Jack Ruby

There is more than one artist with this name: 1. Jack Ruby was a short-lived NY band featuring George Scott of the James Chance & the Contortions fame. ?Seven years ago, a guy named Gary Reese wrote me and said he was friends with the late Contortions bass player George Scott, and that he could probably help me out with some information on the mythic band Jack Ruby. Up until that point, nobody knew of any surviving recordings by this unit.

1. Jack Ruby was a short-lived NY band featuring George Scott of the James Chance & the Contortions fame.
?Seven years ago, a guy named Gary Reese wrote me and said he was friends with the late Contortions bass player George Scott, and that he could probably help me out with some information on the mythic band Jack Ruby. Up until that point, nobody knew of any surviving recordings by this unit. They remained a shady footnote in underground rock history. After years of cajoling and pursuit, Gary finally convinced George's brother to let him make a dub of a ratty old cassette tape with two Fall ?77 Jack Ruby rehearsals on them. Those rehearsals belied an incredible amount of guitar-skree bombast. I mastered the tracks to eke out the most clarity possible from them and the result was circulated amongst very few cognoscenti with little fanfare.

In 2009, another Jack Ruby tape surfaced. Gary was in contact with Scott's old girlfriend Leslie, who had a mysterious 1/4 reel of tape with the band's name and some song titles scrawled on it. It took some time, but I had the reel baked and transferred . . . and, lo and behold, it featured four crystal clear-sounding ?74 studio demos! I kept playing these great demos and I thought to myself, ?If I'm listening to this stuff so much, somebody else is going to want to hear it too!? That's the point where?I knew it was my duty to release this anthology.

So, we found all the surviving ex-members of the group and put together this fully-authorized package featuring eight killer tracks of noisy, high-energy greatness and designed a full-color package featuring extensive liner notes and tons of period photos. This release is a must-have for those who crave those truly bizarre missing links from the pre-punk past. Jack Ruby's tough, sleazy sound is a direct antecedent to both PUNK and NO WAVE.?

- WEASEL WALTER, SEPTEMBER 2011

2. Jack Ruby was a reggae producer most prolific during the 1970s and early 1980s. Along with producing reggae artists (most notably Burning Spear), Jack Ruby released dub reggae albums, along with operating his own sound system Jack Ruby Hi-Fi.

3. Jack Ruby is a frequent mis-tagging of experimental Alt-Country band, Jack Ruby Presents. The band based in McMinnville, Oregon, comprised of Jesse Hughey, Melissa Davaz, Chris Hernandez, and Kyle Helm. Their music is available at www.myspace.com/jackrubypresents