Title of the year ("Concrete and Steel," "Decision or Collision") * And in case you think they've lost their sense of humor, there's a new dance called the "Velcro Fly." I'm laughing, I'm laughing. The Trevor Hornish synth touches and out-front hooks are clues, but the proof is "Rough Boy," an attempted top-five ballad that would sound like pure take-me-or-leave-me revved up. With sales on Eliminator over five mil almost by accident, this hard-boogieing market strategy is defined by conscious commercial ambition-by its all but announced intention of making ZZ the next Bruce/Madonna/Prince/Michael, with two beards and a Beard at every checkout counter. The videos make you smile, the record runs you over. Now, with hitest b.p.m.s speeding the groove, they've motorvated back toward metal again-boogie in overdrive, a funny car that's half platinum and half plutonium. B+Īrena-rockers who never forgot heavy metal was once white blues, they took a long vacation and resurfaced as a fine white blues band starring a guitarist who always sounds like himself. That they're eccentric nonetheless is proven not just by the harmonizer-processed voice of evil shaking the DT's while working street PR, but by the brown-eyed mama who guards their groovy little hippie pad with.
Their boogie's gotten grander again, more nationwide than homegrown, which at its best-the euphemistically misprised "Tube Snake Boogie" (and did you know "Pearl Necklace" is Southwestern for blow job?)-means only that it packs a more powerful kick. I've heard a shitload of white blues albums in the wake of Belushi & Aykroyd.
Zz top nationwide how to#
The strident arena technique is gone, every song gives back a verbal phrase or two to make up for the musical ones it appropriates, and to vary the trio format they not only learned how to play horns but figured out where to put them. These guys got off the road for real-sounds as if they spent all three years playing the blues on their front porch. High point: "Tush" (hey, I thought that was Jewish). And by concentrating all their favorite steals in one place come up with a not-bad boogie album that can stand in for five lousy ones. "Jesus Just Left Chicago" is more like it-these boys obviously believe that even sonsofgod get the blues. "10 Legendary Texas Tales," the cover claims, but that's another tall one. You think Kinky Friedman will cover "Arrested for Driving While Blind"? C+ But this is the first trio to hark back to country music as well as blues, and they're brawnier than anything that comes out of Austin. Touring the way this band does tears you up by the roots, until the digs at Rolling Stone assume an authenticity lacking in the tales of the Pan-Am Highway. Let's just hope it isn't very significant. Significant that the only memorable song by (or from, rather) this no-organ Allmanesque trio-"Francene," a small but deserving hit-was not written by the principals.
0 kommentar(er)
