THE TASTY ESSENSE OF NRBQ
NRBQ: Grooves In Orbit (Bearsville)
John Morthland, Creem, August 1983
As the perennial Little Bar Band That Could, NRBQ occupies a special niche. After all, they've existed in basically this form and with basically this orientation for close to 15 years now, and with little or no record company support. So the real surprise is not that they've forged a fairly distinct identity and sound — what band working that long wouldn't? — but that they've managed to keep going at all.
But, having granted them that — plus the occasional bona fide anthem a la 'Me And The Boys' — see what else the real attraction is. The classic bar-band sound is a noble and desirable calling, and is also becoming an endangered species — bar bands today don't play blues, country, rockabilly, R&B, and early rock 'n' roll forms, they play recent Rolling Stones, John Cougar and Billy Squier. NRBQ doesn't do that, but they do (at least on most albums, including this one) strike an uneasy balance that romanticizes this brand of music in a most self-conscious and self-indulgent way. This may be an understandable reaction to the industry's insistence on mass-manufactured, lowest-common-denominator pap, but it also leads to the notion that all rootsy bar-band music is good by definition — and that's really not a healthy alternative. It results in cuts like 'Get Rhythm', another of the so-what covers they run through in their own arrangement that neither enhances nor detracts from Johnny Cash's original or the numerous other versions since. It results in 'My Girlfriend's Pretty', one of those neutered-jazz ballads NRBQ louses up each album with. It results in 'Smackaroo', the hard-rock cut that opens the album (and that could be anybody were it not for Al Anderson's grinding guitar) and in 'Hit The Hay', the hokey country spoof with which the set finally nods off at the end. And while '12 Bar Blues' might seem the kind of rockabillied blues right up their alley, this version is too coy to be effective.
Now, most of those songs aren't out-and-out stinkers. They're just the kind of everyday barroom fare that leads me to conclude NRBQ's chief strength has been the ability to be in the right place at the right time for so long. There are exceptions.
The live version of 'Daddy-O', with its punch-drunk Tex-Mex flavorings courtesy the Whole Wheat Horns, is infectious and woozy, and suggests more depth than most of the studio cuts. And Terry Adams's two British rips, 'Rain At The Drive-In' (he likes it because he and his baby can make out unobserved) and 'A Girl Like That' (she's too big a slob for one so classy as his pal) are juvenile enough to pass for Nick Lowe, and point a possible direction these guys could take to reconcile their own roots with contemporary rock.
Desperadoes Washington D.C.
Live Review by Paul Lamada
After a quarter-century of rock 'n' roll, it should be obvious that the idiom (if it can be classed as such) must be maintained by certain forms, structures, (musical) languages, borrowings, adaptations, and alterations made to face the demands of taste and time. Few bands master a multiplicity of styles, and fewer attain this mastery with any originality, live or on records. NRBQ is exactly this kind of band, and more.
If the whole world could make sense of my fanatical ravings, I would record them here; but because nobody would understand them – except, perhaps, the band, their friends, and some of the folks who witnessed their non-pareil performances at this D.C. club – I'll try to stick to something basic.
NRBQ (originally short for "New Rhythm and Blues Quintet") have been together with a stable core of personnel since before 1969, when they cut their debut LP for Columbia. Their studio track record has always been what I would call "eclectic"; the group would prefer not to see it that way.
They simply are what they are: All members of the band have individual and collective tastes (and knowledge) which tend to overlap quite nicely. They all enjoy playing each other's music, and other people's music; I think they just enjoy doing what they are doing, and what comes out, comes out. Since none of the members see it any other way, I don't see fit to supply an interpretation.
Part of what makes this band amazing is exactly what does come out. Their music incorporates soul, jazz (Monk, Ellington, at al,), R&B, blues, honky-tonk, C&W, pure pop for the eternal '60s, reggae, touches of the avant garde, Motown, New Orleans "funk", Sun Ra, and more – all marked with NRBQ's own stamp of authority, originality, and virtuosity.
The secret, as Fletcher Henderson once said, is that they swing from the rhythm section. Tom Ardolino is one of the most refreshing and startlingly accurate drummers of the era. On high-velocity rockers, he kicks with the verve of Bev Bevan (when there was a Move) or Dennis Thompson, but he can also relax and lay it down like he's playing on a Meters session. Joey Spampinato does just about the same for the bass. He plays lines that fit musically but also add to other dimensions of the song: Its rhythm, harmony, chord changes, and the proverbial bottom.
