So Peter’s Remarks on Springsteen Made Me Think of NRBQ

This is an inappropriate way to begin a post, but as soon as I began writing what I had to say, the SOFTWARE COMPANY made me update and restart, which in the time it took to maintain a means of communication, I forgot whatever it was I thought I had important to say.

Luckily my natural memory partially overcame such software updates. But for the hassle of a few minutes with moving blue bars telling me the up to the second status of my update, I was trying to remember what I had to say. Needless to say forgot my main point. Whatever was important has been lost.

Alas, I did have something of note to say about how Kojeve said that the human and its history had ended 207 years ago, but it was forgotten in the blip of a software update. I had something to say about being posthistorical.

But since I have forgotten my point, let me praise what is literally most important in my ears right now. For all Louis CK’s talk of Springsteen’s deep yelling from another faraway place in “Jungleland,” one still ought to experience the need to “Get a Grip” by NRBQ. In fact one ought to experience the entirety of the NRBQ album Scraps simply. Seeing this band live was truly an excellent experience in my life.

But I’ve been over this territory before in earlier posts.

“Are you ready . . . ” “Get a grip . . . ” “Do you feel it? . . . ” How could this Scraps album from the early ‘70s on Buddha Records not have a hit? How could this band with all their great albums and live shows in their entire history not have had one hit? I discovered them in the ‘80s, and I was such a fan that my hand and wrist literally made it into a Musician magazine piece on them (Aerosmith is on the cover, but NRBQ had an extended piece where in the photos you can see my hand!). I know this because a girlfriend at the time had given me a wrist “friendship bracelet,” and it is that particular bracelet and hand showing in the foreground of the band playing.

So my hand in photography of Musician magazine must be the inscription left on a time where passion met words, but in which such words did not meet evident deeds. Needless to day I was adrift in doing nothing at the time. And one thing to say for NRBQ is that they excluded themselves from the movements—political and social—that defined their era. Like Peter Lawler’s description of Johnny Carson’s shyness, NRBQ could make good rock ‘n roll without having to put themselves on the line. Usually their songs contained wry observations of the laughable contradictions that good and ordinary Americans often find themselves in.

But then again Terry Adams could sing , “I feel so good, I want you to feel good too.” He meant it too.