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!
― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, 11 August 2018 03:25 (five years ago) link
Green Light sounds so much like an alt mix of a Squeeze song that hearing it without context baffled me.
― Hunt3r, Tuesday, 11 June 2019 16:37 (four years ago) link
This band sucks so much ass
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 24 October 2019 14:46 (four years ago) link
"Do you wish the Grateful Dead was just the Bob Weir good lovin shit?" is not a good mission statement
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 24 October 2019 14:48 (four years ago) link
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
― A breezy pop-rock feel fairly typical of the mid-'80s (Dan Peterson), Thursday, 24 October 2019 14:58 (four years ago) link
While sometimes NRBQ’s eclectic bar band approach works against them, they do not suck.
― curmudgeon, Thursday, 24 October 2019 15:13 (four years ago) link
dan p i'm not sure that video is demonstrating what you want it to demonstrate
― adam, Thursday, 24 October 2019 15:20 (four years ago) link
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 cutethe first album had some good stuff but man that Live at Yankee Stadium record I was like THIS is it
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 24 October 2019 15:24 (four years ago) link
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…
― veronica moser, Thursday, 24 October 2019 17:17 (four years ago) link
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.
― A breezy pop-rock feel fairly typical of the mid-'80s (Dan Peterson), Thursday, 24 October 2019 17:37 (four years ago) link
If you're not on board w/Yankee Stadium, the Q is not for you.
― a bevy of supermodels, musicians and Lena Dunham (C. Grisso/McCain), Thursday, 24 October 2019 23:22 (four years ago) link
Also, to my ears, Yankee Stadium has at least as much in common with new wave as it does with Shakedown Street.
― enochroot, Thursday, 24 October 2019 23:36 (four years ago) link
Yeah, it's very Rockpile/Graham Parker-y.
― a bevy of supermodels, musicians and Lena Dunham (C. Grisso/McCain), Thursday, 24 October 2019 23:44 (four years ago) link
...and of course Dave Edmunds has covered some NRBQ/Al Anderson stuff.
― a bevy of supermodels, musicians and Lena Dunham (C. Grisso/McCain), Thursday, 24 October 2019 23:46 (four years ago) link
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
― J. Sam, Friday, 25 October 2019 11:59 (four years ago) link
“Riding in my car” is great power pop. “Me and the Boys “ and “I want you bad” are also great rockin pop songs.
― curmudgeon, Friday, 25 October 2019 16:59 (four years ago) link
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.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 25 October 2019 17:01 (four years ago) link
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)
― dow, Friday, 25 October 2019 22:06 (four years ago) link
That box set is often amaaazing, though they could get too cutesy at times.
― dow, Friday, 25 October 2019 22:08 (four years ago) link
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.
― a bevy of supermodels, musicians and Lena Dunham (C. Grisso/McCain), Friday, 25 October 2019 22:54 (four years ago) link
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/
― dow, Saturday, 26 October 2019 14:58 (four years ago) link
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…
― veronica moser, Saturday, 26 October 2019 17:24 (four years ago) link
I'm a Spampinato fan. A song like "Still in School" is like...thank goodness someone honors the Lovin' Spoonful tradition.
― timellison, Saturday, 26 October 2019 19:09 (four years ago) link
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-flewzyAlso, for instance, his choice and treatment of a Vacation Bible School fave, as heard on the box.
― dow, Saturday, 26 October 2019 19:43 (four years ago) link
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…
― veronica moser, Saturday, 26 October 2019 20:18 (four years ago) link
can you gimme some more indications of what you remember?
― veronica moser, Saturday, 26 October 2019 20:25 (four years ago) link
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.
― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, 18 February 2023 05:35 (one year ago) link