Cheevyjames’ Musical Roundhouse

Released: 2011
Tracks: Ready or Not; Sick and Tired; Captain Zero
Best track: Sick and Tired
Track to skip: none

Once I found out about this release, I was very excited to hear it.  Jason Weisenburg (vocals, guitar & bass) was previously in one of my favorite bands, Flat Mass, and it’s great to hear new music from the voice of that (for me) highly influential band.  It was great to hear his voice after not having any new music from him in so long.  Well, the wait was definitely worth it.  As much as I love the progressive and improvisational aspects of Flat Mass, it’s great to hear Weisenburg working in a more modern rock/pop direction.  Once I got over my initial excitement of this single, I was really blown away by the quality of the songwriting.  No surprise, that’s for sure, but still a nice jolt of WOW.  Sick and Tired, especially, is an absolutely tremendous song.  It’s so well-crafted with a fantastic bridge and a chorus that sticks in your head for days.  Captain Zero is another great chorus with a nice groove throughout the song.

When someone’s been away from music for so long (over a decade for Weisenburg, I believe) it’s easy to be a bit skeptical.  I mean, would he still have it?  I’m so pleased to say that these songs have such a fire in them and there’s so much passion in the music that it’s infectious.  Everything sounds great here and the contributions from the backing musicians (Pete Young on drums, and Polyphonic Spree’s Nick Groesch on keys and Luna Matto on backing vocals) boost the songs even further.  These are all really great songs and I can’t wait to hear more new music from Jason.  A three-song CD is way too short and I find myself listening to this several times in a row…and like any good music, I continuously discover new aspects to these songs with each listen.  Great stuff & highly recommended, esp. for Sick and Tired; what a great song.

Rating: 85

Recorded: 1967-1968; Released: 2001
Tracks: Hypocrite (recorded at the Beacon Royal Hotel); Digging My Lawn (a); Tremelo Study in A Major (Spanish Suite); Newlyweds; Suite No. 1; Scrivens; Make it Today  (A); Digging My Lawn (b); Why Don’t You Just Drop In (i); I Talk to the Wind (1); Under the Sky (*); Plastic Pennies; Passages of Time; Under the Sky (**); Murder; I Talk to the Wind (2); Erudite Eyes; Make it Today (B); Wonderland; Why Don’t You Just Drop In (ii); She is Loaded
Best track: Make it Today (A)
Track to skip: none

It was a happy day when I heard about the release of this album.  There aren’t a ton of King Crimson fans anyway and those that actually enjoy the pre-Crimson album, The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles & Fripp, is a *very* small number.  So I realize that I’m in a very tiny minority who might care about this – an album of home-recorded demos by Michael Giles, Peter Giles, Robert Fripp, Ian McDonald & Judy Dyble.  Besides enjoying the music contained here, I completely love the historical aspect of this album: home demos from the core of King Crimson a year before that band existed.  And yes, there’s a significant amount of Judy Dyble vocals on here.  Yay!  I love the GGF album, but the addition of McDonald and Dyble really make the music good, McDonald especially.  Crimson lyricist Peter Sinfield appears here as well, contributing lyrics to a handful of songs.

These songs were recorded concurrently as the sessions for Cheerful Insanity in 1968, the difference being that the band recorded this in their living room.  It’s striking how damn good the quality of these recordings are.  I mean, this is 1968 we’re talking about…and there are a lot of overdubs on these songs.  For the most part, the sound quality here is excellent.  The only songs that are of a “lesser quality” are Hypocrite (recorded in 1967 and included here as some of the earliest recordings the band ever made), the first version of Under the Sky & Passages of Time.  Well, on Passages of Time most of the song sounds good, but there are some moments, especially in the overdubs, where the leakage and distortion really affect the sound quality.  However, I’m so glad this track was included because it’s a good song and more importantly, there’s a section in here that would later appear in Peace (A Beginning, A Theme, An End) on Crimson’s In the Wake of Poseidon (the “searching for me” section).  Other than those few everything here sounds surprisingly good.

By looking at the tracklist you can tell that there are multiple versions of a good number of these songs, but I like hearing the differences between them.  Only a few of these songs were recorded for the Cheerful Insanity album, so it’s wonderful to hear 10 songs that were “unheard” in regards to GG&F.  An extra addition for collectors, included here are 2 versions of Crimson’s I Talk to the Wind, including the same version that later appeared on the 1976 Crimson compilation “The Young Person’s Guide to King Crimson”.  My favorite song on this album is Make it Today, esp. the first version with a huge dose of Judy Dyble’s vocals.  It’s a great song and was a wonderful surprise when I got this album.   Truthfully, all of the new songs here are good.

The liner notes go into awesome detail about the process they used to record these songs as well as the most detailed history of the band I’ve ever read.   All around, this is a great package and a much unexpected release for me.  The album makes a perfect companion to the Cheerful Insanity and gives us a clearer picture of how Crimson came to be.  Ian McDonald’s contributions here are my favorite part of the album.  It’s a flute melody here or a vocal there, but his presence here really boosts these tracks and shows how vital his contributions were to Crimson’s debut album.

