{"product_id":"zappacruis_2606","title":"Zappa, Frank - Cruising With Ruben \u0026 The Jets - White Hot Stamper","description":"\u003cp\u003eIs the thought bubble on the cover the real story behind the album?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eIs this the Mothers of Invention recording under a different name in a last ditch attempt to get their cruddy music on the radio?\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAmazing sound for this record of greasy love songs and cretin simplicity to offer to audiophiles and music lovers alike from all corners of the world. We absolutely LOVE this album here at Better Records, or at least that portion of Better Records that remembers it from high school still loves it (which would narrow it down to a subset of just me I guess, but who's counting?).\u003c\/p\u003e \n\u003cp\u003eAnyway, it's a classic of twisted doo-wop that belongs in your collection, and a real \u003ca href=\"\/search?q=tag:%22Desert-Island-Disc%22\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDesert Island Disc\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e for yours truly. At least we think you should give it a chance anyway; hearing it sound this good might just make a believer out of you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eTubey Magic Is Key\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMany copies are just too thin and edgy to be as fun and enjoyable as we have every right to expect from this kind of purposely un-hip, un-cool, goofy retro-pop. We were gratified to find that the top finishers had a healthy dose of the Tubey Magical richness found on the best analog recordings from the latter half of the 60s (1968 in this case). This is a very good recording indeed, judged, as is only fair, solely by the best of the pressings we've heard. In other words, the bad pressings sound like crap, but that's no reflection on the quality of the master tape.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs with most Zappa records, an extended top end is devilishly hard to come by. That said, on of a primarily vocal album such as this the midrange is where the music lives or dies. The copies that were rich and full-bodied, with natural vocal reproduction, tended to score the highest grades in our shootout.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCopies that failed to convey the energy and exuberance of the singers and musicians -- their love of this music that time had forgotten even by 1968 -- as you may well imagine scored relatively poorly. This music is supposed to be \u003ci\u003efun\u003c\/i\u003e, and really not a whole lot else, so the copies that aren't fun scored sub-Hot Stamper grades. (Lifelessness is of course our main beef with Heavy Vinyl these days. When we play one of these new thick LPs the sound is often so \u003ci\u003eblase\u003c\/i\u003e that I feel that the longer it plays, the more the air is being sucked out of the room.)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eWhat The Best Sides Of Cruising With Ruben \u0026amp; The Jets Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe most Tubey Magic, without which you have \u003ci\u003ealmost\u003c\/i\u003e nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in \u003ca href=\"\/search?q=tag:%221968%22\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e1968\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNatural tonality in the midrange -- with all the instruments having the correct timbre\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTransparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNo doubt there's more but we hope that should do for now. \u003ci\u003ePlaying the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above,\u003c\/i\u003e and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eWhat We're Listening For On Cruising With Ruben \u0026amp; The Jets\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eEnergy\u003c\/strong\u003e for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThen: \u003cstrong\u003epresence and immediacy\u003c\/strong\u003e. The vocals aren't \"back there\" somewhere, lost in the mix. They're front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe Big Sound\u003c\/strong\u003e comes next -- wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThen \u003cstrong\u003etransient information\u003c\/strong\u003e -- fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eTight punchy bass\u003c\/strong\u003e -- which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNext: \u003cstrong\u003etransparency\u003c\/strong\u003e -- the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eExtend the top and bottom\u003c\/strong\u003e and \u003ci\u003evoila\u003c\/i\u003e, you have The Real Thing -- an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eThe Really, Really Awful Remixed CD\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe album was reissued on CD in 1985, and almost all of the rhythm tracks were re-recorded at that time. Since all of the reissues that followed have contained the new versions of the material, early pressings of this album, such as this one, are the only way to hear this album the way it was originally recorded.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI made the mistake of buying the new CD and was appalled -- yes, that's the right word for it -- by both the modernized sound and the wrong-headed re-recording of the rhythm tracks. The \u003ci\u003eonly\u003c\/i\u003e way to hear this music properly is on the early Blue Label Verve LP.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eThe Story of Ruben and the Jets\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cstrong\u003eReviews\u003c\/strong\u003e tab above has some wonderful background information on the making of this classic from the preternaturally fertile mind of Frank Zappa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThis is an album of greasy love songs and cretin simplicity. We made it because we really like this kind of music (just a bunch of old men with rock and roll clothes sitting around the studio, mumbling about the good old days). Ten years from now you'll be sitting around with your friends someplace doing the same thing if there's anything left to sit on.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFrom the Liner Notes\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/blockquote\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eVinyl Condition\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMint Minus Minus and maybe a bit better is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThose of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of other pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don't have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful originals.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that's certainly your prerogative, but we can't imagine losing what's good about this music -- the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight -- just to hear it with less background noise.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eA Must Own Record\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCruising With Ruben \u0026amp; The Jets is a recordings that belong in any serious rock collection. Others that belong in that category can be found \u003ca href=\"\/search?q=tag:%22core-rock-collection%22\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ehere\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n","brand":"Zappa, Frank","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51983211266344,"sku":"zappacruis","price":599.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0257\/3415\/2295\/files\/zappacruis.jpg?v=1781629557","url":"https:\/\/better-records.com\/products\/zappacruis_2606","provider":"Better Records","version":"1.0","type":"link"}