The 1981 Listening Post - ZZ Top - El Loco

ZZ Top - El Loco 

#316

By Timothy Daniels

July 1981

ZZ Top 

El Loco 

Genre: ZZ Top Boogie Rock

Allen’s Rating: 3 out of 5

Timothy’s Rating: 2 out of 5

Tube Snake Boogie:  Ohhhh yeaaahhh.  Boogie boogie.  Boogie Boogie.  I mean if someone can’t move a little to this song I don’t trust where their sole is from.  It’s long hair, pickup trucks made entirely of chrome and yellow for some reason, driving past a ten foot tall guitar in Vegas.  It’s about as ZZtop as it gets.  Which is to say there might as well be no lyrics at all, they are meaningless basic gibberish, and the guitar is good.  That’s ZZtop.  It reached number four on the charts and that sounds about right.

I Wanna Drive You Home is a little slow and reminds me of something you ignore just after your song plays on the jukebox.  You would skip it if you could.  At some point I did just that.

Same with Ten Foot Pole.  After hearing the last two songs I’m quite convinced that they make decent music on the guitar, and then at the last minute think of a catchy phrase and just keep repeating it along with some gibberish and call it a song.  Their guitar solos are always fun, their lyrics could have been written by my niece.  She can’t speak yet.

Leila is another background song but it’s got a real night out on the town in Tampa with your girl feel to it.  It went to #77 on the charts. That sounds about right.

Don’t Tease Me sounds like The title of a really good Rolling Stone song. It’s too bad that it’s not. Instead it’s a song that I couldn’t listen to in entirety.

It’s so hard is a nice quiet jam.  Yeah.  I’m okay with this mood song.  It’s not special but it’s not awful

Pearl Necklace was the only song I recognized immediately.  This kind of reminds me of the early MTV days, I was really young but I remember falling in love with videos and watching them all of the time and my parents hated it.  I had to start doing it with an old tv in the basement.  I hooked up some cable wirespliiter thing which was how you got cable on two televisions for free illegally I think: and boom, my quintessential basement room was born.

Groovy Little Hippie Pad is a synth song that’s definitely a period piece.

Heaven, Hell or Houston is a strange song.  It sounds like it was Magic Mike from the Beastie Boys first project when he was 10.  You can hear a couple interesting things but it’s not ready to be heard on an album.  I stuck it out, because as always the ZZtop brilliancy of guitar suddenly appears to really save the day.  Damn those boys can burst out a solo.  Too bad it’s in the middle of this mess because it’s otherwise good.

Party on the Patio sounds like something I made up when I wanted to be in a band, like all comedians as they say.  It sounds about as good as something I would have done.  It’s of course saved by what?  A guitar.  Sorta.

This album would have been better served by picking the 2 best songs and having a good song and a B side.  Tube Snake Boogie with ... I don’t even know.

1 star.  Okay... 2.  That’s just because I love ZZ Top‘s smooth guitar.  And their other albums.

https://open.spotify.com/album/3arG8ypefLVEmDBzFVCsyR?si=7XswduusTUi2rSY_SgEIrw

The 1985 Listening Post - ZZ Top - Afterburner

ZZ Top - Afterburner

#405/1041

October 26 1985

ZZ Top

Afterburner

Genre: ZZTopisDisconotRock

3.25 out of 5

Highlights:

Stages

Can’t Stop Rockin’

“Dis-co Sucks! Dis-co Sucks!”

Right? Amirite?

Except that, as I said before and reinforced here: ZZ Top is not a rock band. They are a boogie dance disco band. With guitars. 

And America loved it. This was a huge seller for the band. 

It’s fine for what it is, I guess, but what it is is four on the floor and guitar breaks separated by monotone lyrics sung with about as emotion as can be mustered through that bees nest of a beard. 

Here’s the thing about ZZ Top that I have come to learn:

They wrote one song. Every other track is a variation of that one song. Or two. Sometimes there’s another.

https://music.apple.com/us/album/afterburner/655175761

The 1983 Listening Post - ZZ Top - Eliminator

ZZ Top - Eliminator

So, this might engender some debate...

3/23/1983
ZZ Top
Eliminator
3.5 stars

Best Tracks:
Gimme All Your Lovin'
Got Me Under Pressure
Legs
Thug

This is gonna get me in all sorts of hot water but…the first few tracks of Eliminator are the opening to a Disco rock record.
Swap in some Donna Summer vocalist and it’s a dance record. No? Four on the floor just a hair shy of Kiss's I Was Made For Loving You (which stands the test of time better than any track here. My question is how were there no disco versions of “Gimme All Your Lovin’”?

Sharp Dressed Man is basically an instrumental. The blues are Bluesy, sure. But are they earth shatteringly worthy of Diamond status?
This is one of those records that sold a ton based on the singles and videos as the industry was shifting to cassingles and CDs. In fact the album doesn’t rise above pedestrian rock pop until Thug, which was actually not written by the band alone but by their studio engineer.

Eliminator isn’t a “bad” record. It’s a dull record that sold 10 million copies and most of the time when that many people like something it has to have broad appeal, which all too often results in something safe and uninteresting.
Which describes this album perfectly.