Guitarist Al Anderson is without a doubt one of the finest rock players around. His playing on record is always startling and intriguing, but live he surpasses all expectations. Very few people can play rock &' roll or rockabilly guitar like Al Anderson or touch his blend of taste, emotion, and technique.
Like Al, pianist Terry Adams plays more live than on record. He can roll with the best – like Little Richard or Huey Smith – then surprise you on the very next bar with a quote from Monk, Ra, or Bud Powell, He also plays clavinet like no one I've ever seen, pounding it with his elbows and fists but never hitting a note out of place. As a keyboard player, Adams is definitely on the attack.
NRBQ's material is representative of what I call All Wave music. It's all music, It's all good, and it all contains that sine qua non rock ingredient that is better to experience than discuss, at least on this level. You can pogo to their rockers, be laid out screaming by their rockabilly, be moved by their ballads, toe-tap to their hillbilly, and put on your sunglasses for their funk and jazz. For tours, they've even added a horn section: Don Adams, on trombone, can make what is relaxed more relaxed, what is driven more driving.
Expect anything from their performances. Much of the material is culled from their last two albums, but the NRBQ don't shy away from either earlier recordings or tunes they have not set to wax.
I heard many unusual selections; Roy Orbison's Sun-period piece, Chicken Hearted; a James Brown-ish instrumental with a real cold sweat funk feel to it; some free-form freakout; a samba; a jaunty piano tune called Petticoat Junction; and their latest 45, Get That Gasoline, which combines humor (like much of their work) with contemporary rock and TV themes from the not-so-distant past. (The guitar solo is also a gas.) I should also add that the three members who sing have distinctive lead voices and harmonize quite well together, both live and on record.
The nagging question remains: Why isn't NRBQ rich and famous? Part of the answer would point a finger at more than one guilty record company, and the band now records for its own Red Rooster label (distributed by Rounder). Nonetheless, their lack of real commercial success has had no effect on either their music or personalities. They know they're great, but that knowledge provides NRBQ with a secure base from which to try out new and different things both in their music and in their approach to music. It also allows them to be fans, and to encourage competing talent.
On the second night of their Washington stand, most of the group walked across the street to catch a set by Jonathan Richman, who later joined NRBQ onstage to sing Morning Of Our Lives and several classic rockers. Such sincere emotion and appreciation is rare these days among artists who don't really know each other, and it was a pleasure to witness. By the way, Jonathan owns all NRBQ's records – and vice versa.
I surmise that NRBQ aren't famous because too many people don't understand them, when in fact they can be loved and appreciated without that understanding. (Their coterie of devout fans, who don't seem to know about their music, proves that.) People have put a label on the band, or suspect that they're up to something. My suggestion is to append a new label to the music of the best rock 'n' roll band active in America today. NRBQ is Nick Lowe's and Dave Edmund's records and collective live performances all rolled into one, with much more to spare.
The next time NRBQ plays in your town, make the effort to go see them – I'm sure you'll be surprised. Or go to your best local cut out bin and pick up a copy of At Yankee Stadium, or the deleted reissue of Scraps and Workshop. Just listen to the music on those records or the recent Kick Me Hard (on Rounder). I know you're gonna find out that, as NRBQ says, it feels real good!
NRBQ: GIRARD'S, Baltimore MD
Live Review by Geoffrey Himes
Al Anderson on NRBQ's rotund bear of a lead guitarist, gave his meanest squint and chewed up the title line to his rollicking, vintage-sounding rockabilly tune: "I can't quit it! I can't quit it, because it comes to me naturally." Terry Adams wrapped up the song with a hysterical brothel-style solo on the tinny upright piano.
Adams jumped up from the piano, spun around in his black-and-gold smoking jacket and tiny blonde braid, flapped his arms, rolled his eyes at the audience and landed in front of his Hohner clavinet. NRBQ plays without a set list, so Anderson and bassist Joey Spampinato leaned intently towards Adams as the pianist scattershot some jazzy chords. Finally they caught his drift and the band launched into 'Me and the Boys', one of the sleekest bits of new wave to come out of America.
