http://www.masslive.com/newsflash/mass/index.ssf?/base/news-8/1078687444319540.xml By MARK PRATT
The Associated Press
3/7/2004, 2:15 p.m. ET
BOSTON (AP) -- Flip through any serious rock 'n' roll fan's record collection and you're almost bound to find a piece of vinyl by NRBQ. Talk to anyone who went to college in the past 30 years, and they probably have a few hazy memories of attending an NRBQ show or three.
The band is one of the most enduring, most respected, most appreciated, yet least well known on the American music scene.
Rock, blues, country, jazz ? the Q, as they are known to their fans, have done it all. And pulled it off, mixing in a quirky sense of humor. The band once destroyed Cabbage Patch dolls on stage.
The band is still touring and still making records 35 years after it was founded, an anniversary being marked by the release on Tuesday of a tribute album featuring some of its greatest admirers in the music industry. Two anniversary concerts also are planned at the historic Calvin Theater in Northampton in late April and early May.
"We really mean it," founding member and keyboard player Terry Adams said, explaining the band's longevity. "We want to play music no matter what happens, no matter what people think. It's not about playing it safe."
NRBQ has recorded nearly 30 albums, developed legions of fans, and earned something that most song writers and musicians would rather have than top 10 records ? the respect of peers, including the likes of Paul McCartney and Keith Richards.
"To me, they were always one of the most important and significant American bands," said Steve Berlin of Los Lobos, which cut a track for the tribute album "The Q People."
"To this day, I think it is one of the true crimes of our age that they are so underappreciated," Berlin said.
The album includes Bonnie Raitt, Yo La Tengo, Widespread Panic and Mike Mills of REM. It also features a nearly 17-minute "audio cartoon" by SpongeBob SquarePants, voiced by standup comedian Tom Kenny, who has opened shows for NRBQ.
Raitt's association with NRBQ goes back to the band's formative years in the late 1960s when she was still a Harvard undergraduate and before her own recording career took off.
"There was a gig at BU with Kate Taylor, a guy named Eric Mercury, Carl Perkins and NRBQ, and I was going to see Kate anyways because she was a friend of mine, and I was just knocked out by NRBQ," said Raitt.
She went on to tour with the band, and even cover a couple of its songs, inluding "Me and the Boys," included on the tribute album.
"There were these guys who could play Chuck Berry as authentically as Chuck Berry, as opposed to some white versions of Chuck Berry," Raitt said. "They were one of the funkier bunch of white people I'd seen and to this day that holds true."
NRBQ's versatility, musicianship, and ability to appeal to so many people ? the band once released an album of children's songs ? is at the same time blessing and a curse. The group is impossible to pigeon-hole.
"That's held them back," Raitt said. "In many ways I sympathize with that. All during my 20s and 30s everybody was trying to put me in a box and saying I had to stick with one style, but that would be boring. If you like all kinds of music, you've got to just play."
The NRBQ tribute album is the first release for Spirithouse Records, a startup label based in Northampton and founded by music industry veterans and western Massachusetts natives Paul McNamara and Danny Bernini.
Bernini, 37, estimates he has seen NRBQ live "at least 75 to 100 times," the first time when he was 9 years old and his older brother dragged him to a show. He couldn't think of a better way for the label to make an initial splash.
"They were as big to me as Aerosmith, Led Zep and J. Geils and all the bands that we were into as kids," he said.
But Spirithouse still needed the consent of the band and cooperation from other musicians for the album.
"We weren't interested in doing it without their endorsement, and when we asked them about it they were immediately excited," he said. "I had worked with them in the past and they knew that I understood the band."
Dozens of artists have recorded songs written by NRBQ over the years, but band member Adams can't remember an entire tribute album. "The people at Spirithouse just had the desire to put it all together, and we were touched by that," he said.
Getting artists to contribute was even easier.
"The level of enthusiasm we got back from the bands kind of justified the whole idea," McNamara said. "It proved there was a lot of love for NRBQ."
"It took me about a second," to agree to be on the album, Raitt said.
Los Lobos jumped at the chance too. "It was a pleasure," Berlin said. "This one was way fun."
Given NRBQ's penchant for the bizarre, SpongeBob's appearance on the album is hardly out of place. Kenny, who has been a Q fan since he was a teenager, was "thrilled and excited" to be on the album.
"We tried to pack tons of NRBQ references in the dialogue," he said. "It's sort of like an audio 'Where's Waldo.'"
NRBQ members not only gave their blessing to Spirithouse, but also took a hands-off approach. In fact, the band members hadn't even heard the completed album until a few weeks ago.
"We liked all the tracks," Adams said. "It didn't matter to us which ones they did. I thought they were all nice choices."
The album, like the band, covers the spectrum, from Yo La Tengo's country-like "Magnet," to Raitt's raucous "Me and the Boys," to a soulful version of "Never Take the Place of You," by Los Lobos.
"There just isn't anybody like them," Raitt said.
Topic: Big names in music come together on NRBQ tribute album (Read 1123 times)