Artist: Ruben and the Jets
Genre(s):
Rock
Discography:
For Real!
Year: 1973
Tracks: 11
So, this is the report -- familiar to all fans of Frank Zappa -- of Ruben Sano and his '53 Nash, and the band he left behind at 19 when his girlfriend said she'd provide him if he didn't depart the group. Right?Wrong.This is the report of Ruben Guevara and the real world Ruben & the Jets. The latter was introduced as a nome de disque by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention for their 1968 album Cruising with Ruben & the Jets. At the meter, biography and art were regularly borrowing from each other in both directions all about Zappa and company. The Mothers of Invention album Freak Out! (1966) had served as role of the aspiration for the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), which Zappa and company, in turn, satirized -- along with the state of psyche elicited by it -- on We're Only in It for the Money (1968).Later that same class, Zappa and company created the fictitious "Ruben & the Jets" image for purposes of doing an album, Cruising with Ruben & the Jets, that was both a loving protection to and satire of '50s rock & roll, and specially of doo wop music. It was a record that worked either square or as a travesty (particularly of doo ginzo lyrics, which Zappa loathed as much as he loved the music); and it included not only some of his pre-Mothers do work, only a handful of songs off of Junky Out! reimagined in distinctly '50s damage, which helped give it an extra layer of attract for the already initiated. It didn't sell in brobdingnagian numbers racket (few of Zappa's records in those years did), just it influenced a lot of former artists, including -- again -- the Beatles, whose have back-to-the-roots project (in the beginning called "Get Back" and finished as Rent It Be), followed a few months later. And as a purely personal observance, it was the showtime Frank Zappa album that this writer remembers turning up in the hands of whatsoever kyd in his high school. Zappa and the Mothers touched on to other projects and ideas, and the "Ruben" album became part of their history, and that might've been the end of it.Just 1 person world Health Organization heard the album was Ruben Ladron de Guevara from Los Angeles, wHO was a isaac Bashevis Singer, musician, and songster with a special dearest of rock candy & undulate. He sour up backstage after a Mothers gig in L.A. and told Zappa how much he'd loved the criminal record -- he likewise pointed out that his list was Ruben, and he did music in that style. A duet of years later they crossed paths again, and Zappa suggested that Guevara think about putt together a band. He took the mesmerism and ran with it, and came back to Zappa with a band and the idea of vocation it "Ruben & the Jets." They requisite Zappa's permission and he gave it, and also suggested that if they treasured to record an album, he'd produce it, if that was okay.It was, and therefore the world all of a sudden had a real world Ruben & the Jets, with a channelise Zappa connection. And for his role, Zappa rosiness to the occasion with one of the c. H. Best (and straightest) productions of his vocation, and one that oozed virtuosity out of every note, far beyond what anyone was expecting from a retro-rock & roll album in 1973. But you could understand how very much Zappa liked the dance orchestra and their sound from the fact that he took them on a 1972 West Coast hitch supporting the Mothers, patch the album was in the works. And when the latter surfaced in 1973 on Zappa's have Indiscreet label (through Mercury Records), the connections 'tween artistic production and life sentence became even closer -- Jim "Motorhead" Sherwood, wHO had played in Zappa's Ruben & the Jets, was performing with the real guys. In a sense, this was a natural -- Sherwood and Zappa had one time played together in a rock music & roll/R&B outfit called the Omens, and the record album, appropriately highborn For Real!, was an extension of that history. The tangible Ruben & the Jets consisted of Ruben Guevara on vocals and tambourine, Tony Duran on lead story and slide guitar, Robert "Toad" Camenara on rhythm guitar and vocals, Johnny Martinez on bass, organ, and vocals, Robert "American buffalo" Roberts on tenor saxophone, Bill Wild on bass and minute tenor, Bob Zamora on drums, and Sherwood on barytone saxophone and tambourine. Among the songs, at that place was peerless Zappa original, the beautiful "If I Could Only Be Your Love Again," and although at that place is some difference of opinion on this point among those world Health Organization were there, it seems he as well likely played the jumper cable guitar on the second-half/fade-out for "Dedicated to the One I Love."For Real! was as lots of a masterpiece as Cruising with Ruben & the Jets, only dissimilar -- it was less a work out of satire than the 1968 album had been, though it silent had its moments of capital fun amid some genuinely, really glorious stone & roll. Zappa took them on circuit nationwide with his banding in 1973, and on a second tour during the like year Ruben & the Jets were engaged alongside Three Dog Night and West, Bruce & Laing. They too played aboard the likes of Tower of Power, Azteca, and Cheech & Chong.Despite all of their work, the group ne'er broke through to a wider public, and For Real! ne'er got as practically exposure as the prescribed Zappa record album. Sad to say -- as peerless of Zappa's best productions -- it's scarcely known by Zappa fans wHO came along in the decades that followed. The grouping did peerless more LP, Con Safos, simply ceased operative together in the mid-'70s, for the most part undischarged to Guevara getting the offer of a contract for a solo recording, and the frustrations of not fashioning sufficiency money. According to Sherwood, they played besides many benefits and non enough paying gigs.
