Ruby Vroom was Soul Coughing's 1994 debut album. The album's sound is a mixture of sample-based tunes (loops of Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse" on "Bus to Beelzebub", Toots and the Maytals, Howlin' Wolf, The Andrews Sisters, and The Roches on "Down to This", and a loop of sampler player Mark De Gli Antoni's orchestral horns on "Screenwriter's Blues", among others). It also features guitar-based tunes like "Janine", "Moon Sammy", and "Supra Genius" and jazzy, upright-bass-fueled songs that often slyly quoted other material—the theme from Courageous Cat on "Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago", Thelonious Monk's "Misterioso" on "Casiotone Nation", and Bobby McFerrin's cover of Joan Armatrading's "Opportunity" on "Uh, Zoom Zip".
The album's lone guest is Rachel Benbow Murdy, band founder Mike Doughty's ex-girlfriend, who supplies a vocal on "Janine". Doughty had Murdy go out to a payphone in Sheridan Square in New York and improvise a long, meandering song into their answering machine. Recorded a year before the Ruby sessions, Doughty and bass player Sebastian Steinberg recorded the tune at the avant-garde jazz club The Knitting Factory during the daytime, when the club was closed, with club soundperson James McLean. McLean put a mic on the answering machine, which Doughty had brought to the session.
(M. Doughty)
Janine, I drink you up
Janine, I drink you up
Janine, Janine, I sing
If you were the Baltic Sea and I were a cup, uh huh
Varick Street and I drove South
With my hands on the wheel and your taste in my mouth,
Janine
Jesus to my left, the Holland Tunnel on my right
Angels shine down from the traffic light,
Janine
I fell asleep by the blue light of Live at Five
And as I drifted off, I heard Al Roker say to me:
Dial one nine hundred
Four Jay Ay En Eye En Ee.
Slap myself to waking but now it's too late
Cause I spelled your name out on my licence plate,
Janine