ZZ Top

"Cheap Sunglasses" is one of ZZ Top's biggest hits but it's the strutting, indescribably cool "I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide," and Billy Gibbons' phased vocal aside on "She Loves My Automobile" that really put this one in a category with the best blues rock of the '70s. Muscle cars, being sloppy stoned and drunk, girls sporting short dresses and spike-heeled shoes -- these are the things ZZ Top songs are about. Nothing else matters, really. "Manic Mechanic" is probably the weirdest song they ever recorded and their trademark deadpan humor is all over everything.

So they're more popular than the Rolling Stones? So were Crosby, Stills and Nash. What
makes ZZ Top a kitchen-slinger, party-time band from here to the Brazos is that, like
Austin's Fabulous Thunderbirds, it's saved white blues from being yesterday's conceit. Or
vice versa. No matter–the long-awaited Degüello is just what it looks like: a
sidewinder-slick slash in the guts. On one level, this may be the same old stuff, b... More >

These guys got off the road for real--sounds as if they spent all three years playing the blues on their front porch. The strident arena technique is gone, every song gives back a verbal phrase or two to make up for the musical ones it appropriates, and to vary the trio format they not only learned how to play horns but figured out where to put them. I've heard a sh*tload of white blues albums in the wake of Belushi & Aykroyd. This is the best by miles. (Grade - A-)