Lonesome George....

There has always been a crowd that thinks that rock 'n' roll is a young man's game. I guess you could make that argument. I argue that it isn't so. There's an element of style there that will always elude the younger performers. I was reminded of this yesterday when watching a dvd of a George Thorogood concert in Nottingham, England. It was by way of being a 30th Anniversary of George Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyers.

George has aged. He's 53 this year and to his credit, doesn't appear to have tried to hide it. He still dresses in black with pointy boots, and wears his snakeskin pattern scarf around his head. Now, the waistline is larger than it was, and jowls are clearly forming. His eyes are clear, but not clear. They reflect a certain rockbottom understanding of the seamy side of life. In the tradition of Jerry Lee Lewis, they became more feverish as the performance progressed. They became glassy orbs...windows on the fire of sin that he knew was being stoked for all the true believers in the house. The thickened waistline wiggled just as obscenely as it always did and his guitar slide waggled at the audience like Steely Dan on the end of his twitching pinky. Sweat poured off his head and he belted out the blues and smiled that "I wanna do you after the show" smile. There's nothing like that in popular music now and that's a shame. As he said, "There's two kinds of music today, the blues...and that bullshit on TV." The bullshit on TV could use a dose of Lonesome George singing something like "Highway 49." We could have a rebirth of slide guitar rockin' blues, with teenagers across the land rocking and rolling in the old sense of the word, Elmore James slicing out of their speakers, pot smoke drifting through the room filled with empty pizza boxes and beer cans, and the crunching of peanut shells joining in with the squeaking bedsprings.

Ah me. I got a little carried away there, and it's only 9:25 AM.