Thanks to my retro 80s loving pal Corey, I thought of T-Ride today.

You haven’t heard of T-Ride…..what?

Wikipedia describes T-Ride as being noted for its wildly complex instrument and vocal arrangements.

That’s funny, because I wasn’t aware that ANYONE besides Corey, myself, and perhaps maybe the people that saw them opening for Joe Satriani on Satch’s tour for The Extremist took note of T-Ride.

Their 1992 self-titled album was bad ass, and certainly already felt a little bit cheesy as you were listening to it, but you tried to focus on the bad ass parts, specifically songs like “Zombies from Hell.”

T-Ride – Zombies From Hell

My friend Jim and I saw that Satch tour, second row here in Cleveland at The Palace, and we were there exclusively to see Satriani blow our minds for the first time, and the opening band was merely an inconvenience that sat in our way of rocking out with King Joe. As it happened though, T-Ride were a damn impressive power trio full of jams, and with only one album to their name, they played most of them on that night with Satriani.

Unexplainably the rest of the world didn’t hear the T-Ride album…greatness goes unrecognized, and as you can probably guess, T-Ride broke up. I imagine that it’s likely that Corey was suicidal upon hearing news of their breakup – as for me, I had moved on to the next band that was doomed to get dropped by their record company….but hey, we’ll talk about that another time!

As for the members of T-Ride – drummer Eric Valentine became one of the in-demand producers of the 90s, producing bands from Queens of the Stone Age, to Third Eye Blind. Guitarist Geoff Tyson, a former student of Joe Satriani, is still making music, in Prague of all places. Singer Dan Arlie, according to this interview with Geoff Tyson, is still writing and recording music….and apparently has the masters for an unreleased second T-Ride album that perhaps we’ll hear, someday.

Relevant Links:

Geoff Tyson official site (including some live video of T-Ride in the history section.)

An interview with Geoff Tyson at Melodic.net.

The T-Ride Shrine