| Cruising With Ruben And The Jets | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio album by The Mothers of Invention | ||||
| Released | December 2, 1968 | |||
| Recorded | Apostolic Studios, NYC December 1967 - February 1968 |
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| Genre | Doo-wop, comedy rock | |||
| Length | 40:34 | |||
| Label | Verve/Bizarre | |||
| Producer | Frank Zappa | |||
| Frank Zappa Studio Albums chronology | ||||
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| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | [1] |
Cruising With Ruben & The Jets is an album by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, released in December 1968, and controversially reissued in an alternate mix with newly recorded bass and percussion in 1984.
Contents |
The album is fashioned as a simultaneous parody of and tribute to the doo-wop music Frank and many of the Mothers grew up with and worked on. The album has been described as a collision of high and low art, with Stravinsky-style chord changes and unusual tempos applied to purposely trite and banal teenage pop love songs.[2] The backing vocals at the end of "Fountain of Love", for instance, sing the opening melody from Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.
The album predated a mini-revival of 1950s rock music styles and touched off the Rock and roll revival movement. Soon after it came out the group Sha-Na-Na formed in New York City to play their own brand of 1950s style doo-wop. Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley relaunched their careers not long after the album was released.
In 1984, Zappa, unhappy with the sound quality of Cruising with Ruben & the Jets,[3] enlisted Arthur Barrow and Chad Wackerman to re-record the original bass and drum parts (although they were not credited) for the Old Masters Box One re-issue of the album. In addition to the new drums and bass, Zappa added several vocal overdubs and heavily remixed the album, resulting in what has been described as "a whole new album" [4]
Like Zappa's remix of We're Only in It for the Money, which was prepared at around the same time, this new version of the album has proved to be very controversial among fans.[5] Unlike We're Only in It for the Money, which was rereleased in its original form in 1995, the remix of Cruising with Ruben & the Jets was the only version of the album available from 1984 until 2010, when Greasy Love Songs, was released. A compilation of both the album's original mix and eight previously-unreleased tracks, Greasy Love Songs was the third collection in a series of FZ audio documentaries following The MOFO Project/Object and Lumpy Money.[4]
In 1973, a real doo-wop band, consisting of Ruben Guevara, Tony Duran, Robert "Frog" Camarena, Johhny Martinez, Robert "Buffalo" Roberts, Bill Wild, and Bob Zamora approached Zappa to ask him if they could use the name "Ruben and the Jets" for their band. Zappa not only approved of the name, he produced the band's first album, which was titled For Real!, a direct reference to the 1968 Mothers album with the "fake" Ruben & The Jets.
In 2008, the Lagunitas Brewing Company put out a Stout named after the album, featuring the cover art on the label. This is one in a series of beers planned to be released on the 40th anniversary of each of Zappa's studio albums.
All songs by Frank Zappa except where noted.
Album - Billboard (North America)
| Year | Chart | Position |
|---|---|---|
| 1969 | Pop Albums | 110 |