Saturday, December 15, 2012

I Can Think Of Other Things To Do



NRBQ have recorded some stuff with as much busted-down cred and who-gives-a-wang as anything LX ever did, although to most people they're the old-timers outfit with only one original member that shows up to play the county fair and Toad's Place every year, and that's true too. At their peak, which "At Yankee Stadium" most likely is, NRBQ was stacked with three ace songwriters, with Tom Ardolino always trailing a half-step behind the beat Charlie Watts-style as literally one of the greatest, most understated drummers of all time. "I Want You Bad" and "Ridin' In My Car" both rank alongside "September Gurls" as some of my favorite pop/rock songs ever, although in an odd twist "Ridin' In My Car" (their non-hit single from 3 years earlier) was appended to the first pressing of "At Yankee Stadium" by the record label for whatever reason and didn't appear on any subsequent pressings. "Get Rhythm" is a Johnny Cash cover, by the way, and it smokes like just about everything else on this album. The indirect joke behind the album's title (besides the main visual gag) is that it isn't a live album and it wasn't recorded at Yankee Stadium either, one of those guess-you-had-to-be-there type references (see: Foghat, Peter Frampton, Blue Öyster Cult, Black Oak Arkansas, Ted Nugent, etc etc) which, as anyone can tell you, is always the best kind of humor.




NRBQ -

"Green Lights"

"I Want You Bad"

"Get Rhythm"

"It Comes To Me Naturally"

"Ridin' In My Car"


2 comments:

Jere said...

The guy on the left: Morris from Cloak & Dagger, or a pissed off Greg Vegas?

Brushback said...

I was thinking Big Al looks like Dick Dastardly a bit