Frank Zappa’s “Cruising with Ruben & the Jets”

ZAPPA DOES DOO-WOP!  In our inaugural episode, the team tackles 1968’s “Cruising with Ruben & the Jets”.  Can Frank tamp down his more eccentric tendencies in terms of complicated chord changes and inappropriate lyrics?  How closely can you have to listen to this album before you realize that this is not a vintage “malt shop” oldie?  How much creative input do the other Mothers of Invention actually have?  If this album was recorded in the sixties, and meant to sound like the fifties, why do the bass and drums sound so very 1980s?  We get into all of these questions and more on Detours & Outliers.