Features : Mark Bram/Ruby Topaz rocks out in Again 23rd Anniversary Remaster

When you’re talking rock and Mark Bram/Ruby Topaz, you’re talking guitars. When you’re talking his newest/old album, Mark Bram/Ruby Topaz Again, 23rd Anniversary Remaster, you’re talking probably the best rock album you never heard of.

And if you want to talk maybe one of the best rock albums ever, well, you could make the case because, again, guitars.

“The song ‘Loneliness’ on there, I wrote that on the piano when I was 16, right around the time ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ came out. So, that was like my ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’ but instead of an opera piece in the middle, it has big-band swing jazz,” he said.

Then comes the kicker: “And the horns in it are all guitar synthesizer, so you hear the trumpet lead, the sax lead — that’s all guitar.”

But it’s big-band, swing jazz via Queen and the Beatles and The Who, the Electric Light Orchestra and dozens, possibly hundreds, of others.

He goes on to name The Fifth Dimension, Black Sabbath, Edgar Winter, Golden Earring, Alice Cooper, David Bowie, Mott the Hoople, Jeff Beck, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, King Crimson, Herman’s Hermits, Frank Zappa and more, not all at once but here and there talking about different aspects of his music.

“Oh, man!” he said. “I just love that stuff, the wealth of music from back then, and it all sunk in. So, my music, you’ll hear very poppy sounds, hard-driving guitars, breaks into fusion pieces. It’s hard to define me because if you’ve listened to the album, you notice there’s a lot of different styles.”

The album’s 14 tracks, which include three bonus tracks, reflect the wild diversity of his influences and music.

Mark/Ruby has been making, playing and recording rock for almost five decades, and twice he thought Ruby Topaz was on the verge of making it big. In 1985, when the band – it was a band then, and he still bounces back and forth between “I” and “we” in talking about Ruby Topaz — was signed to a deal, but due to various circumstances, the label folded.

“In the ’80s, when we had all our notoriety, we were in the singles review with Metallica and Blue Oyster Cult and Roger Daltrey. We opened for John Entwhistle.”

The band split up in ’91, but from the ’70s to 2024, he has never stopped making and recording.

“My defining moment was sitting on the floor at 6 years old watching Ed Sullivan, hoping I’d see Topo Gigio, the little Italian mouse, and on comes four guys that blew my mind. I saw The Beatles, and that changed my life. I was such a Beatle head. I still am.”

By 11 years old, he was in a band playing bass, like his idol, Paul McCartney.

Three or four years after The Beatles rocked his world, his cousin went to see a new band at The Boston Tea Party.

“It was Led Zeppelin, and she brought me Zeppelin’s first album. It blew my tiny little mind. I went, ‘Okay, I’m going to teach myself how to play guitar, I’m going to sing high, I’ll find somebody and teach them how to play bass and have Steve play drums.’”

Steve is Steve D’Andrea, who went on to become the drummer for the original Ruby Topaz.

Besides the diversity of style in his music, he most wants to be known for his guitar work. Mark Bram/Ruby Topaz Again 23rd Anniversary Remaster is full of diversity and his guitar and bass.

“I like to push the fact that the stuff we do is very diverse, and I like to play up my guitar. People really note that a lot. They tell me, ‘Oh, man, you should really highlight your guitar playing.’”

Which leads him to a confession. “I own over 120 guitars and basses. I have a disease.”

He calls it disease but seems more like genetic.

Mark/Ruby has already started recording songs for another album, which will have a combination of old and new and some “fusion” — an improv segment in the middle of the album in which he and his guitar can rock off into the stratosphere.

“We create it in the moment,” he said. “A lot of times we do fusion jams, where we just make it up, and it sounds written, but it’s crazy.”

“Lose Me,” one of the tracks on Again, 23rd Anniversary, has a jam in the middle.

He first recorded the album in 2001. He wanted to record at home, on his own equipment. It was the first Ruby Topaz album that was recorded somewhere other than a major studio. His old friend Steve is on four of the tracks.

In the new, remastered album, Steve is also on two of the bonus tracks, which brings it to six out of 14 tracks.

Otherwise, it’s all Mark.

One song from the 2001 album, “The Sack,” was a remake of the B-side of a 1982 single that was in the Singles Review in England.

“When I did this album, I had bought a Yamaha AW4416, 16-track digital mixer with a digital recorder. I figured, you know, let me start out and see what I can do with it, how to how to come up with sounds on this and do it myself.”

He is re-releasing the album because, “I love these songs. They’re a huge part of our set and they need to be heard again.”

His home studio is now many thousands of dollars and more than 20 years advanced in technology, so he put them through his studio to “tweak” them. For the mastering, he again turned to a major studio.

“I sent it off to Abbey Road to Christian Wright, and it wound up sounding light years better,” he said. “It sounds more analog — bigger, warmer, crisper — giant. You know?”

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