ZZ Top Montreaux 2013

rsvmark

Ok so 9 years ago but this came up on my Samsung channel on Gigs. Fucking hell, is Billy Gibbons a player and makes it look effortless. Lovely playing

Headphones

And they get the count every time. 

Strat54

FF 11 years and he makes singing look effortless too...wait a mo he's lip syncing lol.

https://youtu.be/gre65UqotpQ?si=_jeXRF17dZrnsy2a

lustycourtier

Strat54 said:

FF 11 years and he makes singing look effortless too...wait a mo he's lip syncing lol.

https://youtu.be/gre65UqotpQ?si=_jeXRF17dZrnsy2a

wow thats terrible. 

LPManic

Billy doing it the opposite of every other band - instead of instruments to tape and vocals live, the guitar is live and the vocals are to tape. (I've a sneaky feeling the drums aren't live either).

EricTheWeary

LPManic said:

Billy doing it the opposite of every other band - instead of instruments to tape and vocals live, the guitar is live and the vocals are to tape. (I've a sneaky feeling the drums aren't live either).

Billy's vocals live seem to be as rough as a cow's arse so will be heavily redone for anything that's broadcast. 
Frank Beard has been using a click live since the 1980s and there are probably tracks which are a mix of machine and live drumming (as there are on the albums). 

victorludorum

Wow, that's horrendous. How much are they charging for tickets currently?

Offset

I have always liked/admired BFG as a guitarist, but I stopped listening to ZZ Top as a band at some point not long after Fandango.  I thought they were awful at Glasto the other year.  I most certainly wouldn't pay to see them.

boogieman

Offset said:

I have always liked/admired BFG as a guitarist, but I stopped listening to ZZ Top as a band at some point not long after Fandango.  I thought they were awful at Glasto the other year.  I most certainly wouldn't pay to see them.

Dusty was on his last legs when they did Glastonbury, think he’d had an injury or something? I remember he played bass on some sort of keyboard rig. He died not long after that gig anyway. I agree, it was shite, but at least they had an excuse. 

They have managed a few decent albums since Fandango. Antenna is good, Recycler is ok and Rhythmeen is excellent… it’s actually become one of my favourite ZZ albums, but yeah there’s not really been that much of note since. 

Philly_Q

I think they went from a great band with no image, to a great band with a cool image, to a cool image with not much left to back it up...  The early to mid period albums are great but I rarely want to listen to them nowadays.

Now I've started... I find Billy's hats and sunglasses and cryptic way of speaking pretty tedious, I wish he's just drop the facade sometimes.  And I'll probably get flak for saying this, but I thought it was a little distasteful the way they just upped and carried on about 48 hours after Dusty died.

EricTheWeary

boogieman said:

Offset said:

I have always liked/admired BFG as a guitarist, but I stopped listening to ZZ Top as a band at some point not long after Fandango.  I thought they were awful at Glasto the other year.  I most certainly wouldn't pay to see them.

Dusty was on his last legs when they did Glastonbury, think he’d had an injury or something? I remember he played bass on some sort of keyboard rig. He died not long after that gig anyway. I agree, it was shite, but at least they had an excuse. 

They have managed a few decent albums since Fandango. Antenna is good, Recycler is ok and Rhythmeen is excellent… it’s actually become one of my favourite ZZ albums, but yeah there’s not really been that much of note since. 

Really from their hit singles onwards their albums became two or three good tracks plus some others that sound a bit like them. Not that unusual for many bands  I guess but you might have to go back to El Loco and the earlier ones to hear much variety on a ZZ Top album. Across the years you can hear changes, really extracting as much as possible out of the trio format but in any particular period they started to beat their latest guitar sound and approach to death. I was watching a bit of Live From Texas on Sky Arts which is 2007 and it gets very samey very quickly, relying on the early stuff to offer some light and shade. 
But as per the OP Billy does make it look effortless and there is a wonderful economy to his playing style. 

springhead

I saw them around ‘98 or so at Brixton Academy. They were excellent. Apart from Gimme all your Lovin it was all early stuff. De Guello, Tres Hombres. Wonderful gig.  Many years have passed since, they’re getting on a bit.  

RocknRollDave

boogieman said:

Offset said:

I have always liked/admired BFG as a guitarist, but I stopped listening to ZZ Top as a band at some point not long after Fandango.  I thought they were awful at Glasto the other year.  I most certainly wouldn't pay to see them.

Dusty was on his last legs when they did Glastonbury, think he’d had an injury or something? I remember he played bass on some sort of keyboard rig. He died not long after that gig anyway. I agree, it was shite, but at least they had an excuse. 

They have managed a few decent albums since Fandango. Antenna is good, Recycler is ok and Rhythmeen is excellent… it’s actually become one of my favourite ZZ albums, but yeah there’s not really been that much of note since. 

I saw them in 2009 or 2010….Dusty was the best thing about it. Couldn’t really hear BFG’s vocals; Dusty’s were clear as a bell.

