The Charlatans and Ride at First Avenue, Minneapolis (09 Feb 2023)

Charlatans Setlist

Between 10th and 11th I Don’t Want to See the Sights Ignition Page One Tremolo Song Can’t Even Be Bothered Weirdo Chewing Gum Weekend (No One) Not Even the Rain The End of Everything Just When You’re Thinkin’ Things Over Let the Good Times Be Never Ending One to Another The Only One I Know North Country Boy — Encore — Plastic Machinery Sproston Green

Ride Setlist

Nowhere Seagull Kaleidoscope In a Different Place Polar Bear Dreams Burn Down Decay Paralysed Vapour Trail Taste Here and Now Nowhere Lannoy Point OX4 Monaco Leave Them All Behind

Two titans of British rock bands, The Charlatans and Ride have teamed up for this once-in-a-lifetime tour across America in 2023. The bands stopped in at First Avenue, in Minneapolis, on Thursday, February 9th.

Before the bands took the stage (and in-between bands), DJ Jake Rudh from Transmission, played music videos of 90’s British music: Curve, Catherine Wheel, Lush, New Order, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, The Fall, etc.

Playing first was Oxford’s Ride, featuring vocalists and guitarists Andy Bell and Mark Gardener, drummer Laurence “Loz” Colbert and bassist Steve Queralt. The band is one of the early pioneers of shoegazing music, thanks to their debut album Nowhere, which came out in 1990. The term shoegazing is used to described the layers of guitar distortions and effects. Its origin is in reference to the many guitar foot pedals (so the guitarist would be staring at their feet to operate the effects correctly).

Ride broke up in 1996 and the band members went their separate ways. Notably, vocalists and guitarists Andy Bell joined Oasis (which led to being in Liam Gallagher’s Beady Eye band). When Beady Eye broke up in 2014, Bell announced that Ride had reformed! We caught the band on their reunion tour at Mill City Nights in Sep 2015.

For this 2023 tour, Ride would play their influential debut album, from start to finish. This also included the three bonus tracks from the CD (which was originally not available on the 12”): Taste, Here and Now, and Nowhere.

The record was played flawlessly, so the band is very well rehearsed. There were no delays between songs for guitar tuning or anything, because they had a dedicated guitar tech running and fetching the right guitar for the right song.

After the entire album was played, Bell said, “That’s the Nowhere album. Now we’re going to play a few more songs… if you don’t mind.”

Of those other songs, the most interesting among them was Monaco which is not officially out yet. The band mentioned that this song is from their forthcoming seventh album, set for release either this year or next year. It sounded really good, more upbeat and aggressive than what we’re used to.

Of course, they saved their most well-known song, “Leave Them All Behind” as their set closer.

The Charlatans (known as The Charlatans UK in the USA for legal reasons) closed out the show. This band, with the help of Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets, and James, help launched the Madchester explosion. For this 2023 co-headlining tour, The Charlatans decided to play their second album Between 10th and 11th.

I bought this record when it came out, based on the strength of their Weirdo single, and ultimately tracked down their debut album Some Friendly. Comparing the two records, you can hear the evolution, clearly the better produced and written record was Between 10th and 11th… and it should be the album that define the band.

 

When The Charlatans took First Avenue’s stage, you can clearly tell that singer Tim Burgess was having a blast! He’s video-taping the audience with his phone, he constantly had a massive smile on his face (see special vuart), he’s overly animated, he’s doing his funky hand-wheeling dance, he’s inciting the audience to clap… it’s like Tim just stepped out a beach college and he’s going to teach us how to have fun.

Looking at the setlist, you can see that the band left the song Subtitle off their setlist. I’m not entirely sure why they decided to do this, perhaps it was done for creative reasons… much like how the song The End of Everything was moved to the end of the song order.

They played a two-song encore, starting with Plastic Machinery. Before they started to play Sproston Green, Tim introduces the band: “On the drums is Peter Salisbury, on the keyboard is Tony Rogers, on the electric guitars is Mark Collins, on the bass is Martin Blunt. And I’m Tim Burgess.”

If you love early 90s British rock, you really need to make it out see these two excellent bands play. I don’t normally go out in the middle of winter to see concerts, but this Charlatans/Ride co-headlining tour could not be missed.

Remaining tour dates: