Showing posts with label Frank Beard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Frank Beard. Show all posts

CD Review: ZZ Top - La Futura


CD Review: ZZ Top - La Futura
Universal Republic
All Access Review: A-
ZZ Top - La Futura 2012
Almost as iconic as the long, scraggly beards they’ve steadfastly refused to shave off for anyone, ZZ Top’s “Eliminator Car” – a custom-built ’33 Ford Coupe with a powerful engine and beautiful contours – was not just a sweet ride. For three craggy, old guys from Texas, it represented the mother of all turning points. Though they seemed hopelessly out of step with the times in the synthetic, neon-lit early ‘80s, Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill and Frank Beard had no intention of retiring to Texas to sip Jeremiah Weed, play grab-ass with waitresses and reminisce about the good old days. Come hell or high water, they were going to reinvent themselves, using synthesizers and sequencers to update their crusty, greasy-spoon blues-rock for a new generation with the sleek, stylish and mean-as-all-get-out Eliminator.
And what better symbol of this transformation than an old-timey, Depression-era car pimped-out to attract loose women barely clothed in micro mini-skirts and stiletto heels. Unlike most mid-life crises, this one worked out splendidly for ZZ Top, as Eliminator – on the strength of skintight, nitro-burning singles “Gimme All Your Lovin’,” “Sharp Dressed Man,” “Legs” and “Got Me under Pressure” – roared up the charts and did doughnuts in Billboard’s parking lot. They'd done more than simply assimilate with pop music’s paradigm shift; they’d conquered it, all while not losing sight of what made them great in the first place. Soon after, however, ZZ Top would go too far, as the emphasis on electronic flash made Eliminator’s futuristic successor, Afterburner, seem as bloodless as PVC piping, and that car with the great lines and striking paint job suddenly seemed emblematic of the excesses that had eroded their true character.
Despite the title, ZZ Top’s latest, La Futura, does not march boldly into some brave new sonic world, where computers have taken over and humanity has to serve its robot overlords. This is the ZZ Top of 1973 and Tres Hombres, when Gibbons and company were pit masters of a smoky, sweaty form of slow-cooked blues that dripped fat and practically fell of the bone, even if La Futura was inspired by collaborations with Texas DJs and hip-hop artists. And La Futura is a delicious, artery-clogging feast, with most of the entrĂ©es being reworked versions of others’ recipes. That includes the gnarly, sleazy bump-and-grinds “I Gotsta Get Paid,” “Chartreuse” and “I Don’t Want to Lose, Lose, You” – three seedy songs you don’t want to inspect with a black light. Even nastier is “Consumption,” a lusty Gibbons-penned joint that has the hip-swaying, cowgirl swagger of a sassy Dallas stripper, who goes home at night and cries into her pillow while listening to the bittersweet and soulfully rendered, Stax-influenced ballad “Over You," La Futura's most disarming moment.
Aside from “Flyin’ High” taxing Gibbons' strained vocals to the breaking point and the track taking too much of a liking to John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Hurts So Good” – by way of AC/DC, oddly enough – La Futura is classic ZZ Top from top to lovely bottom, where “Big Shiny Nine” and “Have a Little Mercy” evoke memories of “I’m Bad, I’m Nationwide” and “I Thank You,” respectively. His curmudgeonly, whisky-gargling vocals as mean and lascivious as ever, Gibbons’ guitar riffs growl with real junkyard dog menace, while his solos bite hard and have quite a bit of hair on them. As for Hill and Beard, they continue to massage the rhythmic, rumbling low-end to a very happy ending, indeed. Satisfying in almost every way, even if they could vary the pace a little or manage to make the proceedings not sound quite so labored, the organic and gritty La Futura could easily sit and have a drink with all the old ZZ Top master works … as long it doesn’t order a Zima.
-            Peter Lindblad

