Tag: zz top

“Hey, Dusty.”

“Yes, Billy?”

“You remember Gimme All Your Lovin’?”

“How could I forget it?”

“You liked it?”

“Loved it.”

“Great! Because I wrote it again.”

OR

Upon hearing this tune for the first time, John Fogerty was heard to exclaim, “WHY DO THEY GET AWAY WITH IT?”

• I don’t know if you’re aware, but ZZ Top is from Texas.
• They could take Willie Nelson in a Texas-Off.
• I don’t know what the individual events in a Texas -Off are, but I assume that trivia and chili-cooking are involved.
• ZZ Top is more Texan than the execution of a feeble-minded minority.
• ZZ Top is more Texan than Roy Head appearing at a honky-tonk owned by Jack Ruby.
• ZZ Top is more Texan than Phil Collins’ basement.
• (Maybe three of you are gonna get the Phil Collins joke, but I don’t care; I won’t explain myself.)
• Remember the Rush doc, Beyond the Lighted Stage?
• The one with Jack Black that ends with Geddy, Alex, and Neil getting drunk at the fancy restaurant?
• This is the same as that, but with fewer changes in time signature, and a sawdust-floored bar instead of a fancy restaurant
• (The Top plays in 4/4, man. Some of the tunes are shuffles and could be interpreted as being in 12/8, if you’re a theory wiener, but no one like a theory wiener.)
• Y’got your tall, skinny guy with a beard; that’s Billy Gibbons.
• Y’got your short, chubby guy with a beard; that’s Dusty Hill.
• Frank Beard is the drummer, and he has no beard.
• Three guys.
• Tres hombres.
• 50 years on the road and they still haven’t succumbed to Late Stage Band Bloat.
• No black-up singers, no Brecker brothers on horns, no utility-infielder on rhythm guitar and piano and tambourine.
• Pretty sure they got a keyboardist hidden behind the amps, though.
• Or maybe under a hat.
• ZZ Top are some hat-wearing motherfuckers.
• Even before the male-pattern baldness struck, the Top dug their chapeaus.
• I don’t need to hear the “how we got our name” story ever again, not from anyone.
• They’re sick of telling the story, and I’m sick of hearing it.
• You found it in a dictionary, it was a character in a book you liked, it was a particularly twattish gym teacher.
• Fascinating.
• The Top do far more dancing than you recall.
• Li’l bit of boot-scootin’.
• Four steps to the right, four steps back, up two three four, back two three four, shake ’em shake ’em shake ’em.
• 
• Then twirl the guitars.
• 
• Crowd goes berserk.
• Simplest tricks are the best kind, as they were the ones performed for you when you were a child, and so when they are replayed, you retreat to innocence.
• AC/DC is antipodean to ZZ Top in both the geographic and alphabetical sense, but their music was mostly the same: Bar Rock.
• The Top is meant to be heard in bars, and loud.
• Clubs play UNTZ UNTZ music, and lounges play ironic jazz, and honky-tonks play country, and juke joints play soul music, and breweries play prog rock, but bars play ZZ fucking Top.
• You walk into a bar that isn’t blasting the Top, you take a shit on the pool table.
• That’s direct action.
• The film does not come right out and say that ZZ Top has been coasting since 1987, but it is implied.
• The film also does not cover the time ZZ Top did an entire tour  while pretending to be The Zombies.
• You should click, trust me.
• Great story.
• Best story in the ZZ Top documentary was the time Billy and Frank sold Dusty to that sheikh.
• Comes out of nowhere.
• They’re talking about Texas, and coming up with material for the new album, and then BAM Dusty belongs to a desert prince.
• Dusty doesn’t like to talk about his time in the palace, but Frank still brings it up all the time.
• Frank likes to razz Dusty.
• Dusty takes it, and plays eighth notes.
• It’s difficult to overstate how (deliberately) simple Top songs are, and how strict the rules about playing them are.
• Actually, there’s only one rule: Only Billy is allowed to show off, ever.
• Here, this is fun:

• That’s from the Live From Texas DVD they released in 2008.
• Hawk-eyed Enthusiasts will recognize the stories told around the poker table as the same ones related during the 2020 documentary.
• ZZ Top only has a couple good stories, I guess.
• Unlike the majority of their contemporaries, the Top has not been critically reevaluated by Pitchfork, nor been the subject of a Serious Rock Book, most likely published by Da Capo.
• The Dead had the Wall of Sound.
• Floyd had The Wall.
• ZZ Top had the Worldwide Texas Tour.
• The boys brought varmints with them.
• Not pleasant ones, either: vultures and rattlesnakes and a buffalo.
• That’s committing to the bit.
• When you’re traveling with a buffalo, then you’re all-in on the cowboy routine.
• How all-in?

• If ZZ Top can’t bring their buffalo, then ZZ Top isn’t playing your shitty country.

For a brief moment in the ’80’s, ZZ Top turned into the Art Of Noise.