George Thorogood Bad To The Bone CD

George Thorogood's first album for a major label became his commercial breakthrough precisely because it was business as usual. Again, it's a brash, rowdy take on the blues that owes as much to '60s garage bands and punk as it does to Muddy Waters. That connection is made particularly explicit here via a stomping take on the Human Beinz' '60s punk classic "Nobody But Me," itself a radical deconstruction of the Isely Brothers' original.

The title tune, of course, has become Hollywood's leading signifier of a character's toughness--pretty funny if you've ever seen the transparently goofy Thorogood mugging his way through the song on MTV. Elsewhere on the album, he renders buzz-saw homage to Chuck Berry and John Lee Hooker. But the album's most interesting moment comes on the sleazy sounding, dirge-like "As the Years Go Passing By." The group suddenly recalls John Lennon's one-time backing band, Elephants Memory, which had cut its musical teeth playing in strip joints--and sounded like it.