Ruby were the Garbage that no-one ever remembers, a band that deserved better than the lack of success they enjoyed and one that feels particularly evocative to me for a few reasons/memories. After enjoying their debut single – That’d be this one, “Paraffin” – I was given their first album by a friend and promptly never got around to listening to it until a girlfriend/not girlfriend came to visit and decided that she had to hear what all the fuss was about. It was an October weekend, and we were sitting in my bedroom in the apartment I was staying in at the time, half-listening to this album and talking about our future when it became very obvious that we didn’t have one; I remember, still, the feeling of sadness and both of us trying not to say the obvious thing we were both thinking about, while simultaneously thinking “This album is much better than I would’ve thought.”
For weeks after, I wanted to listen to the album again, but couldn’t quite do it, convinced that there was some bad juju involved, that it was filled with bad magic because the first time I’d heard it was during a break-up of sorts.
(One of the reasons why I’d loved the “Paraffin” single so much was this remix of the song by Red Snapper, which was much jazzier, and just plain lovely. This is the reason that I wish Ruby had been given the success Garbage enjoyed, so things like this would’ve found a much wider audience:)