defend the indefensible: GEORGE THOROGOOD

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i think i've hit the motherfuckin' lode on this sorta thing now.

― Tad (llamasfur), Friday, 22 August 2003 03:56 (twenty-two years ago)

I think he's alright.

― Helltime Producto (Pavlik), Friday, 22 August 2003 03:59 (twenty-two years ago)

i'll take a small crack at it:

1) the following line -- "i said, 'i KNOW! everybody funny! now you funny too!!'" -- still makes me smile.
2) "bad to the bone" was OK, until it got overplayed (which started, i guess, the moment the song was released).
3) the video for "i drink alone" is pretty amusing -- what with George smoking that fat-ass stogy on his Harley and siding up to a skeleton to drink his whiskey 'n' gin.
4) i like the low-fi, electric-razor-buzz sound he gets from his guitar. even if i don't particularly like his songs, per se.

― Tad (llamasfur), Friday, 22 August 2003 03:59 (twenty-two years ago)

He's better with a slide than I am (granted, I think my time with a slide consists of about 2 hours in 1997 playing along to a Flaming Lips album).

― Helltime Producto (Pavlik), Friday, 22 August 2003 04:02 (twenty-two years ago)

C'mon, "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer" if fuckin' hilarious....and the refrain of "I Drink Alone" is pretty damn funny too...."You know when I drink along/I prefer to be by myself!".

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Friday, 22 August 2003 04:08 (twenty-two years ago)

"You know when I drink alone/I prefer to be by myself!".

i agree ... it's one of the best dumb lyrics ever written!

― Tad (llamasfur), Friday, 22 August 2003 04:13 (twenty-two years ago)

couple things - his success has probably helped funnel a lot of money back to Rounder Records. This is a great thing for anyone who loves music, as they've documented some of the most wonderful recorded sound ever.

He's got decent taste in source material. If anyone buying his records gets turned on to Hound Dog Taylor, that can only be considered a good thing. Everybody should be turned on to Hound Dog Taylor.

― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Friday, 22 August 2003 04:15 (twenty-two years ago)

i didn't know that about his relation to rounder. that is a good and very defensible thing, i agree.

also, i imagine that he's sort of an american original -- what tom e. would call a "mentalist from other lands." i.e., his appeal would escape someone from the UK or other foreign lands.

― Tad (llamasfur), Friday, 22 August 2003 04:18 (twenty-two years ago)

He could be worse.....he could be Ted Nugent.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Friday, 22 August 2003 04:20 (twenty-two years ago)

big *yeah* to what diamond said re: hound dog taylor. hound dog was one of the greatest ever, i think his "shake yr $$$maker" is a IMPROVEMENT on elmore james's! for real!! who else could do THAT?

― duane, Friday, 22 August 2003 04:25 (twenty-two years ago)

Speaking of which, is his jerky any good?

― Helltime Producto (Pavlik), Friday, 22 August 2003 04:25 (twenty-two years ago)

when your dad leaves that in the car cd player, and you can bounce around a bit while driving, it's okay. kind of over the top type fun stuff.

― Maria (Maria), Friday, 22 August 2003 04:26 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, I think his first two or three records came out on Rounder. I don't know if his contract got bought when he went to a major or anything. His version of Hank Williams' "Move It on Over" - the one that always gets played on classic rock radio - is from one of those Rounder records. So hopefully they're seeing some money from that in the form of back catalog sales, at least (I mean, I'd rather people were buying any of their many other great releases instead, but if it helps 'em out then cool).

― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Friday, 22 August 2003 04:26 (twenty-two years ago)

alex nyc you a krazy nut man! HOW HOW HOW is the fuckin nuge, THE FUCKIN NUGE, inferior product in any respect to this fuckin dillweed/?WHAAAT?

― duane, Friday, 22 August 2003 04:27 (twenty-two years ago)

I've just grown tired of the Nuge's tirelessly self-serving right-wing rhetoric these days, that's all.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Friday, 22 August 2003 04:29 (twenty-two years ago)

yeah fair enough

― duane, Friday, 22 August 2003 04:30 (twenty-two years ago)

you can't hunt in delaware the same way you can hunt in michigan. and whatever mr. thorogood's political opinions are, he keeps them to himself. both of which make him infinitely superior to mr. nugent (as a person, that is).

― Tad (llamasfur), Friday, 22 August 2003 04:30 (twenty-two years ago)

but alex, george thorogood didn't tour with KISS!

