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…
Warner's 2013 box set The Complete Studio Albums 1970-1990 rounds up the ten albums ZZ Top recorded for Warner Bros over the course of 20 years: 1971's ZZ Top's First Album, 1972's Rio Grande Mud, 1973's Tres Hombres, 1975's Fandango!, 1976's Tejas, 1979's Deguello, 1981's El Loco, 1983's Eliminator, 1985's Afterburner, and 1990's Recycler…
They're all here! ZZ Top's greatest videos, a groundbreaking collection from the band that made chopped cars, great-looking girls, and fur-covered guitars an art form all their own. Right from the start, with "Gimme All Your Lovin'" and the rest of the Eliminator trilogy - "Sharp Dressed Man" and "Legs" - ZZ Top has pioneered the high-concept video. And they're still doing it today with "Viva Las Vegas," shot on the strip.From the deep-space weirdness of "Rough Boy" to the chain gang blues of "My Head's in Mississippi"; from the in-concert electricity of "Stages" to the Paula Abdul-choreographed "Velcro Fly," ZZ Top has always been in video's vanguard. In fact, they performed at the first-ever MTV Awards, where the radio city music hall audience seemed to spontaneously sprout chin whiskers.
Produced by the award-winning Banger Films, ZZ TOP: THAT LITTLE OL’ BAND FROM TEXAS tells the story of how three teenage bluesmen - Billy F Gibbons, Dusty Hill, and Frank Beard – became one of the biggest, most beloved bands on the planet, all while maintaining a surrealist mystique that continues to intrigue fans and entice onlookers 50 years after the band’s inception. The 90-minute documentary is packaged with 35 minutes of live performances, a mix of recent Gruene Hall and archival footage.
Pay attention to the "raw" designation in RAW: That Little Ol' Band from Texas, the 2022 album that purports to be the soundtrack to the 2019 documentary That Little Ol' Band from Texas. Within the movie is a segment capturing ZZ Top playing a show at Gruene Hall, famously hailed as "the oldest continually run dance hall in Texas." That set is presented here on RAW: That Little Ol' Band from Texas, an album that winds up being a more valuable document than expected thanks to the fact that it captures the classic lineup of ZZ Top playing a bunch of down-and-dirty blues just a few years before the passing of bassist of Dusty Hill in 2021.
ZZ Top, the "little ol' band from Texas", has enjoyed enormous success on a global scale since their breakthrough in the early seventies and then their groundbreaking albums in the mid-eighties. Now for the first time one of ZZ Top's legendary live performances has been filmed for simultaneous release on DVD & Blu-ray. The track listing spans their career from early tracks such as "Waitin' For The Bus", "Just Got Paid" and the classic "La Grange", through their eighties blockbusters including "Gimme All Your Lovin'" and "Legs" (complete with furry guitars!) and up to more recent hits like "Pin Cushion". Filmed in their home state of Texas in front of a wildly enthusiastic audience, this DVD & Blu-ray captures ZZ Top at their very best.
ZZ Top's First Album may not be perfectly polished, but it does establish their sound, attitude, and quirks. Simply put, it's a dirty little blues-rock record, filled with fuzzy guitars, barrelhouse rhythms, dirty jokes, and Texan slang. They have a good, ballsy sound that hits at gut level, and if the record's not entirely satisfying, it's because they're still learning how to craft records – which means that they're still learning pacing as much as they're learning how to assemble a set of indelible material. Too much of this record glides by on its sound, without offering any true substance, but the tracks that really work – "(Somebody Else Been) Shaking Your Tree," "Backdoor Love Affair," "Brown Sugar," and "Goin' Down to Mexico," among them – show that from their very first record on, ZZ Top was that lil' ol' blues band from Texas.