NRBQ Classic or Dud

Anybody see the new band live? They are doing a free show here in the next couple months and was wondering if it's worth the trip downtown, parking fees etc.

― Mucho! Macho! Honcho!: Turn Off The Dark (C. Grisso/McCain), Friday, August 19, 2011 10:41 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

As luck would have it, this show was tonight and a friend happened to be having her birthday party at a bar around the block afterwards. So I went.

As bad luck would have it, I got a mild case of food poisoning from my late lunch, so I only got to see parts of their set.

However, I did get to hear them do "Me and The Boys" and the rest of what I heard (not stuff familiar to me) was pretty good. They weren't as zany as legend and vintage youtubes tell.

Also learned Conrad Choucroun (the new drummer) is a Houston boy and a vet of Banana Blender Surprise, an area party band that wanted to be NRBQ really bad.

R.I.P. Tommy Ardolino, a sweet guy who really knew how to swing.
https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=3056331932353

More here:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/NRBQ-Headquarters/221489064545160

Love watching Tommy's face as they play "Music Goes 'Round" at about 3:02.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qSHEGfbkvQg

so sad! terry adams was kind enough to introduce me to tom last summer here at the store and i'm really glad i got to shake his hand and tell him how much i enjoyed his work. such a nice guy. i can't recommend the Unknown Brain recordings of Tom's teenage stuff highly enough. One of my favorite archival releases of all time. Hilarious and awesome. Josh from Mystery Train here put a pressing out on vinyl and you can still find it online.

Unknown Brain is used throughout this video. First time I had heard it. Sounds just like Terry Adams on the clavinet! Who influenced who?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNBEviii-FE

that guy who makes those videos was such a weirdo. and he wrote really rude shit about my pals at MT on youtube. i thought that was uncalled for. they were nice enough to let him in and let him film their store, and then he does that. he's supposedly a vinyl-addicted dj and he didn't look at anything in my store. i didn't get it.

sorry, when i see those vid clips i just go grrrrr....can't help it.

Yeah, that's a real dick move.

RIP to one of the swingin'-est, thwackin'-est backbeat drummers I ever saw. I've been surfing Q clips today, and this one had me smiling:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEsTO6uslhI&feature=related

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/arts/music/tom-ardolino-56-longtime-drummer-for-nrbq-dies.html?_r=1&ref=music

I don't think Tony Bennett gets it.
"Every song featured ear-torturing mistakes, bizarre random noises, wrong notes aplenty, and just plain bad playing from Adams."
http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/ae/3814293-review-nrbq-bewilders-bayfront-blues-audience

Anyone would sound shabby next to Scott Ligon.

the real tony bennett would be totally into nrbq

I need this.
http://www.newhampshire.com/storyimage/UL/20161110/NEWHAMPSHIRE0105/161119982/AR/0/AR-161119982.jpg?q=100

That awesome feeling when you're just hanging on a Friday night and you hear NRBQs local guitarist is playing the burger place next to the bowling alley for free. Beatles covers, Everley Brothers, Beach Boys ...a blast!

Green Light sounds so much like an alt mix of a Squeeze song that hearing it without context baffled me.

This band sucks so much ass

"Do you wish the Grateful Dead was just the Bob Weir good lovin shit?" is not a good mission statement

UMS I generally enjoy your posts, but this is the epitome of wrong. One of the finest bar bands ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d5Hdqyjj5o

While sometimes NRBQ’s eclectic bar band approach works against them, they do not suck.

dan p i'm not sure that video is demonstrating what you want it to demonstrate

in that it is a video of a band sucking

been trying Dan! you know I will give any old rock band the benefit of the doubt but something about this band really rankles me, too cute

the first album had some good stuff but man that Live at Yankee Stadium record I was like THIS is it

rather, I would say to their everlasting credit, the 'Q is everything that the Dead, a pox on on music and life upon this earth, is not. It is exceedingly odd, UMS, given what I know about you via ILX, that they bother you …I saw the Q about as many times as many shitheads I knew saw the Dead from 89 to 95, and have only seen them once since Al left, in 96. Have 0 interest in seeing Terry playing with whichever 40-50 year old oddballs consorting with him…

Current Q is really good, it's heartwarming to me to see Terry still active, but yeah I miss Al (and Tom.)

I do get the 'too cute' label though, it's not entirely unwarranted, especially when they cover, like, Patience and Prudence.

If you're not on board w/Yankee Stadium, the Q is not for you.

Also, to my ears, Yankee Stadium has at least as much in common with new wave as it does with Shakedown Street.

Yeah, it's very Rockpile/Graham Parker-y.

...and of course Dave Edmunds has covered some NRBQ/Al Anderson stuff.

WTF this band is great. At Yankee Stadium, Scraps, and especially All Hopped Up are absolutely packed with beautiful melodies/chord progressions, solid power-pop grooves; and clever, if sometimes corny lyrics. If you can't handle a bit of well-crafted cuteness, I just feel bad for you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DsK2yke5ng

“Riding in my car” is great power pop. “Me and the Boys “ and “I want you bad” are also great rockin pop songs.