For a dozen years, NRBQ has been many a critic's favorite electric bar band. It's finally dawning on a lot of people that this rock acronym (New Rhythm & Blues Quartet) is much more than that. Even more eclectic than Rockpile, their debut album opened with Eddie Cochran's 'C'mon Everybody', followed by Sun Ra's 'Rocket Number 9'. Terry Adams, who played in the Carla Bley Band and compiled the Thelonius Monk anthology, Always Know — will lead free jazz versions of TV themes. The band once joined Carl Perkins for an album, and Joey Spampinato has a flair for Beatlesque melodies.
Upstairs at Girard's in Baltimore, Spampinato explained how they choose a song to cover: "It has to be adaptable, so it could sound as if we had written it." Unlike many eclectic bands, NRBQ has a unified sound. Whether it's Johnny Cash's 'Get Rhythm' or the swing classic, 'Music Goes Round and Round', each song sounds like an original. Conversely, the band's many originals sound like obscure songs discovered on dusty 78s from a Missouri junk shop.
Spampinato refuses to discuss anything before 1976, when drummer Tom Ardolino joined to form the present lineup. Adams and Joey Spampinato (a.k.a. Jody St. Nicholas) are the only members left from the original New Rhythm & Blues Quartet. Now it's a quartet plus two: the Whole Wheat Horns of trombonist Don Adams (Terry's brother) and tenor saxophonist Keith Spring.
Girard's is a glitzy disco seeking reincarnation as a rock club. Halfway through the set, NRBQ's crew figured out the disco lights. Baltimore's always dancing rock audience mobbed the hardwood floors under pulsing green fluorescent bulbs and the band slapped out the primitive rockabilly of Adams' 'That's Nice, That's Neat'. Al Anderson pulled out a milk crate painted with question marks and invited the crowd to test the band with "requests from any source, any era." Ten minutes later, Tom Ardolino pulled out the winner: 'New York, New York'. Anderson only knew the lyrics to the chorus, but Keith Spring and the Adams brothers (Terry on trumpet) embarked on an impromptu horn arrangement. It got so out of hand that Anderson had to stop them with David Seville shouts: "Okay, guys. Guys! Al-l-l-lvin!"
They went back to the box and threw out requests for their own songs. "It's no fun faking something you wrote," explained Terry Adams. Finally they drew a request for 'Girl Watcher'. Without hesitation, they bounced into it with the infectious joy of a band that thrives on surprise.
NRBQ: ORGANIC ECLECTICISM IN ORBIT
Mark Rowland, October 1983
Seeing NRBQ play in a club for the first time is a little like sauntering into an amusement park with all-new rides — you're happy to be in on the discovery, and you're having fun, but it's still a little uncertain just what is going on.
With NRBQ, the whirl-a-gigs commence as soon as they walk onstage. No blow-dried MTV musickers these: wearing a patchwork jacket with more color combinations than a kaleidoscope, pianist Terry Adams is more suggestive of a thrift store on LSD, and bassist Joey Spampinato, only slightly more muted in a candy-striped leisure shirt, is virtually dwarfed by guitarist Al Anderson, who looks like a mountain man.
The fans in front are already screaming requests as Terry, all loopy grin and shaggy blond hair, sets himself behind the ivories with mock solemnity and amiably surveys the scene before signalling to the drummer. At which point Tom Ardolino brings down a thwock! so hard that it pulls his dark cloud of curls over his face, and off NRBQ rides across the richly contoured terrain of Musica Americana.
The next surprise is the music itself, for few NRBQ songs are much alike. Typically they begin with a sprightly jump tune like 'The Music Goes Round And Round', preserving the song's ingenuous Dixieland chassis while Ardolino's pummeling backbeat, Adams' dissonant clavinet figures and Anderson's gruff 'n' tumble voicings refurbish the veneer. Without pause the band swivels into 'Don't She Look Good', a hip-popping original, as Spampinato's more casual vocal delivery slides across a sizzling rockabilly rhythm like grease on a griddle. Just as the jitter-buggers prepare to swoon into dance heaven, though, yes, Terry pulls the plug with a softly reflective, 'Yes, Yes, Yes', coloring the romantic lyricism with a spare, Monkish melody. The room quiets. Terry looks up with a gleam in his eye.