― Tad (llamasfur), Friday, 22 August 2003 04:31 (twenty-two years ago)

x-post with duane-

Yeah, "Shake Your Moneymaker" rips!! I agree, he basically took the song away from Elmore with his version (actually he kind of did literally, too - he renamed it "Roll Your Moneymaker")

The sound of those records is just INSANE. It's like, the trio is set up in your garage and they're just playing so fast, it sounds like it's gonna careen out of control at any second...

Also, "Sadie" is great! Anyone into the White Stripes should totally have those two Hound Dog Taylor records on Alligator. I'm not saying that to like, berate indie fans or anything. I just think anybody would love those records!

― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Friday, 22 August 2003 04:33 (twenty-two years ago)

He WAS being looked at to replace Mick Taylor on the Stones.

― Bryan Moore (Bryan Moore), Friday, 22 August 2003 06:17 (twenty-two years ago)

dave q to thread!!

― geeta (geeta), Friday, 22 August 2003 06:22 (twenty-two years ago)

Nugent should shut the fuck up between songs, but he still kicks ass live. I'm thinking about going to see him in NYC a week from Tuesday. I saw him in 2000 at Irving Plaza and he tore the place down.

I haven't listened to Thorogood in awhile, but that "Get a Haircut (and Get a Real Job)" song was hilarious, plus, wasn't the album cover drawn by Peter Bagge? So he's got good taste in cartoons...

― Phil Freeman (Phil Freeman), Friday, 22 August 2003 14:31 (twenty-two years ago)

I thought "Get a Haircut" was kind of fun when it came out. Probably wouldn't care to hear it now but eh. Nugent definitely made some better music though.

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Friday, 22 August 2003 15:44 (twenty-two years ago)

I also really cherish that once my friend was describing "One Bourbon. . ." to someone - "It's a longer one. It starts with a spoken part and it's slower at first. Then it grows louder until the chorus." George Thorogood = Slint.

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Friday, 22 August 2003 15:46 (twenty-two years ago)

I just saw him about a month ago.
Aside from his schtick (at the concert, he kept saying he was going to do everything in his power to get arrested that night, but I didn't see him do anything indictable, and I was covering the concert for Prosecutor's Weekly), he's pretty unpretentious.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Friday, 22 August 2003 15:47 (twenty-two years ago)

Thorogood was always interested in playing "traditional rock n roll" and that's alright with me - "Move it On Over," stuff like that

the Delaware Destroyers were supposed to be barnburners live, and I believe it

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Friday, 22 August 2003 15:48 (twenty-two years ago)

i remember hearing john peel play something from his first LP when it first came out (1978) and thinking I HAVE NEVER HEARD ANYTHING LIKE THIS EVER THIS IS AMAZING (which at that time i hadn't, nor would it have been easy to have done so)

then i got all distracted w.punky year-zero HISTORY-IS-OVER nonsense, plus also i think he gave a lame interview to sounds where he didn't big up the art attacks or something

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 22 August 2003 15:52 (twenty-two years ago)

George Thorogood vs. Jeffrey Evans

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Friday, 22 August 2003 15:55 (twenty-two years ago)

I've always dug his version of "the Madison Blues"... I think it was on his first Rounder record.

Haven't listend to most of his later output (oh, last 10 years at least), but just based on the early albums, he's done alright in my book.

― nick ring (nick ring), Friday, 22 August 2003 17:12 (twenty-two years ago)

There's something quixotically punkish about playing rock and roll as if it were folk music though, mark, it doesn't seem that off. It's not that hard to imagine him doing a cover of "God Save the Queen" or "I wanna be sedated" but he didn't because that was a continuum of a whole messy arc-and-tumble of rock music in the 70s that he simply ignored; he played as if all the post-Beatles rock-band-as-poet-geniuses-who-also-were-musical-dynamos history—Bowie, Zeppelin, Jefferson Airplane, etc&3151;simply didn't exist, rather than a more-or-less explicit reaction to it.

I love him because I think it's tremendously important that a possibility exists of being recognized as great simply by executing other people's songs. Having a musical division of labor ("you write the songs, we'll play the hell out of them") serves historical memory, it shows what still works from these things and what doesn't translate into our time, and it also opens up the playing field to people who aren't tune/wordsmiths but still know how to rock the house

Yeah, that his albums are on Rounder are a huge tip-off to the whole outlook

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Friday, 22 August 2003 17:19 (twenty-two years ago)

i don't think george thoro. is really imprinted on the public concsciousness on restoring the division b/t songwriter and performer. i'd suspect most people a bit familiar with his hits will think he wrote them, if they care to think about it at all. not to mention no one has payed attention to him for many years. he did write (after a fashion) "bad to the bone." k-dud if only for appearing as a music cue in every single fucking comedy since 1980 where someone strolls in looking the slightest bit bad-ass relative to the other characters (or not, if it's being used for ironic comment).

http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drf600/f627/f62720uktii.jpg

he has big teeth.

