ZZ TOP SONGS FULL

If the guy’s got good wine, it’s OK.” The way the song seamlessly segued into Hombres’ bar rocker “Jesus Just Left Chicago” as if nothing happened made for one of the best one-two punches in the history of road rock. The thing about a bus is who you have to sit beside. “You can meet some very unique people on a bus and in a bus station,” Hill told Spin in 1985. The Homeric track that opened their iconic Tres Hombres album starts with a thin, precise bluesy guitar lick and a tight, sighing drum line that foreshadows the band’s electro-blues era, setting up Gibbons and Hill to plead for compassion in concert: “Have mercy!” Gibbons goes on to explain they’ve been waiting for the bus all day, with a bottle of booze and some leftover scratch, but, horror of horrors, when the bus arrives, it’s “packed up tight.” Blues harp virtuoso James Harman takes a solo, and by the time the song finishes up, the ZZ guys are dreaming of getting a Cadillac someday (fast forward to Eliminator ). Poor ZZ Top, they just wanted to get home. Here we look back at 10 of the band’s defining tracks. The lasciviousness of their lyrics always came with a wink, as did their Reagan-era transformation: The electronics of Eliminator and its follow-ups somehow only brought out more of the band’s inimitable essence. “We all woke up to the reality of an almost telepathic way to communicate,” Gibbons once said of an early rehearsal. After Cream and Jimi Hendrix warped electric blues into psychedelia, ZZ Top pulled it back to the dusty ground of Texas, but they weren’t as straight-ahead as they seemed: The rhythm section of drummer Frank Beard and late bassist (and sometime vocalist) Dusty Hill could groove so uncannily hard that a song like “Jesus Just Left Chicago” could feel otherworldly - and then the interdimensional squall of Billy Gibbons’ lead guitar would arrive.

Waitin For The Bus (Live from Nashville)ġ6.ZZ Top Portrait Session - Credit: Aaron Rapoport/Corbis/Getty ImagesĮven before they revved themselves up into synth-boosted MTV hitmakers in the Eighties, ZZ Top were never an ordinary blues-rock band.

Arrested for Driving While Blind (Remastered)ġ5. (Somebody Else Been) Shaking Your Tree ġ0. Beer Drinkers & Hell Raisers (Remastered)Ħ. Goin’ 50 closes with a selection of songs recorded between 19 that find the band returning to its blues roots for fresh inspiration on tracks like “Pincushion,” “What’s Up With That,” “Rhythmeen,” and “I Gotsta Get Paid.” The set’s final two tracks – live versions of “Waitin’ For The Bus” and “Jesus Just Left Chicago” – are taken from the band’s most recent release, Live Greatest Hits from Around the World (2016). The additional disc explores the steady stream of hits the band released between 19 that made them international superstars, including six Top 40 tracks: “Gimme All Your Lovin’,” “Legs,” “Sleeping Bag,” “Stages,” “Rough Boy,” and “Velcro Fly.” The first disc of Goin’ 50 focuses on the irresistible FM radio hits that hooked the first generation of ZZ Top fans during the Seventies and early-Eighties with songs like “La Grange,” “Tush,” “Cheap Sunglasses,” “I’m Bad, I’m Nationwide,” and “Pearl Necklace.” Two bonus tracks, “Salt Lick” and “Miller’s Farm” – a single and b-side respectively – were recorded in 1969 by the original incarnation of ZZ Top. This new retrospective includes an array from each of the 15 studio albums that guitarist Billy Gibbons, drummer Frank Beard and bassist Dusty Hill have recorded since 1970.

Packed with enough hits to fill a roadhouse jukebox, Goin’ 50 spans the band’s entire musical career, from its 1969 debut, and its multi-platinum zenith during the Eighties, to its most-recent releases.

ZZ TOP SONGS FULL

ZZ Top will kick off their 50th Anniversary with a trio of “ Texas Bash” dates later this month in Dallas, Houston, and Austin, with a full North American tour launching August 16th.

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