Ride on Estrada
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The second offering from the band who had the best name of any band I've ever been in. IMHO the better of the two ROE albums despite the production being a little more rudimentary than that of it's predecessor. This was recorded over a weekend at Candyland (Ryan's garage, completely devoid of candy I might add) with vocals and the odd overdub added before Ashley and Chris ran away to Japan to teach English. The covers were all handmade, my first (and not last) foray into hand crafted album artwork. They came out OK but it was quite a learning curve, for example I learned that using spray adhesive which has a high solvent content in a confined space is a bad idea. The cover image is based on a photograph of the Top Tavern, a large pub in my hometown of Porirua. I remember going to the bottle store on the ground floor with my Dad when I was a kid and waiting in the car while he got his flagon of beer filled. This apparently was New Zealand's largest drinking establishment at the time it was built. Some very effective but cynical planning on someone's part to build the thing right in the middle of a low income area it would seem. What is more intriguing is that it ended up in a book about New Zealand architecture put together by Sir Michael Fowler. Odd. The album was reviewed somewhat unfavorably here. Now we never took ourselves too seriously and if you're gonna get up and make a racket in public you should expect that someone is not going to like it and be prepared to accept that criticism. But let me tell you, Mr Healy, I'm a Porirua boy born and bred and I might know the odd person who drank at the establishment pictured above who could sort you out, know what I mean? Huh? Punk!!!!!!!! (that statement will lose all impact if the reader ever happens across a picture of me and discovers how thin and white I am).