Hot 106: #3 – Bad to the Bone

The Hot 106 is a list of 106 “classic rock” songs that should be banned from radio airplay forever. In an effort to be fair, and to flaunt their quasi musical snobbiness, Kent and Jen have tasked themselves with finding replacements for the overplayed tunes.

Kent and I part ways a bit on this installment of the Hot 106. He’s able to come to terms with George Thorogood, but I’m afraid I’m past reconciliation with Thorogood’s entire catalog. Either way, classic rock radio would do well to consider our suggestions.

Kent: “Who Do You Love”

Here’s a fun party trick; get an indie hipster music snob talking about Led Zeppelin. When he/she inevitably says, “I like John Paul Jones ok enough, I guess, but only his bluegrass side projects,” reply with this: “Yeah, I’m the same way with George Thorogood; I only like the stuff he did on Rounder Records.” The hipster will suffer such social shame from not knowing that he recorded for a bluegrass/folk label that his/her head will explode, Scanners style, while another hipster says, “boom” (not because someone’s head just exploded, Scanners style, but that’s just what hipsters say in that situation. It’s what Dorothy Parker would have said to Harpo Marx after a witty bon mot at the Algonquin Round Table, if they were both douchebags).

Yes, George Thorogood helped make a record company known for this successful in their beginning. And, yes, the Rounder Record stuff is better; “Bad To The Bone” was released on EMI, and the stuttering, the saxophone, and the beating-Bo-Diddly-at-8-ball-in-the-video-ishness of it is not my cup of tea.

“Who Do You Love”, however, is awesome, and has more of a Bo Diddly beat than Bo Diddly’s 1956 original. I can’t say that Thorogood’s my fave rave, but his ethos is too close to the goods to be replaced by other Rounder Records alumni, tempted as I may be…

Jen: “She’s Alright” – Muddy Waters

Kent, I’m sorry, but I just can’t get on board with “Who Do You Love”. Blame that brewer and patriot, Samuel Adams, and his damned beer commercials for taking the air out of it for me. And you know I love me some Bo Diddley-style riffing. “Bad to the Bone”, however, gets my eye a-twitching.

Another guy named Samuel Adams from Boston who’s also ruining music.

But there’s a far more egregious crime against rock going on here, and it should be levied against the legions of complicit white Baby Boomer dudes. The charge? Utterly ruining the novelty of “Bad to the Bone” by putting it in every single lame-ass action movie (and, later, family-friendly movie staring a kid in plastic sunglasses) of the last 25 years. Thorogood deserves a lesser punishment for willingly accepting the royalties from this overplay, but I’m sure he’s already flagellating himself with $100 bills, drinking pink Dom Perignon out of the f-holes of a $12,000 Gretsch guitar.

Given the multitudes of white guys singing the blues on classic rock radio, I think the real deal needs to be given a fair shake. “She’s Alright” features a REAL LIVE BLUESMAN playing the blues like those English boys were doing, with crazy-sounding guitars and random musical asides. That Muddy brought this level of psychedelia into the straight-up blues is pretty damn impressive. Give it a listen:

See? That distorted blues guitar is laid thicker’n Oleo on white bread, and it’s as sinister as it is sexual. You can see ice cubes melting on hot skin, smell the burn of cigarettes, feel the grit under your feet, see the black light glowing. If Eric Clapton dared play this song back at the height of his powers, classic rock radio would have sounded a whole lot different. Or can you possibly imagine a Muddy Waters/Jimi Hendrix album? How would THAT have changed the mellow ’70s landscape?