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The Radiators' 33 year ride comes to an end | NOLA.com



Will I still be dreaming when the whole thing disappears? — from the Radiators’ “Twenty Years in Rad-zola”


The Radiators play a series of farewell concerts at Tipitina's this weekend.
"It really is amazing that we’re still the same band, still making records, still making people happy from coast to coast. I like my job, and I’m going to stay with it.”
That was Radiators guitarist/vocalist Dave Malone in 1997, on the eve of the band’s 19th anniversary. Little did he, keyboardist/vocalist Ed Volker, bassist Reggie Scanlan, drummer Frank Bua and guitarist Camile Baudoin realize another 14 years would elapse before their long, strange trip finally would come to an end.
After 33 years and more than 4,500 performances, the Radiators say goodbye June 9-11 at Tipitina’s. The concerts sold out quickly, as the band’s far-flung community of fans sought one last serving of “fish head music.”
The nonsensical name arose from the lack of a better description for their amalgamation of Band-style boogie and New Orleans funk and rhythm & blues. “We’re a groove band,” Volker once said. “We’re not very amorphous with the jams. The groove, the rhythmical figure, is always the central thing.”
In the late 1970s, the New Orleans music community, such as it was, was in a state of flux. The Rhapsodizers’ Volker, Baudoin and Bua first joined forces with Road Apple’s Malone and Scanlan in Volker’s garage near the University of New Orleans. They dialed up Van Morrison’s “He Ain’t Give You None,” followed by an original, “Red Dress.”

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