If anyone's seen anything written about us more recent than these please let us know. These ones have been up here for donkey's!
Read Jane Ruby's recent South London Press interview HERE
From the Dirty Water Club website
Grinding garage rockin’ guitars, mixed in with a wild surf vibe, a voodoo
goes to Las Vegas beat and a rockabilly moodiness, this is a group that brings
some glamour back to the stage, with their go-go girls getting their hips twisting
and shaking, taking the audience with them on a wild ride.
By Graham Russell, from 'It's a London Thing' website (now defunct)
Voodoobilly band Naked Ruby may live in South London but their spiritual home is the swinging 1950s Rat Pack-era Las Vegas of Sinatra and Dean Martin, gambling, sequins and cocktails. "We are the Rat Pack of Vauxhall," devilish red-haired singer Ruby insists. "No, we're the Twat Pack," bassist Johnny B adds helpfully.
Naked Ruby formed three years ago, with bequiffed guitar slinger Vince Ray and drummer Nick. On songs like 'Love Me', 'Hipsville' and 'Get Naked' their leopardskin brothel-creepers skip effortlessly over torchy lounge music, surf guitar, sultry rockabilly and twangy Lee Hazlewood/Nancy Sinatra-style Country & Western, while Ruby purrs and belts in a voice of pure pink cashmere.
Their live sets are probably 75% originals, but Naked Ruby's choice of covers is also revealing: Elvis's 'Viva Las Vegas' (of course). Adam Faith's 'Beat Girl' (the title track of the 1961 British sexploitation film). Nancy Sinatra's bluesy lament 'Friday's Child'. It's enough to conjure visions of Ann-Margaret in her 'Kitten with a Whip' prime twisting frantically to Link Wray. Unsurprisingly, they're equally comfortable at '50s rockabilly dives (like Virginia Creepers), '60s garage-punk beer blasts (like The Fratshack, & Dirty Water) and pervy fetish clubs (like Torture Garden), where they've lured a disparate following. "We get a lot of the fetish scene. Punks. Rockabillies. Weirdos. Perverts," Ruby sighs, regally dismissive.
Ruby's music is informed by her own checkered past. She hails from "the arsehole of Australia, Adelaide. It's barren. It's a retirement village, like Florida." Growing up in the wastelands of Oz has left her a life-long glamour junkie, something she indulged in her stint as a scantily-clad Vegas-style nightclub showgirl, dancing the Can-Can with a "mad bunch of showgirls". Perhaps that's why even she admits most of her Iyrics seem to involve "shaking your arse and getting your kit off for money". In 1985 she fled to the UK and paid her dues as a piano bar lounge singer covering Billie Holliday and Nina Simone standards. This apprenticeship still lingers in Ruby's femme fatale vocal antics - she sings as if slowly peeling off long evening gloves.
Read the full version of this interview in Razorcake
Melody Maker JULY 10 1999
GEORGE IV, LONDON
What do you do if your life was changed by Cramps guitarist Poison Ivy and rockabilly classic "Redheaded Woman"? Only one choice this time. You pour yourself into a tight cocktaill dress, get your flame locks to tumble just so, and play the part of a down-at-heel femme fatale with a bunch of suited and quiffed guys to back you up Yup, meet Jane, Brixton's goodtime girl gone very, very bad.
What year is this 196-what? Ah, forget it, who cares when the band are kicking out the rumbling garage riffs like they're the only people who understand that suave equals style? "Hipsville" is a vicious tirade against "one night stands in rusty cars", " Let's Get Naked" doles out the best offer of the year, and their teasing version of Elvis' "Viva Las Vegas" tells us exactly what's important in the NAKED RUBY world: money, sex, excitement, danger, and delirium.
Mmm, count me in.
IAN WATSON
By Angus Watson, an old press release
Most weekends you'll find Naked Ruby somewhere in the deep south - South London, that is - treating the denizens of some sleazy dive to their own unique mixture of surf guitar, exotic lounge and Voodoo Vegas beats Imagine the house band from, 'Pulp Fiction' fronted by a seductive female Elvis, and you'll not be far wrong.
Their singer, Jane Ruby, is a star-in-waiting who projects a Polly Harvey/Poison Ivy earthy sensuality that beats in time with the go-go dancing and '50s trash iconography which routinely accompany the band's wired boogie nights. This flame-haired and glamorously be-gowned frontwoman is an experienced Flamenco dancer who's also been a member of the Las Vague Showgirls. Now things are starting to slot into place. Like those half-forgotten snatches of a boozed-up seduction, Naked Ruby's music gets dirtier and more sensual the longer you're in its clutches.
Backing Jane, but by no means in her shadow, bassist Johnny B keeps things moving. Johnny is a veteran of numerous Brixton bands including the Orchestre Murphy and Ultima Thule. Guitarist Vince Ray is responsible for the band's outlandish and outrageous backdrops and visuals while drummer Marino Kisby brings other flavours to the sonic soup, having the somewhat unlikely distinction of having played in a Malaysian reggae band.
Naked Ruby know they're not going to get anywhere waiting for someone to do things for them, and their gigs are one of the top draws on the bristling south London underground circuit. Their shows are most often full-on events, with the band providing decor, slide and light shows, wild graphics GoGo dancers and DJs. Two years of gigging, writing and partying are starting to pay off.
Naked Ruby-watch them shine.