Rating: 83

Cruising With Ruben & the Jets
Released: 1968
Tracks: Cheap Thrills; Love of My Life; How Could I Be Such a Fool; Deseri; I’m Not Satisfied; Jelly Roll Gum Drop; Anything; Later That Night; You Didn’t Try to Call Me; Fountain of Love; “No. No. No.”; Anyway the Wind Blows; Stuff Up the Cracks

Greasy Love Songs
Recorded: 1962-1969; Released: 2010
Tracks: Cheap Thrills; Love of My Life; How Could I Be Such a Fool; Deseri; I’m Not Satisfied; Jelly Roll Gum Drop; Anything; Later That Night; You Didn’t Try to Call Me; Fountain of Love; “No. No. No.”; Anyway the Wind Blows; Stuff Up the Cracks; Jelly Roll Gum Drop (mono mix); “No. No. No.” (long version); Stuff Up the Cracks (alternative mix); “Serious Fan Mail”; Valerie (mono mix); Jelly Roll Gum Drop (single version); “Secret Greasing”; Love of My Life

Best track: Jelly Roll Gum Drop
Tracks to skip: How Could I Be Such a Fool, I’m Not Satisfied

I decided to do something different for this review and combine 2 albums that are essentially the same material.  There were good and bad points to this, but overall it was fun.  History lesson!  Cruising With Ruben & the Jets, Zappa’s tribute to doo-wop and 50’s R&B, was originally released in 1968.  In 1984 Zappa decided to mess with the original versions of We’re Only In It for the Money and Ruben by recording new bass and drums and removing the old tracks.  Repeating for emphasis: Zappa thought it was a good idea sonically to replace drum and bass tracks recorded in 1967-1968 with those recorded in 1984.  He was wrong.  The awful 1984 mix of Money was thankfully fixed when the original mix came out on CD in 1995.  Yay!  Unfortunately, the original mix of Cruising With Ruben & the Jets stayed in the vaults and wasn’t included with the massive 1995 reissue campaign.  Finally in 2010, Greasy Love Songs comes out and not only gives us the original Ruben stereo mix, but we get a lot of great extras too.

My first listen-through of these albums consisted of me going track by track between both versions.  It was kind of painful.  I’d hear the bad 1984 remix, followed by the corresponding song from the ’68 mix, and then back to the ’84 mix, etc, etc, etc.  It got old.  After that, I just went straight through the albums.  That made me happier, but only when I got to the original mix.

There was a ton of remixing for the 1984 version and possibly some other additions, but the glaringly obvious problem is the introduction of 1980’s sounding bass and drums.  It’s awful and once you hear the original version, you wonder how in the world he ever thought it sounded good.  I’m not going to rag on the musicians here, because both Arthur Barrow and Chad Wackerman are great musicians and they were only doing what their boss told them to do.  It’s all Frank Zappa’s fault for this mess.  I mean, it’s just WRONG to have slap bass on Jelly Roll Gum Drop!

In listening to the 84 version, which is the only way you’ll find “Cruising With Ruben & the Jets” in stores (get Greasy Love songs through zappa.com), I have a hard time getting through it.  The bass and drums ruin it for me.  I know a lot of people felt this way about the ’84 remix of Money as well.  The worst offenders on this version are on How Could I Be Such a Fool and I’m Not Satisfied.  The bass and drums sound so out of place.  Both of these songs previously appeared on Freak Out and I find both versions here kind of plodding.  They really bored me.  One good thing about picking up the Ruben CD is the great artwork.  I love the packaging of Greasy Love Songs, but the cover itself is kinda cruddy.  (I appreciate that it’s a ’53 Nash, though)

So, moving on to Greasy Love Songs and the original mix of Ruben.  Man, it’s a fun album.  Zappa clearly loved this kind of music and you can tell the band had a blast recording these songs.  The original stereo mix sounds so great, esp. when compared to the remix.  There’s so much life in the original recordings!  My favorite songs of the album are Anything, Deseri and Jelly Roll Gum Drop.  Anything is probably the straightest song on the album – classic-sounding doo-wop and not the least bit silly.  Love it.  Deseri is a ton of fun and I especially love Ray Collins’ slight vocal mess up right before the spoken middle section.  Staying true to the time, the mistake was left in.  Jelly Roll Gum Drop definitely gets my award for best on the album.  The not-so-subtle double entendre in the lyrics is awesome and always makes me smile.  Plus, it’s just a great song with very cool chord changes.  This song especially shows how replacing the bass was a travesty because Roy Estrada plays a great bass line here.  I love the background vocals and horns on this song as well.

Other highlights for me include Love of My Life which is one of my favorite Zappa doo-wop songs and Frank’s snarling guitar solo at the end of Stuff Up the Cracks.  It’s a tone straight out of the studio version of Stinkfoot some 5 years later.  As for the extra songs, it’s great to hear all of the alternate and early versions of these songs – not to mention the Studio Z version of Love of My Life from ’62 or so.  Both Serious Fan Mail and Secret Greasing are interview segments that shed some more light on the songs.  And of course, in Greasy Love Songs we get excellent liner notes and pictures – especially the fake “school photos” of the band.

Overall, I like the album… as it was originally released.  I have no need to listen to the remixed version.  The original Ruben isn’t Zappa’s best album (not even close), but it’s definitely a fun listen.  Ratings go as follows: Cruising With Ruben & the Jets refers to the CD issue of this album and not the original mix.

Ratings:

Cruising With Ruben & the Jets – 65
Greasy Love Songs – 80