Who Killed Jack Ruby?

Wishing you all temporal tangos, mandible mambos, beryllium blues, & bad teeth this New Year. I believe we are in for "DEEP SHIT" this year, so I'm trying to be uplifting my Self.  From deep in my soul to all...

We all've heard MC5, Velvet Underground, the Dead Boys...but how many of us are familiar with Jack Ruby? Yeah, sure, he shot patsy Oswald before that sad tool could spill the assassination beans, but who is this relatively unknown Jack Ruby?

Jack Ruby came alive in 1973 through vocalist Robin Hall, guitarist Chris Gray, multi-instrumentalist Randy Cohen, & classically-trained viola player Boris Pearlman (notorious himself as Boris Policeband...search out Stereo / Mono by Policeband elsewhere on the web...readily available & a great listen), who were later joined by bassist George Scott (of James Chance & the Contortions / 8-Eyed Spy / John Cale). The first incarnation of Jack Ruby recorded two tracks in a Times Square recording studio in 1974; their signature tune, the nihilistic proto-punk "Hit & Run" & (the first song I ever heard from Jack - this shit made a great sandwich) the bizarre number entitled "Mayonnaise", based around Boris' amplified viola & primitive electronic 'beats' sequenced on Cohen's Serge synthesizer.

These two cuts were used to hustle additional studio time from Epic Records through Sly Stone's A&R, Stephen Paley. Jack now gave birth to three more anthems of arch art-punk: "Bored Stiff"; "Bad Teeth"; & "Sleep Cure" were recorded in a rapid-fire five to six hour session at Columbia Studios in May 1974. On these three song in particular we hear the Jack Ruby sound: Cohen patching musique concrete sounds through the Serge; Gray's banshee guitar playing & Hall's snotty vocals.

Fast forward two years. Cohen has left & is writing for Letterman. Hall & Gray want to reactivated Jack Ruby as a live-performing unit so they hook up with George Scott. This line-up played harder, faster, & louder than any other band in New York at that time. Their rehearsals at Matrix studios & dusk-to-dawn parties at the Bowery apartment behind CBGB's shared by Gray & Scott are legendary. Casa Jack Ruby was a mecca for NYC punk & No-Wave musicians. Hall quit the band unexpectedly in 1977, days before their first scheduled gig. Jack Ruby continued on as a power trio with Gray, the only original member left standing, taking over vocal duties for a couple of shows they played with Teenage Jesus & the Jerks that headlined the Fleshtones. They played one last riotous show with new vocalist Stephen Barth at Max's Kansas City, before calling it quits.

"     Hit & Run is a two-disc set (Hit - CD1 & Run - CD2) of everything (nearly...a fantastic cover of Hawkwind's "Brainstorm" is a much missed ommission - ed.) Jack Ruby recorded between 1973 & 1977 (across four incarnations of the band) that should see them acknowledged as one of the most radical and brilliantly original groups to emerge from the 1970s New York City music scene. Remastered from recently-discovered master tapes, the first disc collects all five of the band's studio recordings, which although forty years old still sound thrillingly-urgent and modern, alongside a 1977 cassette of a band rehearsal, and a 2013 remix by producer Don Fleming. Disc two contains another side to Jack Ruby; a series of largely-electronic, avant-garde pieces from 1972 and 1974—nine short tracks that play like a library record, book-ended by two longer ones—some of the earliest extant recordings made on a Serge synthesizer. What Jack Ruby left is a remarkable legacy of recorded music—hidden for decades, now-revealed—constituting a previously-unheard secret history of the New York City music scene of the early 1970s."    Jon Savage

Jack Ruby - Hit & Run 2xCD, Saint Cecillia Knows CEC002, 2014.

all decryption codes in comments

Hit CD -
Hit & Run
Mayonaise
Bored Stiff
Bad Teeth
Sleep Cure
Beggars Parade
Neon Rimbaud
Out of Touch
Hit & Run (‘77)
Bad Teeth (Don Fleming ‘Instant Mayhem’ remix)

Run CD -
Destroy / Lost
Beryllium Blues
Parietal Cha Cha
Lithium Serenade
Hydrogen Lullaby
Palaatine March
Sphenoid Waltz
Sodium Nocturne
Temporal Tango
Mandible Mambo
Ghost Note

Enjoy,
NØ