― amateurist (amateurist), Friday, 22 August 2003 17:27 (twenty-two years ago)

rounder puts out ALL kinds of shit aside from the great reissues and occasionally a good new album. i know this because i was a music director and had to pretend to be appreciative that they sent us all their shit just so they'd continue to send us those alan lomax and other things when i asked. g.t. is like the first blast of shitty blues-rock on rounder and associated labels.

― amateurist (amateurist), Friday, 22 August 2003 17:30 (twenty-two years ago)

they also put out some pretty fucking weak country-ish/bluegrass stuff. And just tons and tons of it.
but the good stuff is pretty damn good. Like Johnny Adams, or the Tau Moe Family and some of the Zydeco stuff and Jonathan Richman's late 80s early 90s stuff

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Friday, 22 August 2003 17:33 (twenty-two years ago)

yeah they have a huge catalog a big portion of which is pretty much unbeatable. and i even like their big cash cow, alison krauss, a lot. but along with the great stuff is loads and loads of forgettable neo-bluegrass and blues-rock.

tau moe family is great! have you heard the original tau moe stuff?

― amateurist (amateurist), Friday, 22 August 2003 17:38 (twenty-two years ago)

no, I've just got the Bob Bronzman album, the liner notes (from 1989) say something like "Rounder will soon release the originals" but I haven't been able find any proof of that.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Friday, 22 August 2003 17:41 (twenty-two years ago)

haha rounder in false promise of reissue shocker. (i wonder where the ninth volume of "early days of bluegrass" went? or the second two volumes of the monroe brothers complete recordings.)

horace if you want to hear the original tau moe find the cds

"on the beach at waikiki"

and

"vintage hawaiian music vol. 1"

― amateurist (amateurist), Friday, 22 August 2003 17:50 (twenty-two years ago)

much much appreciated. would you believe I've become a fiend for HWian music as a result of watching Spongebob Squarepants?

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Friday, 22 August 2003 17:51 (twenty-two years ago)

"most people a bit familiar with his hits will think he wrote them"

surely would cement anyone's claim to being a great artist?

you're right about no one really giving two shits about the musical division of labor; these days people just roll along assuming people write their own songs (just as in The Old Days people rolled along assuming people DIDN'T write their own songs - i'll never forget hearing an old radio interview with this fledgeling group called the Rolling Stones and the interviewer expressing amazement that about half the songs were originals) but if it IS a cover you don't have to know what it is or who wrote it for it to possess a familiarity, for it to speak to some old part of you you thought you'd forgotten - this works even better if you DO think it's an original, come to think of it

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Friday, 22 August 2003 18:04 (twenty-two years ago)

surely would cement anyone's claim to being a great artist?

why? i think it's simply that most people in america probably presume rock musicians write their own songs. or: you answered your own question.

thorogood was probably introducing these songs to people that hadn't heard them the first time around.

― amateurist (amateurist), Friday, 22 August 2003 18:07 (twenty-two years ago)

My point is perhaps smaller than you imagine. The people who loved his songs recognized him as great not because they imagined he was some wildly original genius, or somebody Taking Things in a New Direction, but because he was just playing the hell out of something very familiar-sounding. I think this is a talent to be valued and treasured on a par with actual song-writing.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Friday, 22 August 2003 19:11 (twenty-two years ago)

yeah but thorogood is hardly the only exemplar of that. i'm also not sure those who like his songs (meaning his hits) recognize him as anything beside "that guy who sings 'bad to the bone.'" I think the song has a much greater visibility than the guy himself. like "what I like about you" or something.

― amateurist (amateurist), Friday, 22 August 2003 19:28 (twenty-two years ago)

i mean i agree with your point re. the value of "unoriginal" art but i don't think i have to pretend to have any sympathy for the music of george thorogood to do so.

― amateurist (amateurist), Friday, 22 August 2003 19:29 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, but respect!!!! I mean, this isn't the Nitty-Gritty Dirt Band tugging on nostalgia strings with "Will the Circle Be Unbroken." "Move it On Over" was a hit in 1947, before Elvis, before Burma-Shave, before Chuck Berry, before Kerouac, and Thorogood made it a hit AGAIN, and not in a throwbacky way, either! I'm not trying to convince you to like him, though, lord knows he's got a lot of crap tunes.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Friday, 22 August 2003 19:53 (twenty-two years ago)

why is that an achievement inherently worthy of respect, if i find the results grating?

his vocals are insufferable and he solos every few bars. ack!

