No. 498: Tres Hombres

Band: ZZ Top
Album: Tres Hombres
Why Rolling Stone gets it right: Before they were the guys with the crazy car, ZZ Top played hard blues riffs over and over. "Tres Hombres" is an album of hard blues riffs, played over and over.
Why Rolling Stone gets it wrong: There's not a lot to hate here. It's ot one of the best 500 albums of all time, but at 498, is anyone really complaining?
Best song: "La Grange," a song about a whorehouse, is a classic. "Waitin' For The Bus" is pretty good.
Worst song: Once you get to "Have You Heard?" you're pretty tired of the same three riffs.
Is it awesome?: Nah.

Before ZZ Top was the ZZ Top we all know, the band was simply a three-piece from Houston. Playing inexplicably simple blues-rock, the band released "Tres Hombres" in 1975, to minor fanfare.

The album is actually quite pleasant for what it is. It's blues rock as filtered through a solo-happy guitarist and a rhytymn section happy to fall into the background. So, you have songs like "La Grange," a three and a half minute guitar solo, with some stolen John Lee Hoker riffs in between.

That's not to say "La Grange" is a bad song. It's not. It's tons of fun and that song's opening -- lifted or not -- is iconic in rock and roll music. You know it the minute you hear it.

"Jesus Just Left Chicago" is a similar blues song, in that the riff is lifted and the lyrics are thematically typical of the genre. "Waitin' For The Bus" isn't bad and "Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers" has a decent populist streak (though I still dislike blue collar rock).

It's not the worst thing in the world, but it's pretty standard blues

No. 396: Eliminator

Band: ZZ Top
Album: Eliminator
Why Rolling Stone gets it right: "Eliminator" sold 10 million copies based on the easy guitar riffage, hot rods and long beards of ZZ Top. Trust me, you know the songs and you know the beards. As a bearded person, I salute their beards.
Why Rolling Stone gets it wrong: Let's not get crazy. It's not exactly Beethoven.
Best song: Any of the three singles are good.
Worst song: Every other song stinks.
Is it awesome?: Not really, but, hey, beards!

Here's my contention: ZZ Top is wildly underrated as a cultural entity. I don't think ZZ Top is the do-all and end-all of a particular phenomenon, but when this particularly phenomenon hit them (and they exploited it with the three videos from this album), that meant it was mainstream.

I am, of course, speaking of the triumph of the cool person inside the nerd (or loser). The '80s were full of this storyline.

ZZ Top's videos from this period have a very similar storyline. Someone is a big dork and is having a hard go of it. In "Gimme All Your Lovin'," this guy has a tough job fixing cars. ZZ Top comes in (with their hot rod) and gives him an awesome hot rod and he suddenly has scores of women. Loser no longer!



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In "Legs," the main character is having a tough go of it as a big nerd. Glasses, shapeless clothes. Everyone hassles her. But, then, ZZ Top comes in and gives her the famous keys to the hot rod. She then gets a makeover, new clothes and, boom! Nerd no longer.



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"Sharp Dressed Man" features, of all professions, a valet parker. He's a real weenie in his misfitted tux. The rich people are all harassing him. He is toiling at his job until (you guessed it!) the hot rod shows up and the women all love him. They even get him a top hat and a scarf. Weenie no more!



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One of my favorite music anecdotes:

Guided by Voices and Superchunk toured together in the fall of 1999, when I was training to become a DJ at (what would become) my beloved college station, KCOU. I admired the older DJs at the station and I saw one of them at the show. I asked him which band he was looking forward to seeing and he said "Each of these bands have been playing the same song for 10 years, I just like the Superchunk song better."

The same could be said for two bands on this list, ZZ Top and AC/DC. Like Superchunk and GBV, ZZ Top and AC/DC occupy the hearts of similar fans (pseudo-metalers) and come from the same time period. But, of course, ZZ Top and AC/DC each have a very strict template and almost never deviate from it.

For ZZ Top, "Eliminator" is where that template made them millions. Each song is based on a pretty easy blues guitar riff, has a couple of verses and turns into an extended Billy Gibbons guitar solo. They're are pretty simple. They're all in 4/4. They're all about pretty classic rock and roll topics (hot rods and women).

Really, there's not a lot to it. That doesn't necessarily make it bad. It's just thumping white guy rock.