"Did you bring any apples?" he asks Al.
"I've got all the apples!" Al yells back.
"Did you bring any peaches?"
"Every one of 'em!"
And off they fly into Daddy-O, a mariachi-flavored polka of deceptive innocence about a fellow who delivers not only apples and peaches, but a kiss or two. Now anarchy beckons. Trombonist Donn Adams, half of the NRBQ brass section known as the Wholewheat Horns, introduces something called the finger dance ("It's sweeping the nation," he assures) on a goofy cover of 'Woolly Bully', while the other Wholewheat Horn tenor saxophonist Keith Spring, pumps the instrumental break full of kickapoo joy juice.
When NRBQ sings 'Captain Lou', a catchy pop paeon to their erstwhile "manager" and otherwise professional wrestler Lou Albano, the Captain scales the stage to join in on the chorus. One moment Anderson is crooning an impossibly sweet ballad like 'Never Take The Place Of You', the next he's raking the bejesus out of Johnny Cash's 'Get Rhythm'.
Bodies are cramming the dance floor now as he spirals crescendoes from a seemingly ancient Telecaster, as Terry digs for that space where the rhythm sends shock waves up your spine, as Spampinato lassoes it all together with smooth, loping runs. Another thwock! and people are spilling their drinks as the band drives toward its denouement, screaming, singing along, laughing, yelling for encores, pleading for encores, and when, finally, there are no more encores, stumbling about in happy disorientation as if stepping off a rollercoaster. The music goes 'round indeed!
Were this show was merely an eccentric pastiche, NRBQ's sheer range and grasp of songwriting craft would still be impressive. But analyzing NRBQ that way is like examining the body of a doughnut; if you just tally up the parts, you miss the whole. In fact, NRBQ congeals musicianship as integrated and artful as the band is with the thoroughly artless, try-it-on spirit of a New Orleans rent party. At once steeped in tradition and resolutely organic, their aura reflects a romantic 60s idealism without the sentimental posturing of that era or the equally cynical posturing of this one.
NRBQ is funny but never camp, tight but not slick, loose but only rarely sloppy; ridiculous and sublime. And it is that intangible essence which ultimately provides the communal link between the band and their intensely loyal following, the members with one another, and each song to the next. For it's no accident that the group's more obvious forebears — Monk, the Beatles, Lee Dorsey, Jimmy Reed, Ray Charles — were all themselves unconventional artists whose achievements transcended the limits of their genres.
Probably no band, however, has a keener grasp of how to make its points through humor. In this regard NRBQ stories abound, but two are particularly illuminating. One time the group, rather notorious for not even beginning concerts before midnight, were slotted to play at an outdoor festival at eleven o'clock in the morning. They showed up on the dot and performed a great set — in their pajamas. On another occasion, a club date, they discovered that their set was being surreptitiously taped. Terry ordered the offending scofflaw to the stage and demanded his tape recorder. Then the rest of the band gathered around its microphone and sang one of their songs a cappella. Terry handed the recorder back to the startled fan, and NRBQ continued with their performance.
Though live is unquestionably their metier, NRBQ has also recorded nine albums (including their latest, Grooves In Orbit, on Bearsville) over the course of their career, most of them of more than respectable quality. Their original compositions 'I Want You Bad' and 'Green Light' have been covered by Dave Edmunds and Bonnie Raitt respectively (both singers also tried their hand at Terry Adams' 'Me And The Boys'), and over in England NRBQ's blistering arrangement of the rockabillly staple 'This Ole House' was less respectfully pirated by Shakin' Stevens, for whom it became a number one hit. Their praises have been sounded in print by Elvis Costello, and over the years pop critics have regularly showered enough NRBQ accolades to start a ticker tape parade.
Still, they make some people nervous. The music industry, for example, has not yet figured out what to make of NRBQ, or more accurately, how to make something of them. They're too independent, too adept at parlaying too many styles into a collective voice too broad to be easily encapsulated in standard programming formats.
"We try to leave the real sound of the band intact," Terry emphasizes. "We're not marching to the tune of I.B.M — we're swinging to the tune of B.M.I. I say I.B.M. because so many records now are built around an automatic drum track; the rhythm is steady, sure, but then if the band has to go out and play somewhere, they can't match it — it's superhuman. If we can't get the rhythm right, we're not gonna bring in a machine. We'll just come back the next night."
