It’s probably a good thing that NRBQ never became famous. Who knows what we would have lost if success had gone to their heads, if they’d started playing by the rules and doing the kinds of things that normal bands did? This is a group, after all, that opened its debut album, in 1969, with back-to-back covers of songs by rockabilly great Eddie Cochran and out-there jazz iconoclast Sun Ra. Now it’s a half-century later and they’re still going—although keyboard genius Terry Adams is the sole remaining original—and there’s a huge enough body of work to be gathered up into this way essential five-CD set. The chronology is all out of whack, but who cares? The guiding principles of unpredictability and going for broke and having a blast and keeping it real have never wavered. Go ahead and put it on random shuffle—those perfectly crafted pop-rock tunes like “Rain at the Drive-In” and “Ridin’ in My Car” are right at home next to the driving anthems “Me and the Boys” and “Crazy Like a Fox,” and the nothin’ but fun “Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard” and “Terry Got a Muffin” (and the weird shit, too). It’s all just one big bunch o’ lovable Q madness: insane rockabilly licks, avant-garde jazz-piano excursions, horn-powered sweet soul music, Carl Perkins and John Sebastian guesting, silliness and virtuosity like you can’t believe, and pro wrestling, too. There are live tracks/rarities and…oh, just get it and hear for yourself. Even if most folks still don’t know who they are, there’s a reason some of us just never shut up about them.