ZZ Top: C/D

Cool. Wonder if that will show up on my Release Radar.

Yeah, special guest: Jeff Beck, among other possible high points---
http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/rock/7503736/zz-top-live-greatest-hits?utm_source=twitter

Oh yeah, and Billy F. Gibbons wrote the intro to new edition of Ed Ward's Mike Bloomfield bio (w much input from ilm's own Edd Hurt, as Ward emphasizes in acknowledgements).

Live album is solid. They're playing LA next month - think I should go.

BG on his favourite records: http://thequietus.com/articles/20920-billy-gibbons-zz-top-favourite-albums-interview he's friends with Keb Darge apparently!

That's a pretty cool article. Good for him to keep looking for new records.

The official video for "Rough Boy" is...strange.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_4ULKpkLNc

I only bring it up because I'd somehow never seen it before last weekend.

My question is, where's the rest of the Fandango! concert?

― a full playlist of presidential sex jams (C. Grisso/McCain), Tuesday, August 23, 2016 10:48 PM (three weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V9m_sEDzJw

been a 'top day today, and have loved every minute of it.
mescalero is such a good album.
shivers all over the place when the guitars let loose at the end of 'tramp'.

tejas is a fun album

to be fair ..all of their albums are fun.
that's kind of the 'top way and why i have enjoyed today so much.

ten dollar man is my favorite song about paying someone to kill your wife. the riffs are pretty good too

i think that's what it's about? idk

blimey.
i guess i should pay more attention.
for me its the riffs and grooves.

that song is 100% groove

"breakaway" on antenna still probably my platonic ideal of the zz top track

"A Fool For Your Stockings" just came up on Pandora, one of their best Blues.

tejas is excellent

They're on tour with John Fogerty this summer - really want to go see them.

Fuck, I forgot to post this here...

In 2010, a dude with a web site questioned whether ZZ Top actually had cattle, buzzards, and snakes on stage during the ’76 Worldwide Texas Tour. The followups are the best…
https://t.co/aFf5v9BrCe pic.twitter.com/4dC8WRl3vK

— Chris Barrus (@quartzcity) May 2, 2018

FB post from Ralph Fisher about the ZZ Top tour and more photos https://t.co/MqPUXxq7m7 pic.twitter.com/ouoTKHO94H

— Chris Barrus (@quartzcity) May 2, 2018

That's fascinating stuff. I too remain skeptical. As the mod puts it, lots of proof of ZZ Top, and proof of animals, but no picture of ZZ Top and wild animals together on stage.

ZZ Top seems like a band, like the Replacements, that got little to no traction outside of America.

http://www.officialcharts.com/artist/20857/zz-top/

I assume that was during the MTV era right?

How could it be that "Master of Sparks" wasn't an international hit.

One day a couple of years ago I was listening to the radio and they played "Just Got Paid" by Johnny Kemp. When it was over I stitched the channel to classic rock, and they were playing "Just Got Paid" by ZZ Top. True story.

I so want a photo.

True story: went deep-sea fishing out of Biloxi about 20 years ago. The boat captain told us he’d taken ZZ Top out the week before. Asked how they kept the beards out of the fishing lines, he replied “Chip Clips!”

Said they told him he’d be thrown overboard if he took a picture.

— Will Collier (@willcollier) January 9, 2019

ZZ Top seems like a band, like the Replacements, that got little to no traction outside of America.

Some of that was due to the band not touring outside North America until 1979-'80.

s & d :: desert sessions is a thread I keep reviving and receiving very little interest, so I'm reaching out to its members' home threads.

There are some good tracks on them but I haven't heard them all as when I was big into that music, the Cds were crazy expensive and I have never gotten back into checking them out since you can probably hear them all for free online.

Yes, but the reason I revived the ZZ Top thread is because the new one has Billy Gibbons on it.

Netflix doc!

is pretty good, lots of great stuff covering up through '76 - less so afterwards

was blasting tejas at lunch, love the drumming on that album as well as the obv classic guitar

The doc is pretty standard rock doc fare but elevated because its ZZ Top. I'd have preferred that it didn't stop when it got to Eliminator tho

I was glad there was some nuts n bolts stuff about the first couple albums, but could tell by the running length that that wasn't gonna last the whole movie - would've liked some tidbits about Deguello or Tejas or especially Eliminator - zero mention of Linden Hudson for ex., or the use of synths and drum machines and sequencers and deliberately writing an album around the bpms most common to hit records of the time

yeah want to see this but sounds a bit odd that they stop at the point where they become one of the biggest bands on earth

maybe the doc was secretly made in 1984

Eh, they do go into it. I think Billy even flat out says (concludes?) that Eliminator is why they are still playing to big crowds today.

Good bits with Tim Newman about the advent of music videos with plots or themed branding or whatever. And funny story of Frank telling the others about MTV thinking it was just a cool music special or something. Also there's the bit with Howard Bloom being brought in (much earlier) to figure out how to market these particular weirdoes.

yeah that stuff was all good - esp how they just kept watching it thinking it was going to eventually end

that was hilarious! “hey how long is this damn show anyway”

for some reason I was previously unaware of Frank Beard's junkie-dom. I've never been able to understand how someone could be a killer drummer *and* a junkie but there are numerous cases

Art Blakey, for his entire career

which is insane! Energetic junkies wtf

maybe I should start a thread

Energetic junkies wtf

I asked Dave Mustaine (of Megadeth) about this in an interview once - "How could you do the amounts of heroin you were doing, and then play as fast as you were playing?" His answer was that it boiled down to muscle memory, basically. I found that kind of fascinating.

Topper Headon was a junkie too

It is kind of fascinating. There have been plenty of junkies in rock and jazz, but weirdly it doesn't seem to significantly impair performance the way, say, alcohol does.

as long as you practice high, you can play high.