Ride The White Pony -- Help ID, Please

Cafe Society
1

Monday I was at an establishment that plays alternative/techno/rock/dance, and generally some pretty hip slick and cool stuff. I’m usually listening to classic rock, and top 40 pop from the mid 60s to the mid 80s, and like it. I really don’t want to branch out that much, but I realize there is a lot of good new or almost new music I’ve missed out on.

Well, a song came over the speakers that just blew me away, and I’m hoping a Doper will be able to help me ID the song and artist. I’m not sure of the name of the song or artist, but by the way that it sounded, the name of the song could have easily been “Ride The White Pony.” And I can’t get it out of my head.

This morning I Googled White Pony, and there were several pages of White Pony. Great, I thought. It looked to be from ’99 or ’01, by The Deftones. There was a CD called White Pony, but I didn’t see a song called White Pony. Then I think maybe it’s like “Baba O’Riely” by The Who. Many people think it’s called Teenage Wasteland. So I look at the lyrics of all the songs on the White Pony CD. There was nothing that resembled the song.

I continued to search and heard a woman sing a song called “Ride The White Pony.” But it was a completely different song. The White Pony I heard has a real edge to it.

Does anyone know the song I’m talking about? Who is the artist, the album name, etc?

Thanks.

2

Maybe “White Horse” by the Dutch band Laid Back, from their 1983 album, Keep Smiling?

3

That was my first guess too: “White Horse” by Laid Back.

4

According to AllMusic, there’s a song called “White Pony” that has been recorded by Paul Parrish:

5

I did a search on a P2P network, and found many mp3s called “Ride The White Pony” by the Gap Band. And many of them are labeled to be from the 80s.

6

OK, these are almost certainly actually the Laid Back song already mentioned, but mislabeled.

If this rings a bell, one lyric is “If you want to be rich, you got to be a bitch”.

7

That’s it! Thanks, Dr. Rieux and Laughing Lagomorph.

White Pony? Why and how I thought that was the title, I’ll never know.

And thanks to pinkfreud for the link too.

8

Perhaps because it alternates with the line, “If you wanna ride, ride the white pony” occasioanlly? It also sneaks a few “If you wanna ride, don’t ride the white horse/pony” in there. Better advice, really, since the white pony/horse is heroin.

9

Huh. My last response didn’t seem the least bit snarky and assholish in my head. It kinda does now that I read it . Sorry about that. No snark was intended.

10

That song f’n rocks.
(jeez, my vocabulary is so limited today, not sure why that is, anyhoo…)

11

Laid Back is from Denmark! And no, Amsterdam is not the capital of Copenhagen. :smiley:

Sorry, but people getting Denmark and the Netherlands mixed up (and you’re not the first Doper to have done this) is one of my pet peeves. Grrrrr!

12

You Swiss are so sensitive.

13

Thank God I’m German, or this would really get me peeved. :smiley:

14

OK, here are the lyrics, just so people don’t get confused:

*If you wanna ride,
Don’t ride the white horse.
If you wanna ride,
Don’t ride the white horse.
White horse,
Don’t ride the white horse.
White horse,
Don’t ride the white horse.

If you wanna be rich,
You got to be a bitch.
If you wanna be rich,
You got to be a bitch.
I said rich,
Rich you bitch.

If you wanna ride,
Ride the white pony.
Ride,
Ride the white pony.
White pony,
White pony*

I remember when this came out in the 1984. The word on the street was that “white horse” was heroin and “white pony” was cocaine.

Now I’m a little confused as to why the intarwebs seem confused as to whether it was done by a group called “laid back” or “the gap band.” It seems clear that “laid back” were the creators, but I wonder if “the gap band” did the American release… sort of like Falco did “Der Kommissar” originally in German but in the US the release we know best is by an unknown called “After The Fire.”

Man, I love pop music history. Thanks for reminding me of this one.

15

Probably not. My guess is that one person mislabeled it, and due to the nature of the how the files spread, this mislabeling spread with it.

16

I remember it as being the Gap Band, too, and I haven’t heard it since I was cocktailing at a singles bar back in the 80s - before P2P sharing.

Of course, I could be wrong.

17

Here is an album on Amazon.com that has the song, with a decent sound sample available. Is this the song you mean? That one is one of my favorites too.