CD Review: ZZ Top - Live in Germany

CD Review: ZZ Top -  Live in Germany
Eagle Rock
All Access Review: A+


The tread on ZZ Top’s tires was showing a lot of wear by the time that little ol’ band from Texas put out 1976’s uninspired burr under the saddle Tejas. Compared with the thick, rubbery, insatiably delicious blues-rock boogie of Tres Hombres and Fandango, from 1973 and 1975, respectively, the bald and flat Tejas rolled along almost completely on its rims until being sent out to that album scrap yard where disappointing records go to be dismantled for parts. As for ZZ Top, it was time to go back to the shop for a tune-up.
Lying low for three years, the durable trio of Frank Beard, Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill triumphantly returned in 1979 with the nitro-burning funny car Deguello, as rowdy and raunchy a record as ZZ Top would ever make. Their propulsive rhythms and Gibbons’ growling guitar licks never sounded so lean or mean as they did on Deguello, with the bubbling hot bluesy stew “I Thank You” and the snarling pit bull of a single “Cheap Sunglasses” leading the charge. It was a strutting, vice-ridden tour de force that would set the stage for the even more lusty and powerful Eliminator in 1983, an album that would transform ZZ Top into the toughest rock-and-roll outlaws on the planet.
But, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Already bad and nationwide, having poured its whiskey-soaked, boogie-rock down America’s gullet and gotten the country blind drunk on its shots of its heavy-duty, Chicago-by-way-of-Texas blues moonshine, ZZ Top set out to search Europe for some accommodating “Tush” and new fans thirsty for their brand of barroom rock, at the behest of Warner Bros. And they found it all on the famed TV show “Rockpalast.” In 1980, ZZ Top roared into the Grugahalle in Essen, Germany, and raised more than a little hell, the live mayhem caught on camera for the acclaimed “Double Down Live” DVD released in 2009. Here, is the musical documentation of that unforgettable night and it is street-legal, complete with vintage concert photos of the band and informative liner notes from “Rockpalast” executive producer Peter Ruechel that tell the fascinating story behind this historic performance.
Riding in to the sound of spaghetti-western horns of the intro “El Deguello,” ZZ Top launches into a wicked, side-winding version of “I Thank You,” one of nine Deguello tracks in the concert set, and follows up with the rugged, earthy grooves of a brass-knuckled “Waitin’ For The Bus” that kicks like a mule. Hill’s bass registers 7.0 on the Richter scale throughout Live in Germany, but on “Jesus Just Left Chicago,” it simmers slowly and seductively, until reaching a boil during Gibbons’ fuel-injected solo, just one of seemingly a thousand sharp, stinging leads the guitar legend clawed his way through that night so long ago. Going deeper into the catalog, ZZ Top rumbles and rages through “Precious and Grace” and “Manic Mechanic,” before working out the kind of sweaty, nasty grooves usually found in strip joints in “Lowdown in the Street” and the radiation burn of “Cheap Sunglasses.”
And Gibbons and company are just warming up, their earthy, gritty aesthetic sounding so dynamic and full of vitality. On “Heard it on the X,” ZZ Top presses the accelerator to the floor and simply runs over the clapping, cheering crowd, prior to cooking up a steaming hell broth of boogie-based blues and proto-metal on “Arrested for Driving While Blind.” Many of ZZ Top’s most salacious hits are set on fire in this scorched-earth, 16-track set, including a riotous “Beer Drinkers & Hell Raisers” and a down-and-dirty medley of “La Grange/Sloppy Drunk/Bar-B-Q,” where Gibbons wrings every bit of sinful, aggressive energy his guitar can muster out of those hot-wired six strings. It’s the highlight of an incredibly exhausting thrill ride that concludes with tasty, swaggering takes on Elmore James’ “Dust My Broom” and Elvis’ “Jailhouse Rock,” before driving the bruising, brawling closer “Tush,” in all its tawdry glory, straight into a house of ill repute. Confident, lively and full of testosterone, ZZ Top’s Live in Germany is a sensational concert album, maybe one of the best ever. It never lets up, not for a minute, and in the end, it’s a full-blown package of dynamite that will blow you to kingdom come. Don’t worry, you’ll die happy.
Peter Lindblad

Artist Official Page: ZZ Top