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Pretty cool documentary on NetFlix, ZZ Top, The Little Ol' Band From Texas


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13 hours ago, Brooks said:

I was hoping for more live 70s footage.

I agree.  I was loving all the pre-Eliminator footage.  Not to rag on Eliminator; I really do like that album, but seeing stuff from before that is so much more rare.

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Thoroughly enjoyed it and posted a Hamer case sighting earlier this week.  Kind of stopped after the 80's - I really would have liked some additional post - Eliminator details.  The Rhythmeen back-to-their-roots move, for example.

At any rate, laughed out loud in too many places.

And the oft, overlooked, ante-Eliminator "El Loco" is absolutely my favorite ZZ Top album - sneak peeks into the synths and sequencers to come but still recognizable as ZZ Top, just enough quirkiness.  Fantastic! 

ZZ_Top_-_El_Loco.jpg

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On 3/25/2020 at 2:28 PM, tommy p said:

^^^^ Great choice!  Here's my favorite:

ZZ_Top_-_Degüello.jpg

My all-time favorite Top album. Enjoyable from beginning to end, and quite diverse in terms of song structure and guitar tones. IHMO, if they'd stopped their run with El Loco, they wouldn't be as wealthy, but they'd still have a hell of an anthology.  Eliminator wasn't a bad record at all, but it was to the tres hombres what Hysteria was to Def Leppard.

Watched the documentary film earlier today. I felt like it had a rather generous amount of pre-Top and early era photos and footage, especially given Bill Ham's iron grip over the band's image and promotion. IIRC, the film's coverage of the Eliminator era came along when there were only 20 minutes left on the clock.  The personal historical anecdotes were cool, as I'd not heard some of those factoids in the past.  Beard's descriptions of his drug addiction were the most succinct and complete narrative I've encountered, and it very clearly showed how the band (and Deguello) benefited greatly from their hiatus.

 

 

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On 3/24/2020 at 2:54 PM, Brooks said:

I was hoping for more live 70s footage.

Yup! I lived in a college dorm 1973-77, and one room had a pretty massive 4-channel receiver and they always were blasting ZZ. I was a few doors down the hall and blasting Buddy Rich, Don Ellis, Count Basie, etc.through a pair of 85-lb. Altec-Lansing 6844 Studio monitors. I came to love ZZ blasting out of the room down the hall.

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Good times.

 

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Saw this when it was running in theaters.   Good enough to watch on Netflix and of course it is available on Blue Ray and DVD for those that just need to have Tres Hombres. 

Hamerica

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  • 3 weeks later...

Great doc.  My favorite part - Billy plays "Brown Sugar" on some weirdo nocaster Tele and it still sounds pretty much the same as the album.  In fact, the way it is layered into the doc, I thought it was the album version until it showed them back in Gruene. Proof that tone really is mostly in your hands. 
 

 

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Last January, at a sales kick off in Vegas, a younger member of our team mentioned her parents were in town and they were going to see a show, "do any of you guys know a band called ZZ Top?"

I've never felt so old.

I roasted her a little, asking if she'd heard of a breaking band from England called "The Beatles."  God bless her, but not knowing ZZ hurt.

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55 minutes ago, Toadroller said:

Last January, at a sales kick off in Vegas, a younger member of our team mentioned her parents were in town and they were going to see a show, "do any of you guys know a band called ZZ Top?"

I've never felt so old.

I roasted her a little, asking if she'd heard of a breaking band from England called "The Beatles."  God bless her, but not knowing ZZ hurt.

You could have given her a turn by telling her it was a group formed by extended family members of the Robertson clan of Duck Dynasty fame. She might have swallowed that hook. 

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