The Hard Stuff

The Hard Stuff is a studio album by George Thorogood & The Destroyers. It was released on May 30, 2006 on the Eagle Records label. The album peaked at No. 27 on the Billboard charts.

Track listing

Personnel

Hard Stuff

Hard Stuff were an English hard rock group which included John Du Cann and Paul Hammond, formerly of Atomic Rooster. Also in the line-up were vocalist Harry Shaw, formerly of Curiosity Shoppe and latterly Export, and John Gustafson, formerly of Quatermass.

Du Cann and Hammond had left Atomic Rooster due to disagreements with Vincent Crane over the increasingly bluesy, soulful direction in which he wanted to take that band. Consequently, compared with Atomic Rooster's more progressive leanings, Hard Stuff were based more heavily on aggressive guitar.

Originally, Du Cann, Hammond and Shaw had formed a band provisionally entitled Daemon, with the intention of eventually touring and recording under the name Atomic Rooster. Gustafson was invited to join them on that basis, but after finding out that Crane retained the rights to the Atomic Rooster name, the quartet decided to continue anyway, but under the name Bullet instead.

As Bullet, the band released one single, "Hobo", the first on Deep Purple's Purple Records label. Following that release, however, they were prompted to change their name yet again, this time to Hard Stuff, due to a legal threat from a US band also called Bullet.

A Drop of the Hard Stuff

A Drop of the Hard Stuff is the debut studio album of the Irish folk group The Dubliners. It was originally released in 1967 on Major Minor Records (SMLP3 and MMLP3). When it was reissued, it was renamed Seven Drunken Nights because the first track became a hit single. The album reached number 5 in the UK album chart, and stayed in the charts for 41 weeks. The album cover provides biographical sketches of the band line-up: Ronnie Drew, Luke Kelly, Barney McKenna, Ciarán Bourke and John Sheahan. Four of the songs are sympathetic to the IRA, but this was before "The Troubles" properly began in Ireland. "Limerick Rake" is sung unaccompanied. Most of the songs concern rogues and drinking. "Weila Waile" is a tragic murder ballad, sung with a certain jollity.

The album title is both an allusion to hard liquor, particularly Irish whiskey, and to the musical difficulty of the fourteen songs chosen for the album, which emphasize the considerable depths of talent of the group, from the intricate fiddle and banjo work on "The Galway Races" and the reels, to the impressive a cappella rendition of "Limerick Rake".