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Cruising with Ruben & the Jets

Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention - Cruising with Ruben & the Jets Audio CD

A fair review of the Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention "Cruising with Ruben & the Jets" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention reviews here, or go back to the Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention tabs.

Band: Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention
Title: Cruising with Ruben & the Jets
Rating:

Release Date: 1995-05-16
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Cheap Thrills 2: Love of My Life 3: How Could I Be Such a Fool? 4: Deseri 5: I'm Not Satisfied 6: Jelly Roll Gum Drop 7: Anything 8: Later That Night 9: You Didn't Try to Call Me 10: Fountain of Love 11: No. No. No. 12: Any Way the Wind Blows 13: Stuff Up the Cracks

Great Music and Memories
The music is entertaining and the cover is great. Zappa does a great job swinging to the 50's sounds with this music. Our family discovered this years ago; it got lost over the years (we had a cassette) and I just looked for it on Amazon and found it. There are several kids (now in their 30's) who grew up listening to and singing 'Jelly Roll Gumdrop'. I'm excited to take it to the family reunion! .

5 stars for the original vinyl, 3 stars for the CD edits
While the album as a whole stands as Frank's loving tribute to East L. The original vinyl "Ruben & The Jets" album was my first FZ purchase. A. Doo-Wop and early ballad-driven rock and roll, my favorite track was. . . and is. . . "Stuff Up The Cracks. " There's really nothing else like it in the entire Zappa catalog, because a very formal and traditional 50s style "my baby done left me" ballad melts into a fuzzy, wah-wah driven classic Frank solo in the final moments. Having memorized the original solo note-for-note, I can tell you that the bass and drums were not the only portions of the master tape to be re-recorded for CD release. That solo always stood as the cherry on the sundae, the payoff of an already great album.

Frank easily could have duplicated the notes and phrasing of the original solo to make the new performance a perfect match. He chose not to. He had his reasons, and we'll never know them. But remember that Steve Vai's original role in the Zappa band was to transcribe "impossible" compositions like "The Black Page. " This was a conscious decision to re-record the solo and "approximate" the original.

Of course, Zappa was well aware of the obsessive collectors in his audience, and the whining and moaning that would have followed a decision to NOT release "Ruben" on CD is probably 100 times greater than the fact that the CD edits upset the purists (like me).

It is what it is. It was not possible for FZ to utilize a CD-quality master, so he took what he had and tweaked and fiddled around and this is what we got.

Three stars for the CD. 5 for the vinyl. Hunt down the vinyl.

A masterpiece
Get it from various places in the internet (type the name of the album and the word 'blogspot' and google it) the original version of this, one of the Mother's best works. Of course, i am talking about the original (vinyl) album. I downloaded mine from some one who had a very clean copy and made a great job 'mastering' it. I can't believe that the Zappa family has not rescued this great doo-wop work yet. .

A Major Error Of Judgement
Most suffered some sort of tweaking as Zappa attempted to "improve" on what he'd done in years before. During the 80s, Zappa began to reissue his back catalogue on CD. Some albums got through unscathed (Absolutely Free & Burnt Weeny Sandwich) some benefited from well chosen additional material (Hot Rats & Weasels Ripped My Flesh) some suffered from indulgently chosen additional material and crappy remixing/re-editing (Uncle Meat & Freak Out)and a couple were just really sloppily mastered. A quick comparison between portions of "Weasels" and the same material on the beautifully mastered "Ahead Of Their Time" amply demonstrates this point.

But the biggest travesty was reserved for "We're Only In It For The Money" and "Cruising With Ruben And The Jets". Both these albums copped new rhythm tracks, recorded using members of his contemporary touring band. It's interesting to note that even the musicians booked to do these sessions thought Zappa was out of his mind.

The reason Zappa gave at the time was that the original masters were lost, but as all tracks on the reissued CDs use some components from the original recordings, the original multi track recordings must have been available to Zappa. A remix using all the original performances was - and probably still is - possible.

The real reason is likely to be that the ever-litigious Zappa was at war with his old band, The Mothers Of Invention, who wanted to be paid royalties from the reissues. But, whatever the reason, the result was two completely awful sounding albums, completely devoid of the warmth, humour, personality and humanity that enveloped even the most technically difficult Mothers Of Invention albums.

This squabble probably resulted in these fine, seminal old albums that had been originally released as Mothers Of Invention albums, being reissued as Frank Zappa albums.

Mercifully after a tirade of bad press Zappa eventually "found" a half inch master of "Money", and it was eventually, begrudgingly reissued in all its 1967 glory, the old one being ignominiously withdrawn.

"Ruben and the Jets" was not so lucky. Artie Tripp and Jim Black's lovely drum patterns are gone and so is the heart and soul of the album. The last track, "Stuff Up The Cracks" comes the closest to the original recordings but, these days, if I want to hear this lightweight but enjoyable little journey through fifties nostalgia, I dig out my old Verve vinyl.

Stephen Renfree .

A question
It, frankly, was the best part of the LP. I have not heard his CD but I did own the LP at one time and would rate it 3 stars only because it had a very funny parody of garage band histories (along with a classic picture of Zappa) on the back. However I have this memory of Little Richard's song "Directly from my Heart" being on the LP. Can anyone verify this for me? Is my Alzheimer's taking over?.

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