intense. you can actually see somebody getting chased by the cops while the songs is playing. the rest of the tracks here seem a little under cooked. it's not a total loss, you just feel like the ride on this cd went a bit longer.

Straight up, no bones rock n' roll. This is why GN'R died when Izzy left, he was the one with the sound...

This is a great album, and I always crank it loud when I'm in my car driving through the desert. It sounds like that's what some of the songs are about anyway. Also, there is some great songwriting and interesting twists that balance out the hard rock with some other moods. Izzy was the main songwriter of GnR and it shows here. So Ride On, Baby.

Mark Dark

Ride on is really rocks! Izzy really seems to have recaptured the raw vibe of AFD and Right Next Door to Hell, Perfect Crime and Double Talkin' Jive from UYI I; especially on the songs Ride On, Spazed, Highway Zero and the bluesy-cool The Groper. It's much better than his first two solo albums because the sound is more GNR than wannabe Stones/Faces a la the Black Crowes like 117 degrees and Ju Ju Hounds and some of his stuff on UYI (i.e. better to do a modern synthesis of the Stones than to rip them off blatantly). The album maintains this sound throughout (with the possible exception of the blase "Needles"). As a fan who's heard Duff's "Beautiful Disease" (I never heard anything from "Believe in Me" except the title track), Slash's Snakepit's It's Five O'clock Somewhere (and four or five of the songs from "Ain't Life Grand"), Gilby Clarke's albums, Axl's "Oh My God", and the "The Spaghetti Incident", I can say with some confidence that Ride On is the best album by GNR/a GNR member since UYI II. It's just a shame Izzy didn't release it in the U.S. and thus I (and other Izzy fans) had to shell out about $30 to buy it. If you're a serious GNR fan it's worth the steep cash outlay.

If you were in it just for the singles, the price may be too steep. As was the case on his previous two albums, Izzy's vocals are mediocre. The same can be said for Izzy's lyrics. They are vague, often repetitive and generally uninspired. This is most evident on "California," "Primitive Man," "Here Comes the Rain" and "Hometown", all of which are very strong musically but lack the lyrics to match. In addition, Izzy lacks Axl's ability to be occassionally poetic or even romantic.

Overall, if you're a fan who needs a strong power ballad on every album, look elsewhere. But if you're like me and think ballads are just a nice way of using terraced dynamics to make a great guitar solo stand out, this is for you. It's the closest glimpse of what GNR could have been if they did not break up.

From the opening notes of "Ride On," it seems clear that this will be Izzy Stradlin's hardest rockin' album to date. Yet another quality album from Izzy. This guy doesn't quit, and you have to respect his ability to put out record after record, when there must be enormous pressure to "sound more like GNR." This one is a little more hard and driving, but still has a lot of that great bluesy Izzy style. Excellent, as always.

"Ride On" is certainly not a bad album, especially not if you prefer Izzy Stradlin at his most punk-ish (which I don't). But it is not as musically versatile or indeed as melodious as his two best records, "117°" and the superb, still-to-be-recognized classic "Izzy Stradlin And The Ju Ju Hounds".
I prefer Izzy's previous blend of hard rock and acoustic blues-rock, but "Ride On" has its moments as well. There's just a little bit too far between them.