Cruising With Ruben & The Jets

Release Info

Released November or December¹ 1968.

Recorded: Apostolic Studios, NYC, December, 1967-February, 1968.
Produced by Frank Zappa.
Engineered by Dick Kunc.
Cover by Cal Schenkel.

Tracks

1. Cheap Thrills (02:39)
2. Love Of My Life (03:08)
3. How Could I Be Such A Fool (03:34)
4. Deseri (02:09)
5. I'm Not Satisfied (04:08)
6. Jelly Roll Gum Drop (02:24)
7. Anything (03:06)
8. Later That Night (03:00)
9. You Didn't Try To Call Me (03:58)
10. Fountain Of Love (03:23)
11. "No. No. No." (02:16)
12. Anyway The Wind Blows (03:02)
13. Stuff Up The Cracks (04:38)

Players

• Frank Zappa (Lead guitar and vocals)
• Ray Collins (lead vocals)
• Roy Estrada (Electric bass and vocals),
• Jimmy Carl Black (Drums)
• Arthur Dyer Tripp III (Drums)
• Ian Underwood (Keyboards and Tenor & alto sax)
• Don Preston (Keyboards)
• Motorhead Sherwood (Baritone sax and tambourine),
• Bunk Gardner (Tenor & alto sax)

1984 Remix:

• Jay Anderson (String bass)
• Arthur Barrow (Bass)
• Chad Wackerman (drums)

Background

The fictitious bio about Ruben Sano next to Frank’s high-school photo on the back cover ends with the fan-club-spoofing fact that the singer “has 3 dogs. Benny, Baby & Martha.” If we return to the back cover of Absolutely Free, we find a wall of graffiti that reads "Benny, Joe, Ruben, Mar[tha], Steve" under an advertisement for Fydo dog collars.

The poodle, a frequent Zappa symbol of the unnatural, repressive shaping of a media-influenced person, appears as Fido the talking dog in "Stink-Foot" on Apostrophe ('), Fido the sex-starved monster in "Cheepnis" on Roxy & Elsewhere and Evelyn the modified (clipped and sculpted) dog listening to the Lumpy Gravy piano-dwellers on One Size Fits All. On the front cover of the latter, God’s hand is tattooed with the Pachuco cross (the Californian Spanish gangster emblem from Frank’s teenage memories), which is also found in the Absolutely Free graffiti. The "God/dog" blasphemy comes into play, implying in this context that religion’s just another media tool that collars the unwary, when God’s hand is seen in the One Size Fits All picture and when one considers the title "Dog Breath, in the Year of the Plague" from Uncle Meat; plagues were among the historical events in Christian history, and the character in the song sings like a Pachuco ("mi carrucha," etc.). God’s sofa is seen on the One Size Fits All cover as well; the Hebrew term En Sof means "the Boundless One."

A small word balloon on Ruben’s front cover, far off to the left, has one of the musicians (whose noses are extended like dogs’ in order to fit their enlarged brains, as the Uncle Meat booklet explains) going "quackquack," spoofing people who try to be cool at the expense of being themselves (acting like a duck rather than a dog). In this case, the quacking singer’s trying to sound black; it’s Frank’s self-effacing joke about being a white person who tries to sing the blues. Duck bills resemble black people’s lips, as the Thing-Fish album points out via its sarcasm-based mockery of those who stereotype. In the army to the left on The Grand Wazoo cover, we see not a singing dog breaking character, but a quacking horse riding into battle (horses have big lips). A similar horse is seen on the back wall in the Ahead Of Their Time drawing, also quacking. On the floor is a book called Uncle Duck, under the only non-dog character in the drawing: a bird. The French word oiseau (say "wazoo") means "bird."

The songs on Cruising With Ruben & The Jets are "...more than recreations, they're careful conglomerates of archetypical clichés." - Frank Zappa interview for International Times (issue 63), 1969

Versions

ZFT #	Version #	# discs	Format	Catalog #	Release (YYYY-MM-DD)	Barcode (EAN-13)	Artwork	Comment
5	1.1 Original Stereo	?	LP	MGM Verve V6 5055-X	1968-11 or1 1968-12-02	None		US edition.
	1.2 Original Mono	?	LP
	Unknown	1	LP	Barking Pumpkin BPR 7777-5	1985-04-19			Included in The Old Masters, Box I set.
	2 Important remix	1	CD	Rykodisc RCD 10063	1987-10	0014431006326		US edition.
		1	CD	VideoArts VACK 5024	1994-10-26	4988112405271		Japanese edition.
		1	CD	Rykodisc RCD 10505	1995-05-16	0014431050527		US edition. Matrix # DISCTRONICS RCD 10505 01 IFPI L501 IFPI 8724
		1	CD	VideoArts VACK 5118	1995-10-25	4988112407787		Japanese edition.
		1	CD	VideoArts VACK 5253	1996-06-01	4988112408531		Japanese edition.
		1	CD	VideoArts VACK 1207	2001-09-21	4988112412637		Japanese edition, mini-album papersleeve.

Notes

1. Depending on the source, released November 1968 (zappa.com - The Official Frank Zappa Website, Zappa Patio and Michael Gray) or December 2 1968 (IINK).