''Sinking the Eight Ball'' is the debut album by

Ruby Joe Ruby Joe was a Christian band from Ventura, California. Their debut album was cited as psychobilly, but their second played squarely as swing revival due to the appearance of the horn section of Royal Crown Revue. Both were released on Sub•Lime ...

. Due to its topical content, the album was pulled from some Christian book stores. The album drew upon the production talents of

Mike Knott Mike may refer to: Animals * Mike (cat), cat and guardian of the British Museum * Mike the Headless Chicken, chicken that lived for 18 months after his head had been cut off * Mike (chimpanzee), a chimpanzee featured in several books and document ...

and

Gene Eugene Gene Andrusco (April 6, 1961 – March 20, 2000), better known as Gene Eugene, was a Canadian-born actor, record producer, engineer, composer and musician. Andrusco was best known as the leader of the alternative rock band Adam Again, a member ...

. On this release the band has a rockabilly sound, somewhere between the

Stray Cats Stray Cats are an American rockabilly band formed in 1979 by guitarist and vocalist Brian Setzer, double bassist Lee Rocker, and drummer Slim Jim Phantom in the Long Island town of Massapequa, New York. The group had numerous hit singles ...

and

The Reverend Horton Heat The Reverend Horton Heat is the stage name of American musician James C. Heath (born 1959) as well as the name of his Dallas, Texas-based psychobilly trio. Heath is a singer, songwriter and guitarist. A ''Prick'' magazine reviewer called Heat ...

, or "like a rockabilly version of

..." Lyrically the album addressed hard issues such as racism ("Skin"), the underground church in China ("People Underground"),

materialism Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds matter to be the fundamental substance in nature, and all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. According to philosophical material ...

and temptation ("Fat Cat"),

New Age New Age is a range of spiritual or religious practices and beliefs which rapidly grew in Western society during the early 1970s. Its highly eclectic and unsystematic structure makes a precise definition difficult. Although many scholars consi ...

spiritualism ("Rock 'n' Roll & My Baby"), and internal spiritual battles with our sinful nature. In "Spiritual Heroin" Russinger deals with his own former

speed In everyday use and in kinematics, the speed (commonly referred to as ''v'') of an object is the magnitude of the change of its position over time or the magnitude of the change of its position per unit of time; it is thus a scalar quantity ...

addiction, describing how Christ can fill the need created by addictions, which one reviewer described as a "slightly disturbing metaphor." The album also deals with the victims of

the holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

("Death Train"), and finally closes with "Let's Go", a "no holds barred celebration of salvation." One reviewer found the album to be on various tracks "

cliché A cliché ( or ) is an element of an artistic work, saying, or idea that has become overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, even to the point of being weird or irritating, especially when at some earlier time it was consi ...

-ridden but vaguely worshipful", "weakly inspiring", and "shallow & dumb." The reviewer went on to state that the attempt "to bring 1950s wholesomeness into today's moral

morass Morass may refer to: *Marsh, a wetland * Morass (set theory), an infinite combinatorial structure *The Morass, former name of Inundation, Gibraltar The Inundation was a flooded and fortified area of ground on the sandy isthmus between Spain an ...

" fell flat.

Track listing

#"Skin" #"Within" #"Childhood Love Song" #"Death Train" #"Fat Cat" #"Rock 'N' Roll and My Baby" #"Spiritual Heroin" #"Rocket Ship" #"Studio, No. 5" #"People Underground" #"Tongue Is Numb" #"Let's Go"

References

External links

''Sinking the Eight Ball'' song topics
{{Authority control 1997 albums Ruby Joe albums