#54: ZZ Top - Tres Hombres

I wish I could have been a fly on the wall for the planning of the Tres Hombres cover. "Okay. We have pictures of all three of you, the band name and the album title." "Lower that shit." It's such a weird use of space. I hated it when I first noticed it, but now it's pretty great.

Being a Texan, I feel obligated to love my share of dirty-ass rock and roll, and it's never been a problem to live up to my end of that deal. Discovering beer helped, too. And ZZ Top is a beer drinkin' band. I have my favorite band to listen to on particularly boozy nights, and lately it's been all about ZZ Top and Motorhead - stuff that doesn't require much precision to air-guitar to, but still jacks you upside the head.

Tres Hombres is often thought of as the more 'authentic' counterpart to the band's mega-selling Eliminator. Tres Hombres predates that record by ten years, but save for the synthesizers the band would later throw into the mix (which I'm totally fine with), there's really nothing different musically between the two records. There might be a little more boogie, which is probably more a result of the non-production production job, in which the band sounds as unencumbered as possible, allowing the guitars to achieve a sharper sound and letting the bass be more than just a constant buzz.

Opener "Waitin' for the Bus" takes no prisoners with some of Billy Gibbons' best guitar work, and even though "La Grange" is the most oft-mentioned cut on the album, it's a cover and therefore doesn't count, so "Bus" gets the nod for most badass song, regardless of which tune was responsible for more sales. Once things get going, it's basically thirty minutes of fuzzy grooves and dry throats, and track by track, I could hear Tres Hombres enter my hallowed tome of unsober music.

The only misstep is the ballad, "Hot, Blue and Righteous," which isn't a bad song, but on an album that just tips the thirty-minute mark, is there really a need to bring things down? Maybe I sound like the guys that yelled "too long!" and "prog-rock wankers!" when Napalm Death would play a song that lasted more than a minute, but it just seems unnecessary. But screw it, I'll just revise my playlist to play "Waitin' for the Bus" again instead. Who cares if I don't notice that I heard it already?

"Waitin' for the Bus" and "Jesus Just Left Chicago" live in 2005. Ignore the choreography.