Ruby Vroom
| Ruby Vroom | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by Soul Coughing | ||||
| Released | September 27, 1994 | |||
| Recorded | April – June 1994 | |||
| Genre | Alternative rock, alternative hip hop, beat poetry, experimental | |||
| Length | 61:27 | |||
| Label |
Slash/Warner Bros. Records 45752 |
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| Producer | Tchad Blake | |||
| Soul Coughing chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   |
| Christgau's Consumer Guide | A |
| Encyclopedia of Popular Music |  |
| Entertainment Weekly | A |
| The Guardian | |
| Rolling Stone | |
| The Rolling Stone Album Guide | |
Ruby Vroom is the debut studio album by American rock band Soul Coughing, released in 1994. The album's sound is a mixture of sample-based tunes (loops of Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse" on "Bus to Beelzebub", Toots and the Maytals, Howlin' Wolf, The Andrews Sisters, and The Roches on "Down to This", and a loop of sampler player Mark De Gli Antoni's orchestral horns on "Screenwriter's Blues", among others). It also features guitar-based tunes like "Janine", "Moon Sammy", and "Supra Genius" and jazzy, upright-bass-fueled songs that often slyly quoted other material—the theme from Courageous Cat on "Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago", Thelonious Monk's "Misterioso" on "Casiotone Nation", and Bobby McFerrin's cover of Joan Armatrading's "Opportunity" on "Uh, Zoom Zip".
The album sold approximately 70,000 copies, as of April 1996, according to Billboard.
Ruby was named after Ruby Froom, daughter of record producer Mitchell Froom—a frequent collaborator of Ruby Vroom producer Tchad Blake—and singer/songwriter Suzanne Vega.
The album was recorded at Sunset Sound Factory in Hollywood, Blake and Froom's usual haunt—a storage room near the studio's lounge was filled with vintage keyboards and road cases filled with toys—whistles, baby rattles, children's toy xylophones. Many of these ended up in the songs, such as a train whistle played by Doughty on "Uh, Zoom Zip". This was in keeping with Tchad Blake's spirit of maverick experimentation, which included sticking a binaural head-shaped microphone in front of Yuval Gabay's drumkit, sticking a mic in a car muffler, called "the Bone" and sticking that in the drum booth as well, and having Doughty improvise wild, yelling ad-libs on "Casiotone Nation", singing into a cheap amplification system called an Ahuja that Blake bought in India. The speaker was essentially a huge bullhorn atop a stick.
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Wikipedia