#jon perrin

I’m never sure of anything. Ever. Even at moments when I can fake certainty with a convincing degree of fake authenticity, the doubts are roaring. And justifiably so, because I am always a hairsbreadth from irrevocably fucking up. Not exaggerating. My relationships, my job, my health, all surrounded by a tension that keeps mounting until I finally succumb to one of the myriad absurd impulses harrying me while trying to blend in to polite society. The tension intensifies until stumbling offers more relief than staying the course, like deviation is inevitable. Say something rude. Argue a meaningless point. Treat something important dismissively and something trivial like it’s vital. Imagine grossly intimate activities with that person over there. So when I say that the people in my life who put up with me are saints, that ain’t hyperbole. Sometimes (always), I worry that the gratitude I feel toward friends and family, and the self-loathing implicit in that gratitude, is so exhausting that I’m actually urging them to recognize how much nicer their lives would be if they never had to deal with my infuriating mix of passive aggressive self-effacement and utterly unfounded arrogance, all wrapped up in a constant appeal for sympathy. I wouldn’t begrudge any of them the sudden realization that life is too short for my special brand of bullshit. And I know that’s probably just fear dressed up like sympathy to stave off its fulfillment, but whatever. The point is that, while I love my friends and family, for the good of everybody, I need large doses of solitude. But not silence. 

Like Peter and the Wolf’s anthropomorphically symbolic instrumentation, dynamic music can have metaphysical qualities, elevating rhythm, melody and harmony into a coherent, affirming message, something both resembling and removed from life’s more atonal, discordant realities. A good band takes you for a real ride, and NRBQ is a great band. Listen closely to their music and your reward will be bliss.

The similarities between NRBQ fans and XXX moviegoers are uncomfortably strong. We’re usually middle aged men. Raincoat or not, we aren’t dressed well and our hair is a mess, which is not our fault because how are we supposed to control our own hairlines? We often go to our shows alone. And we derive immense pleasure from something that most folks just don’t appreciate. I am aware of a community of NRBQ fans who have bonded over the years and are all happy to see each other. I’ve even met a few and they are lovely people. But then there are the fans like me, who prefer an unadulterated musical experience, pro-sonic, anti-social. And if they’re really like me, they’re ashamed of it, knowing that the worries about all the ways an interaction could go awry are indicative of much deeper flaws. If we were emotionally healthier, we’d happily get down with other audience members instead of grabbing as much space as we can find to dance goofily by ourselves. But our worries are real, though at least they’re quieter when the music is really sending me, which honest NRBQ does, honest they do, honest they do, whooaaaooaaaoh. Yeah, they played that too, and it was great.

First time I saw NRBQ live was in 1995 at the Cat’s Cradle in Chapel Hill, NC, a year after they’d released a 25 year retrospective called Peek-A-Boo, and also a year after the departure of their lead guitarist, Big Al Anderson, who moved to Nashville to write songs (and gain significantly more financial security than his former bandmates, one of whom recently needed a fundraiser for medical expenses). At the time I played electric piano for a band called The Spirits of Deviation and had gotten to know a few musicians around town. Chip, the drummer from a band called the Two Dollar Pistols who rented the same practice space as us, saw me at the show, slapped me on the back, handed me a beer and said, “This is the best band in the world.” The jovial certainty of Chip’s pronouncement made an impression, but not as deeply as the band did. Of course, I was mesmerized by Terry Adams, who still plays piano like Thelonious Monk, Jerry Lee Lewis and Chico Marx, all while conducting the show as both teacher and class clown. Also, midsong, the late Tom Ardolino, tossed one of his drumsticks to the bass player, Joey Spampinato, who, Jack Burton-style, caught it and threw it right back without anybody missing a beat. These guys were doing a highwire routine where, instead of fearing an inevitable fall, they kept adding more risk to the act, getting wobblier and wobblier, but never losing their balance. Near the end of the show, an older, almost angry man started clapping his hands and shaking the dust off his boots, shouting that he had seen music all over the world and it didn’t get no better than this! At the time, I was struck by his sincerity, even if I didn’t really understand what lent his whooping a note of desperation. But years later, I thought that maybe he really wanted to cut loose, but couldn’t quite get there without a little more reinforcement from the his neighbors in the audience. He needed the college kids hearing the same music as him to tell him he wasn’t crazy, that this really was the best goddamn Rock ‘n Roll you could ever hope to hear, but nobody really gave it to him. I wish I could buy that guy a drink because he was absolutely right, and we all shoulda partied harder to celebrate how lucky we were to see that band perform one stunning musical feat after another.

