OrpheumTheatre
Los Angeles CA
December 8th 2015
I love ZZ Top but I stop at Degüello
After that they lost their way for me.
In recent years Billy Gibbons has played solo shows
which I feel are much better.
However there are no good recordings of these gigs that I am aware of.
This is the best and I have attempted to remaster it.
Still shite. Don't download this.
and if you do...certainly do not leave a comment.
tip: if you get drunk it sounds better.
regards
Titus
01. intro
02. Treat Her Right
03. Pickin’ Up Chicks On Dowling Street
04. Sal y pimiento
05. Ten Foot Pole
06. Got Love If You Want It
07. The Drifter
08. Thunderbird
09. Quiero mas dinero / Sassy Mae
10. Baby Please Don’t Go
11. You’re What’s Happenin’, Baby
12. Jam
13. La Grange
14. Whole Lotta Love
"And then they were ... Dos Hombres." Farewell Dusty Hill (R.I.P.). Hasta La Vista, Amigo.
ReplyDeleteI just heard. I'll have a party on the patio this weekend
DeleteReally sad news. I´ve got to crank up the garage stereo rack compiled from mostly flea market leftovers (everyone´s got one, right?) and open a couple of cold ones to that nice bootleg of an eighties german hard rocking show where they churn out mainly their boogie rock classics from the seventies along with a few recent ones, now was that Hamburg or Essen? ´Believe that´s an audio rip from the Rockpalast TV show series. Anyway, even the mid day cultural magazine on swedish national public radio had a newsspot about the passing of Dusty Hill (r.i.p.), didn´t expect that one but it tells something about the wide approval he and the band managed to get over the years. Wish i´d made it to their show at Gatufesten (The Street Fest) in Sundsvall city back in the nineties, even though friends who got their said later that the sound was really crappy for some reason, so not much to miss in that way as they summed it up. ZZ Top held a big part of the soundtrack to my youth, a class mate in high school kept talking about them before anyone else around here did and they made it big with "Eliminator" so i had to check them out and the rest is history. I would never agree that they lost track after "Deguello" but certainly changed (italicize that) track. Okay, so the hits from "Eliminator" and "Afterburner" seems to be forever just below heavy rotation on the classic rock FM channel in my area, but so does "La Grange" and "Tush". Seriously, i might slip "Rough boy" into the playlist for my own funeral (absolutely no pun intended to the subject of this rant), that song always give me flashbacks of better... nights way back then. As for Billy Gibbons, in my opinion his latest studio album is like the one i´ve been waiting since the nineties for ZZ Top to put out. As for bootlegs of ZZ Top shows, i suggest you guys check out Heavy Bootz at Blogspot for a few more of these hard-to-find sets.
ReplyDeleteCheers...er...Mr. Eyes - you need a more approachable name :)
DeleteI don't go past Deguello. it's a matter of principle. First saw them in 1981. Had heard the name but knew nothing about their music. Needless to say they blew me away.
Nah, i think i will stick with the nickname, my other aliases don´t translate well... maybe i will shorten it for ease of writing, i´ll see if i can come up with an acronym that works :-D. But seriously, as for ZZ Top i agree that you hardly think it´s the same band if you compare their seventies and eighties albums. The latter don´t correspond well to much anything else just like the street rods they drove in the accompanying videos are like time capsules of the mainstream taste in that era and the overly slick production with all the fake machine sounds has some serious ageing problems. But that´s just like any other syntheziser infested crossover albums from that time (i.e. Judas Priest´s "Screaming For Vengeance", Dave Edmunds´ "Information" or "Riff Raff" - even i don´t like that one and i´ve been a DE fan since the late seventies - or Jethro Tull´s "Under Wraps". Kind of embarassing how many tried and true rockers back then that tried to hang on to the current fads with sounds that seldom could be reproduced on stage without tape recorders present in the background. I remember how some people would say that the time for real instruments were over and it would all be electronic in the future. Well... i guess that´s yet to come even if so much is done in Cubase (an amazing software tool, i must admit) and other cyberspace environments nowadays. You still can´t put out real rock´n´roll by way of Guitar Hero :-D. Then again, as Tom Waits once said when asked about being critized for taking a new direction with "Swordfish Trombones" and what followed, that people like to make a space for you in their brain and get annoyed when you (the artist) don´t stay there. Well, he got my attention with "Rain Dogs" which served as the WTF moment :-D but i also got curious about his earlier works that i had only heard a few pieces of (even the man himself don´t seem to be fully satisfied with the production on some of those). I think i´ve collected most everything avaible that mr. Waits put out since then but must say my ears (and mind) propably never will adjust to his Beefheart-esque yawns on the albums he made at Anti Records. Hmmm... doesn´t those kind of explore the same gravely dirt roads as ZZ Top when they were struggling to find their way back from the staccato-ridden hi-tech sound to the swaying boogie rock? Must be a nineties thing...
ReplyDeleteI remember playing Eliminator quite a lot when it came out until I realised that it was essentially a pop record which you hammer for a couple of weeks then never want to hear again. I first saw them at the Monsters of Rock festival in Donington. 1981 I think. They were not that well known in the UK and were given an afternoon slot. They were brilliant. They headlined it later but that was nowhere near as good.
ReplyDeleteNow you got me envious... ;-) Wish i had made it to that show in Sundsvall, not really a long trip but as i remember it was a friday afternoon for which i would have needed to leave work early (not that popular) and my car at the time wasn´t very reliable so all things considered it ended up a no-go. I may kick myself :-p. As for the Eliminator album i agree, besides the obvious hits. It comes across a bit of a toss-up of different styles with not much being of their hallmark boogie rock, hardly the classic album it often is referred to as, which propably is like swearing in church to some. All in all i put the Afterburner album over it though being another slick pop record but better held together and then they´ve had their moments but not easy to pick a full album worth listening to from their later decades while often tending to mix influences from grunge and nu-metal and the like and then all that heavy bass in the production, but then again i guess you have to respect the artists right to experiment with their work. Like i said before, Billy Gibbons´ solo albums nailed it with that first one bringing it back to the roots and Hardware is the ZZ Top album they didn´t get around to make as a tree-piece, that´s how i see it.
ReplyDeleteI'll have to give those solo albums a closer listen
DeleteDo that, they´re worth it. I recall that the first one comes with a tip of the hat to Billy Gibbons´ old music teacher who apparently introduced him to the Tejano/Tex-Mex ways of playing guitar and he makes good use of it on that record. Btw there´s a rather complete compilation of The Moving Sidewalks which he played with pre-ZZ Top, i believe it was a while since the CD was avaible commercially but unless, then there should still be MP3 rips floating around somewhere in the blogosphere or in torrent territory.
ReplyDeleteCome to think while i´m on the subject of bearded white blues men, you should also check out Bill "Sauce Boss" Wharton. Great attitude and great slide guitar. https://www.sauceboss.com/
ReplyDeleteSauce boss...LOL.sounds like one of Rippin Frog's things
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