Interestingly, while always priding themselves on being a kick-ass live band, ZZ Top never got around to issuing a full-length live album during their 1970s/1980s peak. But as they say, it's better late than never, and 2011 finally saw the arrival of an archival live ZZ Top recording, Live in Germany 1980. Featuring half of the audio portion of their 2009 Double Down Live DVD, Live in Germany 1980 does a fantastic job of displaying all of the group's pre-Eliminator classics in a concert setting…
Double Down Live is a 2 DVD set from ZZ Top combining shows from 1980 and 2008. Disc one was filmed at the Grugahalle in Essen, Germany for the Rockpalast TV series. Hot on the heels of their classic "Deguello" album (it features 9 of the 10 songs from it) the show finds ZZ Top before sequencers and synthesizers epitomizing their "lil' ol' blues band from Texas" nickname…
Blessed with their first full-fledged hit album, ZZ Top followed it up with Fandango!, a record split between a side of live tracks and a side of new studio cuts. In a way, this might have made sense, since they were a kick-ass live band, and they do sound good here, but it's hard not to see this as a bit of a wasted opportunity in retrospect…
Blessed with their first full-fledged hit album, ZZ Top followed it up with Fandango!, a record split between a side of live tracks and a side of new studio cuts. In a way, this might have made sense, since they were a kick-ass live band, and they do sound good here, but it's hard not to see this as a bit of a wasted opportunity in retrospect. Why? Because the studio side is a worthy successor to the all-fine Tres Hombres, driven by "Tush" and "Heard It on the X," two of their greatest songs that build on that album by consolidating their sound and amplifying their humor…
Tres Hombres is the third album by the American rock band ZZ Top. It was released in 1973. The album was the first of many times the band worked with Terry Manning as engineer. It was a successful combination as the release was the band's first commercial breakthrough. In the US, the album entered the top ten while the single "La Grange" reached number 41 on the singles charts (meanwhile, "La Grange" debuted number 33 on the American Top 40 broadcast on June 29, 1974). At the height of ZZ Top's success in the mid-1980s a digitally remixed version of the recording was released on CD and the original 1973 mix was no longer issued. The remix version created controversy among fans because it significantly changed the sound of the instruments, especially drums.
The very title of Goin' 50 suggests ZZ Top are considering their 50th anniversary as an event to be celebrated with a sense of humor. That's appropriate. Good spirits and lascivious jokes always have been integral to the trio's appeal, and they can be heard in abundance on this triple-CD/five-LP set that tells their story from beginning to end (there is also a single-disc edition that rounds up the highlights)…