George Thorogood & The Destroyers Preview

George Thorogood & The Destroyers
House Of Blues, Chicago
Sunday, July 30, 2006

The book was closed on George Thorogood long ago. So why does he continue to release albums? B-b-b-b-b-bad!

It’s hard to have much respect for anyone who feigns death during a guitar solo for cheap applause. There’s another reason he doesn’t get props from blues purists: he was originally a minor league ballplayer and couldn’t leave well enough alone. Well, here he is 25 years later with a new album, The Hard Stuff (Eagle), and very likely a full, if not sold-out house on a Sunday.

So whaddya wanna hear, that Hard Stuff is more tame, past-its-prime blues rock? Maybe it is, but Thorogood doesn’t seem to think so. The best thing about Thorogood is you can argue not being in on the joke somehow makes him more authentic. He’ll always be relentless in that regard, and charmingly so. Truth be told, the title track is one of the harder cuts he has ever cut, even if songs like “I Got My Eye On You” have been done by him a hundred times at exactly the same tempo in exactly the same key. So what if “I Didn’t Know” is essentially ZZ Top’s “Tush” without a hook? You were expecting James Taylor perhaps?

— Steve Forstneger

Category: Stage Buzz, Weekly