'Q' tunes Here's the lineup on "The Q People" CD, a tribute to NRBQ. 1. "Magnet" by Yo La Tengo 2. "A Girl Like That" by Steve Earle 3. "Ridin' In My Car" by Settie 4. "Never Take The Place Of You" by Los Lobos 5. "Me And The Boys" by Bonnie Raitt 6. "I Love Her, She Loves Me" by Ware River Club 7. "When Things Was Cheap" by Mike Mills (of R.E.M.) 8. "My Girlfriend's Pretty" by Ron Sexsmith 9. "I Want You Bad" by J Mascis 10. "Ain't No Horse" by Widespread Panic 11. "Yes, Yes, Yes" by King Radio 12. "Little Floater's Wild Weekend" (audio cartoon) by SpongeBob SquarePants With liner notes by Penn Jillette

The band is one of the most enduring, most respected, most appreciated, yet least well-known on the American music scene.

Rock, blues, country, jazz - the Q, as they are known to their fans, have done it all. And pulled it off, mixing in a quirky sense of humor. The band once destroyed Cabbage Patch dolls on stage.

The band is still touring and still making records 35 years after it was founded, an anniversary marked by the release last Tuesday of "Q People," a tribute album featuring some of NRBQ's greatest admirers.

Anniversary concerts featuring members past and present are planned for April 30 and May 1 at the Calvin Theater in Northampton. The present lineup will play March 27 at the Old Jailhouse Tavern in Orleans.

"We really mean it," founding member and keyboard player Terry Adams said, explaining the band's longevity. "We want to play music no matter what happens, no matter what people think. It's not about playing it safe."

"To me, they were always one of the most important and significant American bands," said Steve Berlin of Los Lobos, which cut a track for the tribute album "The Q People."

"To this day, I think it is one of the true crimes of our age that they are so underappreciated," Berlin said.

The album includes Bonnie Raitt, Yo La Tengo, Widespread Panic and Mike Mills of R.E.M. It also features a nearly 17-minute "audio cartoon" by SpongeBob SquarePants, voiced by standup comedian Tom Kenny, who has opened shows for NRBQ.

Raitt's association with NRBQ goes back to the band's formative years in the late 1960s when she was still a Harvard undergraduate and before her own recording career took off.

"There was a gig at BU with Kate Taylor, a guy named Eric Mercury, Carl Perkins and NRBQ, and I was going to see Kate anyways because she was a friend of mine, and I was just knocked out by NRBQ," said Raitt.

She went on to tour with the band, and even cover a couple of its songs, inluding "Me and the Boys," included on the tribute album.

"There were these guys who could play Chuck Berry as authentically as Chuck Berry, as opposed to some white versions of Chuck Berry," Raitt said. "They were one of the funkier bunch of white people I'd seen and to this day that holds true."

"That's held them back," Raitt said. "In many ways I sympathize with that. All during my 20s and 30s everybody was trying to put me in a box and saying I had to stick with one style, but that would be boring. If you like all kinds of music, you've got to just play."

The NRBQ tribute album is the first release for Spirithouse Records, a startup label based in Northampton and founded by music industry veterans and western Massachusetts natives Paul McNamara and Danny Bernini.

Bernini, 37, estimates he has seen NRBQ live "at least 75 to 100 times," the first time when he was 9 years old and his older brother dragged him to a show. He couldn't think of a better way for the label to make an initial splash.

"They were as big to me as Aerosmith, Led Zep and J. Geils and all the bands that we were into as kids," he said.

Dozens of artists have recorded songs written by NRBQ over the years, but band member Adams can't remember an entire tribute album. "The people at Spirithouse just had the desire to put it all together, and we were touched by that," he said.

"It took me about a second," to agree to be on the album, Raitt said.

Los Lobos jumped at the chance too. "It was a pleasure," Berlin said. "This one was way fun."

Given NRBQ's penchant for the bizarre, SpongeBob's appearance on the album is hardly out of place. Kenny, who has been a Q fan since he was a teenager, was "thrilled and excited" to be on the album.

"We tried to pack tons of NRBQ references in the dialogue," he said. "It's sort of like an audio 'Where's Waldo.' "

NRBQ members not only gave their blessing to Spirithouse, but also took a hands-off approach. In fact, the band members hadn't even heard the completed album until a few weeks ago.

"We liked all the tracks," Adams said. "It didn't matter to us which ones they did. I thought they were all nice choices."

The album, like the band, covers the spectrum, from Yo La Tengo's country-like "Magnet," to Raitt's raucous "Me and the Boys," to a soulful version of "Never Take the Place of You," by Los Lobos.

"There just isn't anybody like them," Raitt said.

(Published: March 15, 2004)