Small wonder record labels (Bearsville is their fifth) aren't sure how to promote them, radio stations where to slot them, or record stores even where to stock them. So far. For their part, however, NRBQ isn't much concerned. Of course, they wouldn't mind a little more plush here and there — a few more concert stages, a few less saloons. But since the current sextet has held together for nine years (the band itself for considerably longer), they aren't likely to change their, uh, tune to get it.
Such lofty ambitions are still more discernible within the maelstrom of an NRBQ live performance than on vinyl, where lack of direct audience rapport and the band's relatively lax regard for lyricism (Terry: "I never go back and change a lyric") tends to diffuse some of their intensity. Most of the songs on Grooves stick to such congenial topics as girls, the joys of rhythm & blues, girls, going to sleep, and going to the movies (with a girl). "Well," Joey drily philosophizes, “if there aren't any girls, there isn't gonna be much music.”
We are hanging out in the comfortably neo-rustic confines of Albert Grossman's Bearsville studios, as Adams and Spampinato take a break between final mixes of Grooves. The first NRBQ album in almost three years (an interim LP with country singer Skeeter Davis was released overseas), its eleven tracks provide a fair sampling of the band's musical prowess, infectious cheer and characteristic drollery. Bubbly pop sing-alongs ('Rain At The Drive-In') alternate with winsome balladry ('How Could I Make You Love Me'), jaunty two-steps ('I Like That Girl'), rockabilly in overdrive ('Get Rhythm' and Jack Butwell's obscure gem 'Twelve Bar Blues'), rumbling rockers ('When Things Was Cheap') and aching bunions ('Hit The Hay').
Terry admits that people are always asking, 'How do you classify your music?'" Terry says, “We're a rockabilly group but that's not our point. I don't want to relive rockabilly and put grease in my hair — I can't really, it's too late. Now if it comes up, we'll play the heck out of it!”
NRBQ: GRILLING BY THE ROADSIDE
Mitchell Cohen, Creem Magazine
Think of NRBQ as a diner somewhere off the main highway, serving up Tex-Mex chili, Kansas City barbeque, Philadelphia cheese steaks, New England clam chowder, Chicago deep-dish pizza, Anchor Steam beer on draft. The gamut of American gastronomy. And every time you drop in, the clientele is whooping it up, clearly delighted with each course. So delighted, in fact, that they're concerned lest this place become too popular.
So when the announcer at this club in downtown Manhattan introduces NRBQ as "America's Best-Kept Secret" (as they come bounding out to the strains of Sinatra's recording of ‘New York, New York’, with its "if I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere" moxie), it's part complaint, part boast. To the people inside, NRBQ is no secret, but there is this air of exclusivity, of being privy to something that the world at large hasn't discovered yet. You get the feeling that if the exclusivity is never threatened, that'd be just fine with the regulars. Puts the band in a bind, you might conclude.
NRBQ wants you to know that they are tired of questions the thrust of which is "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" Tired of people wondering out loud why the band is still together. They bristle at suggestions that perhaps NRBQ hasn't gone as far as they'd wish. "Some places can't keep the record in stock," Adams says. "You might not see our name on the charts in Billboard, but the records are sellin' & I'm makin' money."
The important thing is that from the very first song on their very first album (Eddie Cochran's ‘C'mon Everybody’), they have announced their open-door policy. This ain't no members-only party, and never was. They are a band of expansive good cheer, as is evident from the performance.
The only difference in circumstance between this set and any other set they may have played in this neighborhood over the past few years is that now they have a new album called Grooves In Orbit, and its inevitable offspring, ‘Rain At The Drive-In’, on a small upstate N.Y. label distributed by a much bigger downstate N.Y. communications conglomerate. In effect, they have printed up tens of thousands of copies of a portion of their menu and are circulating them around the country. "I don't believe in being a living ad for the new record," Adams says, "but I would like for the people to buy the new record because they like the band."