Their young ringer guitarist lives near me, and plays these occasional intimate gigs in the back room of a local burger place, doing covers of the Kinks and Beach Boys and Beatles and the like.

Want to say the last time I saw him he did a set of Everly Brothers.

We were talking about the Q over on the main Little Feat thread recently:

You know who else makes good companion listening to the Feet?

'70s NRBQ.

― a bevy of supermodels, musicians and Lena Dunham (C. Grisso/McCain), Monday, October 7, 2019 8:18 PM (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

recommend an LP?

― calstars, Monday, October 7, 2019 9:01 PM (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

Omnivore's been reissuing a bunch of theirs, also a few recent sets (Terry Adams with an all-this-century line-up, I think) The best reissue I've heard is their s/t debut, from 1969, smokin' Louisville backyards and other spaces. Don't know how many of these have been reissued by now, but I liked several of their 70s, At Yankee Stadium, Kick Me Hard, Grooves in Orbit, and Tapdancin' Bats---oh yeah, All Hopped Up has been reissued, but seemed too or wrongly gimmicky at times; they could be that way (ditto the current crew)
And if you really want to take the plunge, Omnivore's High Noon - A 50-Year Retrospective is pretty refreshing, for the most part---as it damn well better be, with 5 CDs.

― dow, Monday, October 7, 2019 9:20 PM (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

I was just listening to Workshop, which is what inspired me to post. I've got it was part of a vinyl two-fer with their prior effort Scraps, which might be a good place to start (Sundazed did individual LP reissues). At Yankee Stadium has them starting to get New Wave-y in a way the Feat never lived to reach, but it's the consensus pick and very much worth your time.

I should point out that where the two bands most overlap is in their wacky sense of humor. NRBQ used the Beatles as a jumping-off point the same way the Feat used the Stones.

― a bevy of supermodels, musicians and Lena Dunham (C. Grisso/McCain), Monday, October 7, 2019 10:11 PM (two weeks ago)

That box set is often amaaazing, though they could get too cutesy at times.

I'm blanking on it right now, but there's a track on either Scraps or Workshop that would slot in perfectly on the first two Feats albums, down to an LG-esque slide part.

From a consid of NRBQ box and Sun Ra singles comp (thee biggest and most recent, though still not complete):

...n 1969, co-founder and sole constant of all line-ups Terry Adams was quoted by the New York Times as declaring that NRBQ was based on “the Sun—-Sun Ra and Sun Records.” It’s a good hook, and basically true---and would be, in the sense of an adventurous, driven and canny spirit shared, whatever the stylistic differences—-=even if, as he recounts in this set’s booklet, Adams hadn’t first visited Ra at the end of the 60s, when too much was up in the air; he was given a Saturn Records 45 RPM single of “Rocket Number Nine”—hearing this, Adams realized he had to get NRBQ back together and dedicate his life to music (the reunited combo’s own version of “Rocket…” soon blasted off, sonically if not commercially).
https://www.nodepression.com/sun-ra-and-nrbq/

man, I used to describe Terry's style as Jerry Lee Monk, but you can't beat that Sun/Sun remark…

I lived in Louisville from year 0 to 18, so I had a lot of pride in the 'Q. One day, at the shit telemarketing job I had the summer before I went o college, I looked over at the red-faced alky hippie who was sitting across from me, and realized it was Steve Ferguson. The lunch breaks at this job were suddenly fascinating for me, although he was unaccustomed to being around teenagers who knew who he was and then pestering him at whatever job he found himself taking…

I'm a Spampinato fan. A song like "Still in School" is like...thank goodness someone honors the Lovin' Spoonful tradition.

Jerry Lee Monk! Hell yeah. And some of their most inspired work was with Steve Ferguson---an excellent example is well described here:
...all funked up and frenzied. It’s hard to identify each note among the slurs and bends, but by my count he manages in those four seconds to play at least twenty-four of them. Ferguson called himself a blues player with a country right hand—meaning he naturally pulled out the blue notes, the bends and slides and double-stops, but syncopated the picking rhythm in the style of the old-time classic Nashville or Memphis sound. If you listen with this in mind you’ll understand what he meant; although over the years he would venture widely and experiment with about every imaginable genre of music, the sound and style here remained his signature, the opening lead into “Flewzy.”
https://www.oxfordamerican.org/item/1389-nrbq-flat-foot-flewzy
Also, for instance, his choice and treatment of a Vacation Bible School fave, as heard on the box.

Hey C Grisso: I went through Scraps and RC Cola and a Moon Pie (more or less Workshop) since I'm curious what tune you mean but I can't figure it out…I don't hear the parallels between Feat and the 'Q…

can you gimme some more indications of what you remember?

Tonight for the first time in three years Scott Ligon returned to our local dive bar/burger joint with the rest of NRBQ (minus Terry Adams) for a set of '60s rock. Beatles, Byrds, Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry, Burt Bacharach, even a few things that didn't start with B, like the Sir Douglas Quintet and Sun Ra and Johnny Cash and Gram Parsons. A good time was had by all.