George Thorogood and the Destroyers Performing at Hard Rock Live
Courtesy - CleveScene.com
By David Kemp
July 1, 2014
George Thorogood and The Destroyers - Premieres Sunday, July 6
LIVE: George Thorogood & the Destroyers @ ESP Convention Hall
Photographs by Stanley Johnson
George Thorogood certainly does know how to bludgeon the blues. Subtle, he ain’t.
But then again, the fans that packed into the Empire State Plaza Convention Hall last week for the final installment of the free Capital Concert Series weren’t looking for subtlety. It was a party, a beer-soaked, two-fisted drinking party, and 64-year-old Thorogood and his band the Destroyers provided the wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am soundtrack from the opening volley of “Born to Be Bad” to the expected show-closing romp through “Bad to the Bone.”
Despite racks of flashy, computerized stage lights and not one, not two, but seven large video screens on stage, Thorogood & the Destroyers are still a bar band at heart – even after 40 years. With the band’s original drummer Jeff Simon still fueling the barroom blues ‘n’ boogie, the Destroyers ripped through selections from the songbags of rock pioneer Bo Diddley (“Who Do You Love?”), blues kingpin Elmore James (the encore of “Madison Blues”), ’60s garage-rockers the Strangeloves (“Night Time”) and country music legend Hank Williams (“Move It On Over”).
During his hour-and-a-half-plus set, Thorogood stepped up for a slide-guitar showcase in the middle of the on-the-road nugget “Gear Jammer.” And not surprisingly, it was the back-to-back pairing of his 80-proof alcohol anthems – “I Drink Alone” and “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer” – that drew the loudest cheers of the night.
Read more: LIVE: George Thorogood & the Destroyers @ ESP Convention Hall
George Thorogood & the Destroyers at the Empire State Plaza Convention Hall
Courtesy - TimesUnion.com
By GREG HAYMES
ALBANY – You can take the band out of the bar, but you just can’t take the bar out of the band.
George Thorogood & the Destroyers took over the jam-packed Empire State Plaza Convention Hall on Wednesday evening after the rains forced the final show of the free Capital Concert Series indoors, and the band filled the stage with racks of flashy, computerized stage lights and not one, not two, but seven large video screens. But despite all of the high-tech equipment, the Destroyers are still your basic bar band, albeit with a shinier and more expensive stage set.
Not that there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, bandleader Thorogood wears the bar band designation proudly. He’s 64 years old now, and the Destroyers – born as the Delaware Destroyers and still featuring original drummer Jeff Simon – is celebrating their 40th anniversary, but the raspy-throated singer-guitarist hasn’t changed a lick from what he was doing four decades ago. It was your basic, beer-soaked barroom blues and boogie, and whether the source material came from rock pioneer Bo Diddley (“Who Do You Love?”), blues kingpin Elmore James (the encore of “Madison Blues”), ’60s garage-rockers the Strangeloves (“Night Time”) or country music legend Hank Williams (“Move It On Over”), it all sounded pretty much the same.
Sure, Thorogood stepped up for a slide-guitar showcase in the middle of the on-the-road nugget “Gear Jammer.” And not surprisingly his back-to-back alcohol anthems – “I Drink Alone” and “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer” – drew the loudest cheers of the night. But otherwise it was meat ‘n’ potatoes, three-chord, bash-it-out blues-rock juiced up with a dash of good humor. If you were looking for subtlety, you were in the wrong place…
Read more: George Thorogood & the Destroyers at the Empire State Plaza Convention Hall