It may be hard to understand now why NRBQ once meant so much to people, but from the moment the album NRBQ was released in 1969, the New Jersey-based band became a lot of fans' "great rock hope," thanks to music-for-music's-sake set lists that jumped wildly from mambo to rockabilly to free jazz to showtunes. NRBQ's original songs were weird and witty, and though they lacked the polish and clarity that would've gotten them on the radio, they were hardly inaccessible. And live, NRBQ had more fun than any rockers of the era.
Derbytown: Live 1982 catches the band at a peak, playing in Louisville, KY to a packed club on a hot night, with the two-piece "Whole Wheat Horns" filling out the sound. Jumping between covers and originals—and even pausing for a recitation of "Sink The Bismark"—NRBQ gives the crowd something light and spirited to dance to, far removed from any of the corporate rock or edgy post-punk and new wave dominating the musical culture at the time. Nowadays, NRBQ comes off like a skilled-but-silly bar band, but in 1982, that was exactly what a lot of people needed to hear.