There's a few things the title of the new ZZ Top album, X X X, can stand
for. It could be for a particular kind of movie rating; maybe that's why Billy
F Gibbons, Dusty Hill and Frank Beard offer a conspiratorial, communal
leer when that possibility is raised.
It may be a nod to Dos Equis beer, one of the trio's favorite brews.
Or it might signify the 30 years "that little ol' band from Texas" has been
together. "We're allowing that confusion to remain," Gibbons says of the
mysterious and ambiguous title. "The truth is, nobody quite knows what
the expected meaning was to be."
Suffice to say that whatever you call it, X X X is the latest offering from a
band that doesn't have to explain itself -- but, rather, has done just that
through three decades of varied and adventurous music making, a far more
ambitious path than you'd ever expect from a guitar, bass and drums trio.
What IS ZZ Top? It's blues and rock. Texas and Memphis. Grit and grins.
Cheap sunglasses and sharp-dressed men. Gorgeous women and fast
cars -- or is that gorgeous cars and fast... well, you get the idea. But
inside it all is a sound and an attitude that's sold millions of records, a
combination of Gibbons' pesos-plucked guitar, Hill's rumbling bass and
beardless Beard's deceptively sly rhythms.
"I guess we could attempt singing all sorts of styles of music," Gibbons
notes, "but nothing really gets too far away from being identifiable as 'Oh,
there's ZZ Top. There's some elements that remain that make it identifiable
as 'those three bearded boys."
Those elements are there in abundance on X X X, which has all the
winking humor and musical gutsiness of its 12 predecessors. Originally
conceived as a live album, X X X combines eight new studio tracks with
four live selections, a blend that worked so well on 1975's "Fandango!" The
concert tracks come from unannounced surprise club shows around the
country. The studio tracks, meanwhile, were cut mostly in the trio's natural
progression following the back-to-basics exercise of 1996's "Rhythmeen."
"I thought that 'Rhythmeen' really re-established to the fans who were
curious if ZZ Top still has a piece of that just pure trio left," Gibbons
explains. " (X X X) is perhaps a little more accurate to the tradition of what
ZZ Top has done on most of the other records, and that's pushed and
pulled at whatever might add to a sound. There's drum loops and even
some synthesizer parts show up -- things that we haven't done in awhile
but are nonetheless valid and legitimate studio exercises."
Of course, like most ZZ Top albums, X X X is not to be picked apart and
analyzed. Rather, it's to be consumed and enjoyed as a piece, from the
sizzling licks of "Poke Chop Sandwich" -- an homage of sorts to blues
great Lightnin' Hopkins and his drummer Spider, who kept a pork chop
sandwich on his kit -- to the barroom blitz of "Fearless Boogie," the
hubba-hubba grind of "36-22-36," the psychedelic overtones of "Trippin' "
and the sonic odyssey of "Dreadmonboogaloo," a salute to nocturnal DJ
Art "Senor Saucer" Bell, whose radio program often escorted the Top boys
home from sessions in the wee hours shortly before dawn.
On the live side, we have "Sinpusher," a variation of the "Antenna" album's
"Pincushion" because "one night we played it and forgot the words, and
we liked this one better," Gibbons says. We're also graced with the
Hill-sung blues take of "(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear" -- complete with a
"lost" verse. And those listening closely to "Hey Mr. Millionaire" can hear
a rare vocal performance by guitar great Jeff Beck, a ZZ buddy who
hunkered down with Gibbons in a Dallas hotel to rekindle the spirit of
mutual favorite Robert Johnson.
All told, X X X shows ZZ Top is entering its fourth decade in fine form,
another stunning accomplishment to join the list that includes -- in no
particular order -- the now historic Worldwide Texas Tour, countless gold
and platinum albums, a new RIAA Diamond Award for selling more than 10
million copies of the "Eliminator" album, MTV Video Music Awards, a
halftime performance at Super Bowl XXXI, honors from seemingly every
politician in Texas (free chicken dinners, folks...) and, perhaps most
importantly, the group's heartfelt patronage of the Delta Blues Museum in
Clarksdale, Miss.
And the best news is that there's no sign -- praise the lord -- of stopping
any time soon.
"We still enjoy playing together," Gibbons says. "And as a band, that
means a lot, if not everything, in this unified pursuit of the collective
unknown. I don't know of anything that we have more fun doing. In fact,
we've been in this band longer than marriage, longer than school, longer
than anything we've ever done. And it doesn't seem like 30 years, either."
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