NRBQ

For my money, NRBQ remains the best bar band in the world: that is, the line-up with guitarist Al Anderson remains the best bar band in the world (later incarnations didn't compare).

The name stands for New Rhythm and Blues Quartet, but rhythm and blues is about the only type of music the band doesn't play. Who else could put together a set list that featured Johnny Cash, Thelonious Monk, Carl Perkins, Sun Ra, traditional tunes and their own wacky paeans to girls, marijuana, cars, dictionaries, biting dogs and Moon Pies? WHo else could cover the themes from Bonanza and old John Wayne movies? Who else could jam with Carl Perkins, Keith Richards, Skeeter Davis and the young lions of jazz?

Just to prove their versatility, the band had a gimmick they employed at live shows for years: pass a box through the audience and invite audience members to write song names on scraps of paper and drop them in the box. Later in the show, the band would randomly draw one or two slips of paper out of the box and attempt those songs. They always succeeded.

Bassist Joey Spampinato was good enough to be tapped by Keith Richards to play in the backing band in Richards' film about Chuck Berry, when the Rolling Stone guitarist could have called any bassist in the world. Keyboard player Terry Adams, sometimes brilliant, sometimes catatonic, recorded an album in which he led several jazz masters (and more than held his own).

They've backed wrestlers (Captain Lou Albano) and rockabilly singers (Perkins), played music from the 1950s and music from outer space, and presented some of the tightest and sloppiest live shows on the planet. Never imitated, never equalled, they're more fun than any other three bands you can name.

Quick Hit

Award for the best title for a live album (best live album remains, of course, James Brown Live At The Apollo) goes to The Replacements, one of the best things to ever come out of Minneapolis-St. Paul (Prince and Husker Du would be the others). Known for their drunken, lurching live shows, where wrong chords sometimes battled with forgotten lyrics, the 'Mats' (fans affectionately dubbed them The Place-mats) live album is named, appropriately, The Shit Hits The Fans. The album is better than you might think.