Assembled from various shows from various tours from around the world, 2016's Live: Greatest Hits from Around the World is billed as ZZ Top's first "full-length live album" – a matter of dispute considering how Eagle Rock released three CD/DVD/Blu-ray combo sets between 2008 and 2014. There is no visual component to Live: Greatest Hits from Around the World, which may be how it skates around the first live album distinction – if there's no video, this is a pure album – but the record mines a similar musical vein, collecting highlights from latter-day ZZ Top tours. During the 2000s and 2010s, ZZ Top released an excellent studio album called La Futura, but that's ignored here in favor for all the songs that are classic rock staples.
With an unchanged line-up stretching back to 1969 and global album sales in excess of 50 million, ZZ Top continue to delight fans around the world with brilliant live concerts and great music. The band has made a number of visits to Montreux over the years and this concert from the 2013 Festival is undoubtedly one of their finest live performances…
ZZ Top's 2012 album La Futura – their first in nearly a decade – was widely acclaimed for bringing back the group's grimy '70s boogie, so what did Billy Gibbons choose to do for a follow-up? Naturally, he decided to leave his little old band behind so he could record Perfectamundo with a new group called the BFG's. Perfectamundo allows Gibbons to not only indulge a newfound love of Cuban rhythms – an infatuation assisted by pianist Martin Guigui, who provides an anchor in the BFG's – but also all the studio trickery he left behind as he worked with Rick Rubin on La Futura.