Right on "Q"

After playing and recording for more than 35 years, rock stalwarts NRBQ show they still make music with soul and smarts on their new album, Dummy.

NRBQ

Do great Rock and Roll bands always sell millions of CD's and play to sold-out stadium crowds? Not necessarily, especially if the band in question is NRBQ, happily playing and recording for more than 35 years. Long ago, the initials stood for New Rhythm & Blues Quartet, but the full name doesn't begin to do justice to a group that is defined by a willingness to perform music of any and every style. Happy sounds have always been a specialty of NRBQ - their love of life is reflected in such song titles as "Howard Johnson's Got His Ho-Jo Working," "Riding in My Car," "Me and the Boys," "RC Cola and a Moon Pie," and "Wacky Tobacky." Their new album, Dummy (Edisun) is only the Q's most recent exercise in ignoring genre restrictions. Along with their upbeat rocking originals, the NRBQ treatment is also extended to covers of the old Mario Lanza hit, "Be My Love" (by Sammy Cahn and Nicholas Brodsky) and Antonio Carlos Jobim's "All That's Left to Say Is Goodbye."

The current NRBQ lineup is Tom Ardolino on drums, Johnny Spampinato on guitar, Joey Spampinato on bass and vocals and Terry Adams on keyboards and vocals. Joey and Terry are founding members of the band and the main songwriters, as well. The group was formed in Florida, where Kentucky-born Adams and Bronx native Spampinato went to seek their musical fortunes in their late teens. From the get-go, musical boundaries were never an issue for the jazz-influenced Adams or the doo wop/Beatles-loving Spampinato. "We were never doing a lot of things," explains Adams. "It was just one thing to us. For people who want bands to play one particular style or whatever, then we're doing a lot of things." And Joey adds, "When we put out our first record, we had a lot of different musical tastes, but we just treated it as sort of one thing. We like good music, and we don't differentiate that this is one genre and that's another."

Longevity in rock bands is rare. Groups like the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead have been together as long as NRBQ, but as Adams points out, "The fact that we've been together this long and working every week -- in rock and roll time, that's 90 years, because any band that lasts this long takes three years off and goes to the island that they bought before its next tour." While the members of "Q" would love to have that level of success, they seem to have their artistic priorities straight. "The music comes first. We'd like to be marketed, if somebody wants to figure it out. And everything else about the business is fine, as long as music is first," declares Adams. "The motives for making music have to be right; they can't be self-centered motives. You can't be making music just to get on television or to say look how handsome I am, and I need more money."

On that business note, NRBQ currently markets itself on a self-owned record label, Edisun. The band actually pioneered the artist-owned label in the pre-Internet 1970s , with an imprint called Red Rooster. "We've auditioned a lot of labels, and so far none of them have been good enough," says Adams. "I'd like to say I hate the labels, but I don't. It's just that sometimes at record companies somebody just doesn't get it and they drop the ball."

There's a self-effacing humility about the "Q" that comes through their music. Both Terry and Joey often take lead vocals on songs the other may have written. And while they love to write original songs, they have no qualms about performing "covers." As Adams says, "I think its just as creative to do a song you didn't write if you choose it right. I've never believed that there should be pressured to come out and do all original songs, not if you don't feel like it." As to the process of picking a cover song, there's no hard and fast rule. "We just play music while we're in a car and then something suddenly strikes everybody. We may not get around to it but eventually when we're making a record, that song might come up.," says Joey Spampinato. "Often, it's an obscure song because we like that kind of thing."

New for NRBQ on Dummy is their first-ever political song, "Misguided Missiles," a Terry Adams comment on the current world situation issued shortly before Election Day. "We always steer away from politics," says Adams. "But this time it was 'now or never.' We've allowed ourselves to speak out because pretty soon it's going to be too late." But I think the motives for making music has to be right. It can't be self-centered motives. You can't be making music for getting on television to say look how handsome I am, and I need more money."