Bring On The Beards
ZZ Top - Various British & German Twelves [24-Bit 88.2kHz FLAC]
I take absolutely no responsibility for what is about to happen! I will be watching the hit count meter on this one as I follow up Meat Loaf earlier this week with more American rock legends from Texas. If he doesn't mind, I would like to put the blame solely at the feet of penguinflight who donated these five twelves to the old ESWA blog in 2016. They were among a lot of boxes of really good stuff and I know he has been eagerly awaiting my attempts at real rock rippage. Here you are old boy, these actually sound great ...enjoy, keep well and keep safe.
ZZ Top - Gimme All Your Lovin' W 9693(T) UK 1983
A1 Gimme All Your Lovin'
A2 Jesus Just Left Chicago
B1 Arrested For Driving While Blind
B2 Heard It On The X
ZZ Top - Sharp Dressed Man W 9576(T) DEU 1984
A1 Sharp Dressed Man
B1 I Got The Six
B2 La Grange
ZZ Top - Sleeping Bag W 2001 (T) UK 1985
A1 Sleeping Bag
B1 Party On The Patio
B2 Blue Jean Blues
ZZ Top - Doubleback W9812T UK 1990
A1 Doubleback (Single Version)
B1 Planet Of Women (LP Version)
B2 Doubleback (AOR Mix)
ZZ Top - My Head's In Mississippi W 0009(T) UK 1991
A1 My Head's In Mississippi
B1 Fool For Your Stockings
B2 Blue Jean Blues
I will admit that I enjoyed preparing these rips, all the singles had a Tergikleen bath even though they were in all near mint condition and the resulting FLACs do sound very sharp and powerful. Clever idea of the band to stick old album tracks on the b-sides, Blue Jean Blues features twice in two versions with the best mastered version on the Sleeping Bag single. Talking of Sleeping Bag, the intro to this single is anything but your regular ZZ fckin' Top. I may well have also been secretly (well not a secret now) listening to some of their early albums as a consequence.
You know that you really want these!!
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ReplyDeleteAlways a guilty pleasure. For me it is, was, and always will be La Grange: the Texas boogie Canned Heat spent a career refining, honed down to three minutes of pure pop heaven. Happily that is one of the B-sides and is alone worth the download.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, the intro to Sleeping Bag is probably the closest they got to the many sequencer greats this side of the pond, but in hindsight, it's a pretty astonishing, yet ultimately extremely obvious, leap from La Grange to Sleeping Bag.
As always - thanks for your efforts. And if you have access to the psychedelic, pre-Z.Z. 'Moving Sidewalks', worth checking out.
The one thing I'll say is that they did a fantastic job of taking advantage of the still new MTV. Just like Duran Duran, they saw the advantages of putting images to their music, and especially in their case, they were able to capture an audience that never had previously been interested in them. ...I can't say much for the music itself or the ridiculous subject matter of the videos, but I admired the campaign of making the videos all part of a larger story/mythos.
ReplyDeleteAmazing. Thank you for this (and yes, real heads know that the line between the blues drone of the 'top and the "adult" drone of, say, Stereolab is shorter than one might have imagined.)
ReplyDeleteAs a music fan, you can't *not* like ZZ Top IMO. Thanks a lot for this
ReplyDeleteyay, first few albums were great, neatly summed up in 1977's best of compilation which still sees my turntable pretty damned frequently...
ReplyDeletethanks for your work.
I Give you all my loving for these twelves
ReplyDeleteAll my hugs and kissing too.
DeleteYou're still cool. It is quite a cartoon phenomenon that rocks to this day. Thanks to you n Penguinflight.
ReplyDeleteHaving lived in Texas the majority of my adult life......ZZ Top has been a staple of my playlists for years. The Reverend Willie G is a Riffmaster and a king of the Euphemism / Double Entendre. I have seen them live several times and they never fail to put on a good show. I was somewhat shocked when 'Eliminator' was released and Dusty Hill and Frank Beard were somewhat replaced by drum machines....but the 'Legs' video made up for that in my teenage brain.....
ReplyDeleteThank you for this collection. Greatness from the U.S.A.