Sadly, I don’t think they’ve been much cop for a while - Montreux 2013 included. It’s clear that for the hits they roll out towards the end, either the vocals are on tape or Billy’s vocal cords selectively decide to work much better just for those exact same songs at every gig.

boogieman

Philly_Q said:

I think they went from a great band with no image, to a great band with a cool image, to a cool image with not much left to back it up...  The early to mid period albums are great but I rarely want to listen to them nowadays.

Now I've started... I find Billy's hats and sunglasses and cryptic way of speaking pretty tedious, I wish he's just drop the facade sometimes.  And I'll probably get flak for saying this, but I thought it was a little distasteful the way they just upped and carried on about 48 hours after Dusty died.

I do wonder about the band’s finances. They didn’t even have a record deal for a long while and I can’t imagine they’ve made much money out of record sales since the Eliminator/Afterburner days. No idea how the royalties are sorted between them. Maybe Billy and Frank just needed to keep the band running for financial reasons? Agreed though, it seemed a very hasty decision to keep going straight after Dusty died. Tbh I thought Billy would wind the band up at that point. 

victorludorum

I had a look at the Wikipedia page for Eliminator the other week and was quite shocked at the story about the 'co-writer' who got shafted by the band's management and had to take them to court. If that was the attitude then, I'm sure it's the same or worse now.

CaseOfAce

boogieman said:

I do wonder about the band’s finances. They didn’t even have a record deal for a long while and I can’t imagine they’ve made much money out of record sales since the Eliminator/Afterburner days. No idea how the royalties are sorted between them. Maybe Billy and Frank just needed to keep the band running for financial reasons?

I watched the Netflix documentary and didn't the impression they were short of cash. 
Dusty was living on a massive ranch - with a hanger full of his guitars and Elvis memorabilia.
Billy is in some Architectural Digest style spanish villa $$$$$
Even Frank who hit rock bottom in the late 70s and almost got chucked out the band for addictions was in a nice little house overlooking a lake. 

I saw Billy Gibbons and friends doing ZZ Top stuff at an O2 regional theatre last year. What struck me most was how sprightly he was for a 74 year old rocker (and that was he was even hauling himself down my way!).
Guitar tone was SUPERB. No idea what he was using - and how atonal he got in his blues sometimes... stuff that wouldn't have been out of place in a Wayne Krantz set...!

Danny1969

You never can tell how much money old rock stars have. Take John Entwistle, lived in a massive mansion with a huge collection of suits of amour, antique furniture etc but was completely skint in real terms. When he died he was replaced for the tour by Pino because The Who would have been sued to bits by promotors and venues otherwise. 

Winny_Pooh

Re late ZZ Top, I really enjoyed XXX
Fun band that are really into guitars.

https://open.spotify.com/track/7qbww0QZYDcJLj9AXb6r4v?si=UB0zmV7DTkyeQO1yqJ39CA

RocknRollDave

https://blabbermouth.net/news/zz-tops-new-bassist-elwood-francis-ill-never-be-in-the-band

Interesting, and probably a view that most fans share - with no disrespect to Elwood at all.

@Winny_Pooh I am also a fan of the later stuff. In fact, in their whole catalogue, it’s probably the three big 80’s/ early 90’s ones - Eliminator to Recycler - that I visit the least. Either side, there are gems. 

Eliminator, of course, isn’t a bad record - lots of hits - but just seems they lost something of the loose, bluesy thing for a while.

CaseOfAce

I'm gonna go against the grain on here but I like the 80s top more than I do the early stuff (even though some of it is great).

In all honesty (brace yourselves) I never get tired of hearing Gimme All Your Lovin' or Sharp Dressed Man. That production and song writing is insane whilst Gibbon's blues licks still shine thru.

I love how they took the blues (and they say in the Netflix doc that doing shuffle's in C wasn't gonna cut it anymore) and mangled it with Moog synths, drum machines, sequencers and came up with something fresh (in the same kind of way Stevie Wonder ditched Motown and teamed up with the Tonto Expanding Head Band in the 70s).

But then I'm weird that way - for me the greatest blues music of the last few decades hasn't been made by the Dumble, strat, Klon brigade but by Moby, Jack White or even the Black Keys where it's been taken somewhere different.

Winny_Pooh

CaseOfAce said:

I'm gonna go against the grain on here but I like the 80s top more than I do the early stuff (even though some of it is great).

In all honesty (brace yourselves) I never get tired of hearing Gimme All Your Lovin' or Sharp Dressed Man. That production and song writing is insane whilst Gibbon's blues licks still shine thru.

I love how they took the blues (and they say in the Netflix doc that doing shuffle's in C wasn't gonna cut it anymore) and mangled it with Moog synths, drum machines, sequencers and came up with something fresh (in the same kind of way Stevie Wonder ditched Motown and teamed up with the Tonto Expanding Head Band in the 70s).

But then I'm weird that way - for me the greatest blues music of the last few decades hasn't been made by the Dumble, strat, Klon brigade but by Moby, Jack White or even the Black Keys where it's been taken somewhere different.

Yeah, the SRV imitation parade gets formulaic.
By contrast the first White Stripes record is incredibly badass and raw.
Check out Tom Wait's Real Gone & Chris Whitley & Jeff Lang's Dislocation blues