After a very successful year with The Ride, 4 Him tries to push that music a little further with a full-length video project, The Ride Comes Alive. The majority of the video is from an evening concert at the Mobile Alabama Civic Center.
The video opens with a video for "Ride Of Life." A shady-looking character breaking into a vault and stealing "The 4 Him Ticket," which appears to be a concert ticket or backstage pass. The 4 Him-ers are alerted via the 4 Him sign in the sky (ala Batman) and spring to action. They chase him from set to set in a large production studio, and instantly appear in a costume appropriate for the set: western, Sherlock Holmes-like, disco, a senior prom, and so on. I got a good laugh out of the video. Besides the numerous costume changes and guest appearances (by Bruce Carroll, John Schlitt, Pam Thum, Tuesday's Child and others), there are a few comic moments that I won't spoil for you-and I'll leave the ending for your surprise as well.
The video for "Real Thing," filmed in Moscow, is also included. The live portion is good, but pretty much what you would expect at a 4 Him show. They do a Bee Gees and a Garth Brooks imitation that are each rather humorous and they show some outtakes during the credits. Past that, there aren't any real surprises. They perform "Wings," "Shelter In The Rain," "As Long As My Heart Knows It's You," "Love Finds You," "Strange Way To Save The World," "Where There Is Faith," "The Nature Of Love," "For Future Generations," and a medley of "Over The Horizon," "Do Right," "He Never Changes," "Why?," and "A Man You Would Write About."
There are several interview clips on the project. They talk about their work with Michael Omartian and Peter Wolf, their trip to Russia (as introduction to "Real Thing"), their musical influences (introduction to the Bee Gee imitation), what a day on the road is like for them, and their intent behind the song "For Future Generations."
If you are a serious fan of 4 Him, you will probably want to have this in your video collection. However, if you have seen them in concert before, this probably won't show you too much more than what you have already seen.