Since that night, I’ve seen the Q in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Hoboken, 3 different venues in Manhattan and 3 more in Brooklyn, and every time there are a few longtime devotees and a few newbies who come in voluntarily to see what the sparse but passionate fuss is about. The crowd is never large, but whoever shows up gets treated to the real fucking deal. These guys may not be in it for the money, but they sure do mean business. And to me, seeing commitment that deep for commercial rewards that paltry is one of the most beautiful things available in our culture. A noble stand. 

In 2004, Terry Adams was diagnosed with throat cancer, and the band stopped performing while he focussed on healing. In 2008, the Joey Spampinato left the band, along with his brother Johnny who had replaced Big Al, and Tommy, whose health was in decline. Terry had formed a new band called Terry Adams’ Rock & Roll Quartet, but in 2011, the TARRQ became NRBQ. The current lineup, with Jon Perrin on drums, Casey McDonough on bass and Scott Ligon on guitar, has been playing together for more than 10 years now, and I would argue they actually surpass their predecessors.

I caught ‘em again on Friday night at the Paramount Hudson Valley Theater in Peekskill, NY and it reaffirmed and even bolstered my admiration for the band. Before the show, I went to a Mexican restaurant and sat next to a guy I had seen 5 minutes earlier at the box office. Somehow, I mistook recognizing him for greater kinship than we shared, and talked to him like a superfan for about 20 minutes before he told me that, rather than traveling a great distance to see his beloved Q, he was a seasonal subscriber with a distant familiarity with tonight’s act. I tried to make it seem like this information was integrating itself seamlessly into a friendly back and forth conversation about topics of mutual fluency, but in my embarrassment, I nodded a little too agreeably when he said, “There’s somethin’ you don’t see everyday. Pink rugby uniforms!” I wasn’t interested in pretending Jim (not his name) and I were manlier than rugby players, but he wanted to seem funny, I’d give up a mini-guffaw for the cause. I’d blown any chance I had to be seen with any complexity when I uninvitedly yammered on about the Q song that SpongeBob covered, and now I felt like things between Jim and me would pass most pleasantly if I dumbed down considerably while still acting like the things he said were interesting, which was a check I wasn’t sure I could cash. Obviously there are social strategies that do not attribute unintentional oppression to one’s interlocutor, but I needed a reason to enforce distance with Jim that wasn’t completely fueled by my own embarrassment. I wanted this interaction to be over, and even wished I’d picked one of the three other Mexican restaurants I’d seen in a two block perimeter around the theater (also, their hottest hot sauce was not very hot). But I didn’t want Jim to feel like he was being soured on, so I kept smiling and nodding and saying something inane every few minutes just to make the coversation feel two-way, feeling increasingly apologetic as the feelings I was displaying grew increasingly counterfeit. “We’re all God’s children,” I kept telling myself. Finally he hopped off his barstool and said, “OK, good meeting you,” and I was relieved to see that he hadn’t remembered my name. I wasn’t there to make friends. 

The theater held over 1,000. I think maybe 200 people showed up, most of them subscribers like Jim. I wondered what the folks who’d never heard of NRBQ thought. I’d like to think they loved the music and weren’t turned off by the middle aged loners in the rear orchestra, flailing arthritically to some approximation of the beat. None of us look like we’re really in on some divine secret, and, since none of the people we’ve dragged before to experience this abiding source of joy ever come back, it seems like we’ve all been blown there by forces that other people subdue. It’s not that I think you have to be a weirdo to love NRBQ, just that whatever peace stronger or more successful people find is less reliant on music than mine is. Maybe if I hadn’t been driving, I would have gotten drunk enough to harangue the audience a bit, like my buddy did back in 1995. 

Jim pierced my little bubble late in the show and said, “I’ve definitely seen less talent in bigger arenas!” and, while I was glad that he appreciated the band, I also perceived that he thought validating my love for the band was some kind of good will gesture. But again, I did mistakenly geek out on the guy 3 hours earlier. So I patted him on the shoulder and nodded, hoping he’d go away so I could go back to listening without feeling too misanthropic about it. Like I was hoarding a drug. Not proud of it. On the other hand, if that’s my self-medication, I could be doing worse.