George Thorogood & The Destroyers 'Live In Boston, 1982' Gets A Reissue As "An Absolute High Water Mark"

Craft Recordings has announced that we'll be getting "a comprehensive reissue" of George Thorogood and The Destroyers’ Live in Boston, 1982.

Remastered by Paul Blakemore, the 27-track Live in Boston, 1982: The Complete Concert includes the entire set, even spoken introductions. The release also includes 12 previously unreleased tracks, with performances of “Bad to the Bone,” “Who Do You Love?,” and “Cocaine Blues” and marks the first time the set will be available on vinyl.

Live in Boston, 1982: The Complete Concert will arrive on December 4^th as a four-LP set on 180-gram vinyl, a two-CD set, and across digital platforms. The collection will include new liner notes by Steve Morse.

There's also going to be a special deluxe edition of the new collection (pressed on red marble vinyl, including a poster, and limited to a 1,000 units) will be released exclusively for Record Store Day’s Black Friday event on November 27^th.

“Bad to the Bone,” has been released ahead of the album and is available to stream or download on all major digital outlets.

Reflecting on Live in Boston, 1982: The Complete Concert, Thorogood says:

“1982 was an absolute high-water mark for us. Everything was going our way and it shows in this recording from the Bradford Ballroom. This is George Thorogood and The Destroyers at our best!”

The band has been touring regularly and has announced a 27-date global tour, kicking off May 4, 2021 at the Revolution Place in Grande Prairie, AB, Canada. Click here for tickets and more information.

Here's some more background bio on the band leading up to this 1982 concert and its recording:

Hailing from Wilmington, Delaware, Thorogood and his band had settled in Boston in the late ’70s, where they became mainstays in the scene—releasing their 1977 self-titled debut and their 1978 follow-up, Move It on Over, with the then-locally based Rounder Records. By the fall of 1982, the blues rockers were fast-rising stars on a national level. Just one year prior, they scored a supporting slot on The Rolling Stones’ tour, while that October, they appeared on Saturday Night Live, promoting their fifth studio album, Bad to the Bone. As the busy year came to a close, the album’s hard-driving title track—which would become one of Thorogood’s most iconic songs—was getting steady airplay on the radio and its video was a mainstay on the burgeoning MTV.

After a non-stop year, the triumphant band returned to Boston, where they were embraced by their longtime fans. Full of energy, power, and focus, Thorogood and The Destroyers played a blistering set that included original material (“Kids from Philly,” “Bad to the Bone,” and “Miss Luann”) blues classics (John Lee Hooker’s “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer” and Elmore James’ “The Sky Is Crying”), early rock ’n’ roll and R&B covers (Chuck Berry’s “No Particular Place to Go” and Bo Diddley’s “Who Do You Love?”), and a few country tunes that The Destroyers had already made their own (Hank Williams’ “Move It on Over” and T.J. “Red” Arnall’s “Cocaine Blues”). In addition to Thorogood’s legendary guitar riffs, the songs are accentuated by the incendiary Hank Carter, who played saxophone with The Destroyers for 23 years. Luckily for fans, the incredible evening was captured in exquisite clarity by the award-winning engineer Guy Charbonneau, known for his “Le Mobile” remote recording truck.