It's hard not to like a band that flings itself into its music with such ebullient abandon, who can swing from doo-wop to be-bop within the space of a single song, who can tear off a polka version of ‘Daddy-'O'’ that makes you imagine them sharing cabbage rolls and jamming with the Schmenge brothers on SCTV, who have a pianist (Adams) who never does the expected, always toys with context, and a burly guitarist-growler (Al Anderson) who can get an entire club chiming in on a song about a pregnancy scare.
NRBQ's albums are woozy missiles, and most appealing for being same, but their live shows, each one designed on the spot, dictated only by whim, are where they go for the kill (in a water-balloony kind of way, of course). How can a band be devil-may-care and persistent at the same time?
NRBQ brought their far flung approach to Columbia Records at the end of the '60s, and they were immediately tossed to the wolves. "They knew we were different, and they knew we had something, but they just didn't know how to say what it was."
The reviewer was Mike Jahn of The New York Times The song that ‘Stomp’ by NRBQ excited him as much as was ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ by the Beatles. He also called it "one of those eternal rock songs like 'Satisfaction'."
Mike Jahn's states that “NRBQ is the first group to play magic music since the Beatles grew up.” Terry's brother Donn, is a trombonist in The Whole Wheat Horns, NRBQ's horn section. Donn says, “NRBQ is life!” Considering that NRBQ's second and final LP for CBS was with Carl Perkins ("We told him we didn't want to do 'Blue Suede Shoes' and he said OK").
It was on to Kama Sutra at the top of the '70s, a label that probably thought it had another Lovin' Spoonful on its hands. You know, slightly wacky-eclectic, eastern on wry. Scraps and Workshop weren't bad (‘Boys In The City’ mentions Ferlinghetti and Durwood Kirby, and the band does a fair job on ‘Ac-cen-tu-ate The Positive’ and ‘Hearts Of Stone’), and are especially notable because one song on each (‘Howard Johnson's Got His Ho-Jo Working’ and ‘R.C. Cola and a Moon Pie’) has a reference to grilled cheese.
NRBQ started to hit their stride on their release, All Hopped Up: ‘Ridin' In My Car’, Spampinato's ‘Still In School’, some sloshed Louis Prima moves on ‘Cecilia’, and a Spike Jones-ish version of the ‘Bonanza theme’. It's generally acknowledged that NRBQ At Yankee Stadium is their high point, and one can hardly disagree.
Kick Me Hard is the one that comes closest to capturing the out-of-the-magic-box spontaneity of the band's looniest performances. A very weird collection of tracks. Adams says, "I think we figured out that there's 13 or 14 songs on it, 11 of them we had never played before the moment they were on the tape. Like 'It Was An Accident' was the very first time we ever played it. 'This Old House', was recorded at home at a party. We were just goofin' around, someone else took it seriously and made a lot of money off of it. The album also features the "Whoo! Whooo!"s of ‘Electric Train’, ‘Hot Biscuits and Sweet Marie’ (a guy has to choose between mom’s home cooking and the favors bestowed by his bride-to-be), and ‘Things We Like To Do’.
Limos? NRBQ? "We've been making the most commercial, accessible music in the country for a long time now. We're not trying to do anything abstract. We're not trying to scare people. This music was made for people, and they'll love it." If you've ever seen NRBQ in a crowded club, you can see the devotion they inspire, another two edged thing they have to handle, just because it's difficult to imagine them being as much fun in any venue where you're ritualistically patted down for cans and bottles and taping equipment before you enter. Are they the ultimate bar band, as many have tapped them?
"All music is folk music," states Adams, "Because we're all folks. I mean, I'm sure Sun Ra likes cornbread as much as Skeeter Davis, and we all might enjoy watching Deputy Dawg together again."
After the release of Tiddlywinks in 1980, there was a recording hiatus broken up only by a single, ‘Captain Lou’. In the interim, they got some impressive endorsements from colleagues, Elvis Costello for one, Bonnie Raitt for another (she cut their existential car song ‘Me And The Boys’ and ‘Green Lights’). On D E7th, Dave Edmunds put ‘Boys’ smack up against a new Springsteen song, and followed that by putting Adams' ‘I Want You Bad’ on Information.
NRBQ's philosophy of aimless forward-motion they have valued freshness over polish, the wide view over the narrow focus. And they won't allow themselves to get locked into a revivalist frame of mind. Music has to be right now. In fact, so right now that every night has to be for right then.
AMEN!
