Consumer Guide Album

NRBQ: Workshop [Kama Sutra, 1973]
This band continues to live up to its full name (now Quartet rather than Quintet again), suggesting a cross between a chamber group (virtuosity and rhythmic decorum) and the New Lost City Ramblers (intelligent folkiness). Terry Adams plays rock and roll like a man who knows jazz wasn't invented by Chick Corea, and I do enjoy their sense of humor--the organ pumping into "C'Mon if You're Coming," or the out-of-synch, out-of-timbre Adams blues piano that undercuts "Blues Stay Away From Me." But I get no sense of why they engage in this musicianly reconstruction of r&b tradition; the jokes, none of which would make Carson, are what there is of a point. And if I'm going to listen to rock and roll without overdrive I need more reason than that. B