ZZ Top: C/D

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.

ah so it's about continuity of condition

"You know why so many drunk drivers get in wrecks? Because they don't *learn* to drive drunk!”

the stakes are slightly higher in that situation

forgive the pun

yeah I’ve always wondered about being a functioning junkie at that level, like Frank or Topper. the muscle-memory thing never occurred to me

did they go into how much on Eliminator and Afterburner *is* Frank Beard and how much is drum machines?

I don't think they even say the words "drum machine."

they don't!

hmmm

did they talk about how funny it is that the guy named beard is the one who doesn't have one?

Yes!

they discuss it at some length

It is weird how some people keep functioning so well (musically, anyway) on smack, Bird being one of the most notorious examples, although he did eventually have that studio breakdown, during "The Lover Man" sessions, "The Gypsy" ("I want to believe the gypsy") etc---then he came back, commemorating (though not remaining faithful to) his rehab, in "Relaxin' At Camarilo."

Sturgill's latest has some ZZ appeal---my Rolling Country 2019/Nashville Scene ballot comments:
i'm a sucker for gleaming pop-country, sez a fellow Marenite. Wal now, have you heard Sturgill's Sound and Fury yet? I just did, and right off, seems like this ZZ Rex electro-pop-boogie, sometimes also reminding me of Neil and the Trans Band (more the show tapes than studio album), might suit you too. It's much less soapbox ranty than I feared---and the non-pedantic retro detailing, commercial inclusiveness x righteous fencepost grievances x deserty-hot-cold broodiness, also that voice, keep it all country or countryoid. Also 'ppreciate how he keeps twisting the dial into another track at just the right moment, or close enough. It's another hard candy Christmas alright.

xp i figured they would!

I've always wondered how much (if any) of the switch to drum machines/synths/triggers was driven by Beard's drum problem & if there were any reliability issues, cuz he may have cleaned up but he's clearly not the drummer he was in the 70s by the time the 80s come around, but also something obv happens and it is more like Billy's solo project then a band by then

I saw them this past summer and it was a lot of fun and there were still moments of greatness, Dusty basically holds the whole thing together playing & singing wise, though if you told me there was loads of offstage triggers and synths helping it along I would not have been surprised.

"drug" problem not drum problem

no drum problems here lol

idk drums are still tight as hell on Deguello and Tejas imo

xps

Those are late 70s though!

I saw them in a small club a while back, and even up close I couldn't quite tell how three people were putting out all that sound, so prolly at least a little hamburger helper, if you follow.

right, according to the doc Beard cleaned up in '76, after the worldwide texas tour

xps

I saw them last summer (chris were you at MN State Fair too?) and I'm real sure there were drum triggers and samples.

This is a clip from their DVD Live From Texas, which was recorded in 2007. I saw them at the Beacon Theater in NYC on this same tour. He might be using triggers to give the kit an extra whoomp, but he's definitely playing, and not to a click track. Frank Beard can swing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sxE-jS9LP4

Honestly, I'm more curious how Gibbons gets his sound, since there are no pedals visible onstage. Who's dialing him in, and from where?

I saw them last summer (chris were you at MN State Fair too?) and I'm real sure there were drum triggers and samples.
― A perfect transcript of a routine post (Dan Peterson), Monday, 9 March 2020 21:08 (five minutes ago) link

Yup, and I would have probably assumed that anyway, but it was especially clear after Cheap Trick who were very clearly not using any triggers or samples and whose extra musicians were all out front onstage

As of 2015 (there are some rig rundowns on YT from earlier tours) it looks like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1x_kg6pOvGU

So this is coming to my town soon.

https://i.imgur.com/b8Xt0hr.jpg

xpost This might be in there, but I thought Gibbons famously went through some tiny old amp, and the big amps were for show.