One Track Mind – Ruby
I feel like the 90′s was loaded with long lost great singles, though I’d have a tough time convincing The Giant Panther of this. I was digging deep while watching football this afternoon to come up with something unusual that might jog some memories this evening and the band Ruby came to mind. This band is so forgotten that I haven’t even put it on my hard drive yet. Now I am forced to. I’m trying like hell to give you guys quality MP3 files for your iPods (320 KPS), but it’s not always possible. Sometimes I put the band’s music on years ago and haven’t found time to upgrade the sound (from 128 KPS). I’m working on it folks…
As I have stated in the past I have a large CD collection and I just haven’t gotten around to uploading every one of them. It takes forever to re-label them and when I started the process most everything was done at the lower quality capacity because I never dreamed I’d have three or four external terabyte drives running around here with room to spare. I’ll probably wind up doing nearly everything twice, but at least everything in the last six to nine months has been uploaded at the best possible MP3 quality. I feel like I’ve been working on this for three years straight.
Technically, Ruby had two “hits” (at least in America) on 1995′s Salt Peter. One was called “Paraffin” and the other “Tiny Meat.” I believe “Paraffin” was the first one, but don’t quote me. I didn’t realize it at the time, but Salt Peter was in league with records like Portishead’s 1995 masterpiece Dummy. I don’t think I gave much though to what Trip Hop actually was, but I was, and still am, positively mesmerized by music like Portishead and Mazzy Star. I don’t know what drugs (kidding!) these people do, but I love the result. Ruby’s Salt Peter will never get the recognition of a record like Dummy, but there were similarities. I am always looking for records that change my whole latitude and Salt Peter was one of those records some fourteen years ago.
Ruby consisted of Scottish singer Lesley Rankine and American producer Mark Walk and some high tech computing. Their Ruby alliance began in Seattle, Washington in 1994. According to our friends at Wikipedia, Ruby became the name of this two person act because both Lesley and Mark had maternal grandmothers named Ruby. They messed around with Jazz, Industrial, Trip Hop and Electronic music and released two studio CDs and three remixes CDs between 1995 and 2001. Salt Peter is the only one that I own. Wikipedia also has an interesting tidbit about Rankine; she lived in New Orleans for about six months, but left abruptly when a murder took place in the garden across from where she was living. Apparently the murder victim’s clothing was found in her garbage by the authorities. I guess that was enough for her and she headed back to Seattle where she once worked in Industrial acts known as Silverfish and Pigface. Don’t worry, I’d never heard of them either…
It’s fun to re-discover bands like Ruby a decade or more after I bought the CD. It’s easy to lose sight of acts like this when you buy alot of records like me. They just seem to get swallowed up only to seemingly fall from the sky years later. That’s Fun For Me (oooh another one hit wonder band for future posts…I won’t make you guess…Moloko).
Buy or download Salt Peter from Amazon here.
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About the author
I'm just a guy who's mother used to play music constantly when I was as a child. I was exposed to a slew of 40's & 50's acts like Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Bill Haley & The Comets, Chuck Berry, Danny & The Juniors and countless one hit wonder bands. Add in your Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, Eddie Fisher with scores of popular soundtracks like Zorba The Greek and West Side Story and it's no wonder I became a music fiend. Thanks Mom. My first 45 RPM was The Letter by The Boxtops, but I went on to own a pretty decent 45 collection until I got the brainiac idea to sell it to the neighbors so I could buy baseball cards. Goodbye priceless Beatles, Stones, Who, Kinks, and Animals collector's items. Hello seven copies of backup catchers. I've been collecting since 1967 or so. Be it eight track tapes, cassettes, 45's, LP's, CDs, MP3's...even VHS or DVD copies of live performances; I've been going at it quite a while. When I was asked to contribute to this site I didn't have to be asked twice. I'm having a ball...
| This entry was posted by John Jay on January 17, 2010 at 11:49 pm, and is filed under One Track Mind. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
about 7 months ago
um. Moloko is not a one hit wonder band.
“sing it back” and “the time is now” were both massive singles.
and the lead singer, Rosin Murphy, enjoys quite a successful solo career…
about 7 months ago
Ruby were great. And you ought to ought to look out for second album “short staffed at the gene pool” and for the remix albums of both albums.
And finally, look out for Fuckin’ Driving or What? by Silverfish.
about 7 months ago
Hey, Thanks C-Tel. I will look out for those records. And Jay, so sorry if I insulted you by saying Moloko was a one hit wonder. Folks are very touchy about this lately. I don’t mean to insult anyone. Thanks for the comments!