Rain at the Drive-In
by NRBQ

Album: Grooves in Orbit (1983)
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Songfacts®:

  • This song introduces us to a young couple who attend a drive-in theatre on a dark and stormy evening. The rain steams their car windows, so the promiscuous pair are able to make love, because "we can't see out, they can't see in." NRBQ keyboardist, Terry Adams, told Shirley Haun that he and his friends would frequently escape to the drive-ins in his home town of Louisville, Kentucky: "I think Louisville had more drive-ins than any other city in the US. It was just a part of everything. That song might suggest that it was time to get naked or something but, it was just a place to... We were too young to rent motel rooms and hang out, not so much getting naked, but a place where you could park the car and talk to each other, and be with friends and not have to be worried about anything. The drive-ins were important then."
  • Grooves in Orbit was NRBQ's first and only album released on Bearsville Records, a label which was owned by Albert Grossman, who managed Bob Dylan between 1962 and 1970. Grossman infamously fell out with NRBQ after they refused to remove the song "12 Bar Blues" from Grooves in Orbit. He subsequently prohibited the distribution of any further NRBQ material, meaning the band were unable to release any new songs until Grossman died in 1986.

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