ZZ Top closed out their tenure with London Records in late 1977 with The Best of ZZ Top, a basic but terrific ten-song retrospective of highlights from their first five albums (well, four, actually, since the underwhelming Tejas is ignored). There are no surprises here, just album rock favorites, which means it does draw heavily on Tres Hombres (four songs, total), adds Fandango's "Tush," "Blue Jean Blues," and "Heard It on the X" for good measure, then rounds it out with two songs from Rio Grande Mud and a selection from the debut. Yeah, there are a couple good album tracks missing, but as a ten-song summary of their early years, this can't be beat.
That Little Ol’ Band from Texas comes up big in ZZ Top: Live from Texas, a concert recorded in Dallas in November, 2007. The hirsute trio (guitarist Billy Gibbons, bass player Dusty Hill, drummer Frank Beard) has been at it for nearly four decades now, and notwithstanding their synth-tinged commercial breakthrough in the ‘80s, they haven’t changed a whole lot in that time–not that that’s a bad thing, as ZZ Top is still essentially a fine, gut-bucket blues band. In the course of this 80-minute gig, they dig deep into the back catalogue, mixing in tunes from ‘70s albums like Tres Hombres, Rio Grande Mud, and Fandango, as well as more recent items from the multi-platinum Eliminator…
ZZ Top is an American rock band formed in 1969 in Houston, Texas. The band consists of guitarist and lead vocalist Billy Gibbons, bassist and co-lead vocalist Dusty Hill, and drummer Frank Beard. The band and its members went through several reconfigurations throughout 1969, achieving their current form when Hill replaced bassist Billy Etheridge in February 1970, shortly before the band was signed to London Records…
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.
With their second album, Rio Grande Mud, ZZ Top uses the sound they sketched out on their debut as a blueprint, yet they tweak it in slight but important ways. The first difference is the heavier, more powerful sound, turning the boogie guitars into a locomotive force. There are slight production flares that date this as a 1972 record, but for the most part, this is a straight-ahead, dirty blues-rock difference. Essentially like the first album, then. That's where the second difference comes in – they have a much better set of songs this time around, highlighted by the swaggering shuffle "Just Got Paid," the pile-driving boogie "Bar-B-Q," the slide guitar workout "Apologies to Pearly," and two Dusty Hill-sung numbers, "Francine" and "Chevrolet." There are still a couple of tracks that don't quite gel and their fuzz-blues still can sound a little one-dimensional at times, but Rio Grande Mud is the first flowering of ZZ Top as a great, down-n-dirty blooze rock band.