Clicky Clicky Music Presents... N O F U C K I N G W H E R E : 11 Boston Bands Perform Ride's Classic 1990 Album

Dearest readers,

We write today to tell you about NOFUCKINGWHERE, a free, digital compilation of our favorite Boston acts covering a landmark record, Ride's debut full-length Nowhere. The compilation is available to download now via the hyperlink below. The original album was released in the U.S. on Sire in 1990 and is now widely regarded as one of the best shoegaze records of all time. Nowhere was issued when this blog's executive editor was 16, and its songs were in heavy rotation at Villanova University's WXVU at the very moment we started rabidly and almost exclusively consuming college radio. We kept the dial locked to 89.1 until we went off to college ourselves, and hearing "Taste" or "Paralysed" was a highlight of nearly every day until we strolled under the R5 tracks to the delightfully sketchy original location of Repo Records to buy our own copy of the CD. And then we played the hell out of it, until a skip developed in the CD at the 1:43 point of "Dreams Burn Down." We markered the lyrics to "Paralysed" on to a pair jeans. We placed key tracks on every mixtape forever. We wished we looked good with longer hair. And there was a new circle in the Venn diagram: people who knew.

As I told Boston Phoenix scribe Michael Christopher last week, Clicky Clicky has been wanting for a while to break out of its comfort zone a little and do something special with the blog involving our favorite bands, something that would find common ground among all of them. Ride seemed like it might be a logical common denominator. It turned out I was right. We're extremely grateful to the 11 bands named below for saying "yes" when we asked them to contribute to this compilation. It certainly would have been a lot easier for them to say "no." But we think that says a lot about the importance of the music on Nowhere. And I think the high regard these bands have for these songs shines through and illuminates these recordings. 

You never forget those first really important albums, and those albums never really stop being that important -- more often than not all the music you hear afterwards is measured against it. All the people that experienced that music contemporaneously are bound by it. It's why we're here today. While homage is by definition intended, the 11 bands we hand-selected painstakingly in late summer through early winter last year for NOFUCKINGWHERE did not shy away from interpretation. The Hush Now's blissed-out iteration of "Taste" sheds the propulsive intensity of the original in favor of an other-worldly and ethereal treatment. Greg Lyon similarly deconstructs "Paralysed," going so far as re-imagining the melody. Young Adults' electrifying "Decay" scrapes off any softness of the original recording to reveal the heretofore undiscovered punk skeleton that had been hiding within the song for the past 22 years. Occurrence and Most Bitter chose to embrace the icy, chaotic drone of the songs they selected. Even the more conventional interpretations of Bedroom Eyes (their song here is the best they've released to date, in our opinion), Chandeliers, Soccer Mom, Slowdim, Guillermo Sexo and Eldridge Rodriguez provide viscerally exciting moments at every turn.

Oxford: this is Boston.

1. Seagull....................................................... (Guillermo Sexo)
2. Kaleidoscope....................................................... (Slowdim)
3. In A Different Place........................................ (BDRM Eyes)
4. Polar Bear........................................................ (Most Bitter)
5. Dreams Burn Down....................................... (Soccer Mom)
6. Decay........................................................... (Young Adults)
7. Paralysed........................................................... (Greg Lyon)
8. Vapour Trail.......................................... (Eldridge Rodriguez)
9. Taste........................................................... (The Hush Now)
10. Here And Now .............................................. (Chandeliers)
11. Nowhere......................................................... (Occurrence)

Get It At Soundcloud
WAV files available upon request

There's a thanks list in the album art filed within the folder you are downloading while reading these words, but because it's important I'd like to name some of the names here as well: thanks to Paul Sentz, William Scales, Greg Lyon, Josh Pickering, Barry Marino and Brad Searles for doing the things you did, be that inspire, counsel or facilitate or some combination of same. Thanks also to Michael Marotta for offering unconditional support for the project when it came time to let people hear it, and of course for arranging the completely bonkers Phoenix article featuring Mark Gardener of Ride -- who hopefully likes this comp very much -- that you can read online later today and in print later this week.

NOFUCKINGWHERE is CCM-001.

Clicky Clicky Music Blog is Jay Breitling, Michael Piantigini and Edward Charlton.