Geek Rock Demolisten
The Evolution Of Ridel High's "Look At Me Now"
“Look At Me Now” has always been one of my favorite Ridel High songs to play live.
An early demo convinced Kevin Ridel (vocals/bass) and Steve Leroy (guitar) to form the band and recruit me as their drummer. This was in the mid-‘90s when the Geek Rock scene started by Weezer and The Rentals briefly ruled Hollywood clubs thanks to bands like Nerf Herder, Shufflepuck, Chopper One, and a little later, Ozma.
Ridel High released one album (twice!) before breaking up. Kevin and I have periodically regrouped in the 2000s, most recently for the Generation Blue launch. And we’ve booked a couple shows since then featuring Marko DeSantis (Sugarcult), Matt Fuller (Bow Wow Wow), Justin Fisher (Psoma), and Jose Galvez (Ozma).
Something tells me that if the right opportunities come our way (and 4 or 5 of us are available at the same time!) we’ll probably keep playing random gigs in the near future. And when we do, I can almost guarantee that “Look At Me Now” will be on the setlist—like it pretty much has been since we first learned it in 1995.
Kevin Ridel and Steve Leroy’s first 4-track/drum machine demo for the Ridel High song “Look At Me Now.”
Last week, Kevin sent me a Dropbox link with a bunch of Ridel High recordings I’d forgotten about.
Listening to your old demos can be fun in small doses, but I’ve also found that the nostalgia gets a little overwhelming. So, I’ve been checking out a few tracks a day and mostly enjoying the slow motion sonic trip down memory lane.
There are early versions of songs that later ended up on our album, a handful of early favorites we discarded along the way, and a few tracks I had completely forgotten about. One thing that jumped out at me was the number of times we recorded “Look At Me Now.” I guess we always knew that one was a keeper.
Which makes sense since it was the foundation for our noisy alterna-pop sound, even if it was a lot moodier and slower than much of our later material. It’s fascinating to see the arc of these Dropbox demos as we progressed from an indie pop band to a sound more influenced by Face to Face or Jawbreaker on certain later recordings.
Ridel High’s first demo for “Look At Me Now” as a trio. I think I’d been in the band less than a month.
The groove Kevin wrote for “Look At Me Now” causes this deceptively simple song to heave and pulsate.
That and the killer guitar and bass lines are what make this one so fun to play live. But the repetitive, plodding rhythm can be trance-inducing under the stage lights, so I have to be careful that I don’t get lost in the hypnotic wall of sound up there.
In the studio, it was always about trying to hold the distinct mid-tempo feel together while punishing my kick drum and snare. I’ve always been better with faster tracks, but this one has a way of locking you in and holding on tight.
Another demo of Ridel High’s “Look At Me Now” recorded at a mystery session sometime in 1995. This version was recently rediscovered on a forgotten cassette tape.
I love that this third version is from a demo that neither Kevin or I can recall recording.
I have a vague memory of doing a session with an Interscope Records A&R assistant at some point, so that might be where this came from. It’s also possible that we recorded this version with one of our music friends in Glendale or Santa Barbara.
This take is interesting because you can hear us streamlining the arrangement a bit. Ridel High was known for never really turning down shows back then, so we probably played this song over a 100 times between rehearsals and live performances in the ‘90s.
Last is the version featured on Emotional Rollercoaster.
The album was produced by Lagwagon vocalist Joey Cape for his short-lived indie label My Records (also home to Nerf Herder before they jumped to Arista Records). Ridel High originally released that collection as Hi Scores, but it was renamed and repackaged when A&M Records re-issued it a year later.
I’m guessing there are other recordings of “Look At Me Now” floating around, but it was interesting to see how the song evolved across these takes. I’m still partial to the album version, but these other recordings reminded me how we got there.
LA Readers: Come Hear Us Play “Look At Me Now”!
