About Jack Ruby
Hometown
New York, NY, United States
Born
1973
Genre
Dance
One of the less championed bands of New York's already deeply obscure early No Wave scene, Jack Ruby was a wildly damaged proto-punk band sporadically active between 1973 and 1977. Named after the nightclub owner who shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald, the band was made up of vocalist Robbie Hall, guitarist Chris Gray, bassist George Scott, keyboardist Randy Cohen, viola player Boris Policeband, and a drummer who went simply by Nick. Jack Ruby's noisy, pre-punk skronk paved the way for downtown mutant rockers like Teenage Jesus & the Jerks and DNA, but early contemporaries were brittle, challenging acts like Suicide, Chrome, and a handful of Cleveland weirdo punk acts like the Electric Eels, the Styrenes, or Rocket from the Tombs. Very little documented proof of Jack Ruby's existence surfaced during their short lifespan. No albums were ever released during their brief run and it was fabled the band only ever played five live gigs. Players went on to engage in acts like the Contortions and 8 Eyed Spy, among others, with their legacy growing over time as obscurist historians like Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and Byron Coley heralded the band in various articles and essays. In 2011, New York extreme musician Weasel Walter procured an archival tape with eight songs of Jack Ruby's material and released it in a remastered form on his UgExplode label. Three years later Hit & Run, a two-disc retrospective including most of the band's known recordings, materialized on the Saint Cecilia Knows label. ~ Fred Thomas
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