Frank Zappa - Cruising with Ruben & The Jets
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Free Music Notes for Cruising with Ruben & The Jets
Free Music Review: a bit of nostalgia for the old folks
Hit: 4 Stars
Well crafted. Amusing. Zappa made these tunes (all doo wop 50'/60's style) totally his own.Free Music Review: 5 stars for the original vinyl, 3 stars for the CD edits
Hit: 3 Stars
The original vinyl "Ruben & The Jets" album was my first FZ purchase. While the album as a whole stands as Frank's loving tribute to East L.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.
Free Music Review: pretty pretty?
Hit: 3 Stars
This is a flawed and strange record. It contains some incredible pop gems - "Anything" being a real, doo-wop masterpiece, with "Deseri" running a close second - and some tragic missteps - the three songs remade from "Freak Out" fall short of their original versions (which were already good). I can't judge whether the redone drums are an improvement or not, but I can say that they give this disc a timeless quality, lending it an almost new wave ambience. I would say that this is for "completists" only, except that some tracks, the two mentioned above as well as "Cheap Thrills," "Stuff up the Cracks" (which contains the only real guitar solo on the album), and "Later that Night" are worth heariing by just about anyone.Free Music Review: Okay 3.5 but no choice for that
Hit: 3 Stars
this recording is a good doo woppy type of record, and if you enjoy that stuff, it is a good deal. Very well done. BUT, it is worth the price of admission if just for one track alone.. STUFF UP THE CRACKS, check out the power chording slapping of the guitar that FZ does at the end of the song. It begs you to hear more. It is done so well that even Pete Townshend would be jealous.
I keep replaying that Song. It is odd because power chording just seems to strange to the doo wop format, but FZ makes it fit like only he could.
Free Music Review: Good
Hit: 3 Stars
Zappa loved doo-wop, and Rubin and the Jets is the Mothers' pure foray into the genre.
Except for some of the lyrics, this is pure doo-wop, and so you really have to like this music to enjoy this album, unless you are an extreme Zappaphile.
Putting this out in 1968 was such a contrairian gambit--it was all the music everyone was rebelling against- was a gutsy move.
And why Zappa was and will forever be, Zappa.