― amateurist (amateurist), Friday, 22 August 2003 19:56 (twenty-two years ago)

i mean the ataris could do a crap cover of "the way you look tonight" tomorrow and i wouldn't blink.

― amateurist (amateurist), Friday, 22 August 2003 19:57 (twenty-two years ago)

It's not that hard to imagine him doing a cover of "God Save the Queen" or "I wanna be sedated"

For some reason I love the idea of "I Wanna Be Sedated" being played in chugging Thorogood fashion.

― My name is Kenny (My name is Kenny), Friday, 22 August 2003 20:10 (twenty-two years ago)

probably the best way to experience the Thorogood is to drive out to the least flat section of yer nearest prairie, spend all day gettin' tanked in the sun with your rocker relatives and climb over a fence that you already have a pass to be on the side of, but you feel like being bad and the GT & D come on with, shit, what's his name, Howlin' Wolf's old sax player. Serious. Hot stuff.

He's basically a slightly-right wing Mojo Nixon

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Friday, 22 August 2003 20:15 (twenty-two years ago)

as i said above -- and perhaps it reflects my ignorance of blues-rock -- but i think that thorogood has a very interesting guitar sound. i actually like the sound -- almost like an electric razor, very sharp and tinny. i understand that it comes from low-fi equipment, particularly the speakers. anyway, his sound is pretty unique (to my ears at least), and that's a positive thing.

― Tad (llamasfur), Friday, 22 August 2003 20:32 (twenty-two years ago)

man you would fucking love hound dog taylor.

― amateurist (amateurist), Friday, 22 August 2003 20:32 (twenty-two years ago)

six years pass...

Search Borful Tang - Destroyer (Part A)

― amateurist, Friday, 9 October 2009 15:19 (sixteen years ago)

His first couple Rounder albums are real entertaining, especially Move It On Over from 1978. Who Do You Love? (Rounder 2003) is an excellent CD compilation of that era's stuff. Also thought "Get A Hairct" from 2003 was a good goofy novelty song. And here's what I wrote in Harp about a fun album he made a couple years ago:

GEORGE THOROGOOD AND THE DESTROYERS The Hard Stuff (Eagle) Way less staid or stuck in one place than you’d guess: Hard (rock) stuff, sure, but also pretty guitar stuff, funky dance numbers, Joe “King” Carrasco-worthy Tex-Mex, Delta hootchie-man cootchie with high lonesome wails and hints of mariachi, odes to industrial Midwestern cities that’d make Huey Lewis or Bob Seger proud, ZZ Top tube-snake boogie, whole-lotta-shakin’ party rock, ridiculous blues brags where George pretends to be the Love Doctor, a jazzy instrumental, and a Dylan cover that’s not even the most Dylan-sounding thing on the album.

But okay, this is strange -- I just looked him up in Joel Whitburn's Billboard singles book, and apparently his only Top 100 charting single ever was...not "Bad To The Bone" (which I kind of hate btw), not "Move It On Over," not "One Bourbon One Scotch One Beer," but a version of "Willie And The Hand Jive" that went #63 in 1985. Weird!

― xhuxk, Friday, 9 October 2009 15:47 (sixteen years ago)

weird I was just thinking about George Thorogood last night - he seems to occupy a unique space of his own, he's not part of any scene or set of similar bands, he's just off in his own little white blues boogie world... is he still around?

― the taint of Macca is strong (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 9 October 2009 15:49 (sixteen years ago)

RIP Stevie Ray Vaughan.

― Euler, Friday, 9 October 2009 15:51 (sixteen years ago)

actually when I lived in Texas there were lots of bar bands that were kinda Thorogood-esque. Plus the Fabulous Thunderbirds.

― Euler, Friday, 9 October 2009 15:52 (sixteen years ago)

he's just off in his own little white blues boogie world

every fucking bar band sounds like george thorogood

― amateurist, Friday, 9 October 2009 16:32 (sixteen years ago)

I interviewed him earlier this year. Good guy, as down-to-earth about himself and his music as you'd expect. Here's the piece.

― neither good nor bad, just a kid like you (unperson), Friday, 9 October 2009 17:28 (sixteen years ago)

eight years pass...

You know what's kicking my ass this week? Board tapes of George shows from the 70s on youtube. I've never really paid all that much attention to him, but he has great taste in covers, mad guitar skills and tone to die for, and a crackerjack rhythm section.

every fucking bar band sounds like george thorogood

I wish. Every blues guitarist I see in a bar wants to be Stevie Ray.

― Christopher Futterwacken (Dan Peterson), Wednesday, 18 October 2017 15:25 (eight years ago)

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