ruth ruth

if you would have asked me when i was in seventh grade what my favorite album on epitaph was I would have answered with no hesitancy that Rancid's "And out come the wolves.." was not only the best record on epitaph, it was, in fact the greatest fucking record ever.

today i am not ashamed of my one time intense devotion to rancid. if you were to ask me today what the greatest record to ever come out on epitaph was i'd answer with little to no hesitancy that Ruth Ruth's "The little death" ep is without a doubt the greatest record to ever come out of epishitaph (or epicrap???!!! booya! my humor knows no bounds... be they the heights of awesome or the bounds of good taste).

ruth ruth's album "the little death" was one of their mid period albums. their first album found them with a video on mtv. but that album sucked shitty turds. their albums after "the little death" sucked shittier turds.

but the "little death" (and the brainiac 7" that came out after it on Deep elm records) is a treasure.

There are some fab lyrics and killer jams that simultaneously remind me of the Cars and a tiny bit of the Replacements.

part of what is killer about it is that it is so inherently dorky and lame. and that it is sort of made in that context. with the knowledge that it is totally dorky and lame (but also killer), and because it is rubbed down with that awareness it's hard not to enjoy getting into it. these guys truly DID want to make it big and they failed miserably. if they wouldn't have failed miserably i probably wouldn't be touting this as killer. i'd probably be really disapointed and shit.

here are a couple of their jams... one song is my favorite, it's called Tenderlung and it's off "the little death" and another is way more poppy and it's off a later period record..





you can listen to their jams and find out more here

after you click on the word here in the previous sentence go to the "bands" part of the deep elm website and find ruth ruth


heres what someone else said about the record:

"An eighteen-minute burst of unblemished, soaring, three-piece power pop in dedication to Women Who Fuck You Up, by courtesy of a man who loves his mom. Complicated only by the fact that mom was emotionally involved at some point with another mom. And by life. In general.

Biological mom seems to be the namesake subject of opener, 'Julia, you have no heartbeat', whose tempestuous life he once spectated uselessly, aggravated unintentionally, now laments guiltily, only to find himself grown up and equally useless when participating in the equal tempests lived by the new women who absorb him -- the brave, neighbourhood Mrs Curley, bewitching New York boho singer and high school antisweetheart. All of whom may or may not be the same person, it's difficult to tell. Narrative thread isn't vital to The Little Death's startling, impressionistic songwriting, which employs mental snapshots and confabulated recollections to yield red-raw, heart-on-the-sleeve vignettes of some blinkin' intensity. Ruth Ruth singing dude is a flux of confused, infantilised but burgeoning masculinity -- his self-important desire to save the idealised woman he constructs around each of them founders spectacularly every time on the Maid Marian sex he duly expects, that surely she's expecting to give up. No! He didn't think it like that. She played a black guitar / hung around her neck in an empty New York bar. / With my mind full of make-believe / I dreamed I took her home and held her hand and watched TV. / Then she knew she needed me, / then I laughed and went, / "Don't cry".

When reality reimposes, they hang loosely together like a snapped curtain rod; he throws a party, she gets off with "that guido rat" and the last vestige of delusion dissipates. I liked you / from the moment that we met. / You took my poor virginity. / It meant the goddamn world to me. / I want you and I'll have you in the end. / Your ugly talents should be locked away... His jealousy and self-loathing are tangible like a high wind, his threats are full, his self-pity a hole in which to inter the present by grubbing up the past: the whirlwind peaks then breaks over the frantic demands he makes of his untouchable mother simply to tell him who he is. I found out later / that a dyke ain't daddy / but a big hunk o' love / with a waterproof memory. / The devil rode in / on a fifth grade pony / and he called me a faggot / then laughed like a showgirl. / I ran home / and turned on the radio. / Captain and Tenille / were fucking in the living room. / A thing like that / can change a boy... / Daddy can't shoot!

Seriously ace."