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ZZ
Top
Living in the media capital of the world (or, technically, a neighboring province) has its perks. Not only does every major performing artist, big and small, come by to perform, sometimes you get the best of both worlds and big artists are booked in small venues. Grammy weekend in Los Angeles offers a smorgasbord of such events. For me, there was no show more tantalizing than ZZ Top playing a late night gig after the Grammies on Sunday at the House of Blues. I first saw ZZ Top at the beginning of the <i>Eliminator</i> tour at what was then called the Ohio Center in Columbus--the LA House of Blues, with its intimacy, good sightlines and great acoustics, makes that venue look like a concert hall on the Bizarro world. A club date for a band that regularly plays at arenas and festivals has the feel of a 'return to roots' events, and it was not lost on the rock-n-roll vaqueros from Texas. The Top opened with "Thunderbird," their traditional opener from the 1970s but not a song that has been heard much in the intervening decades. The set included most of their familiar hits, from "Waitin' for the Bus/Jesus Just Left Chicago" through the biggest smashes from the aforementioned Eliminator, but featured several other smaller pleasures as well--a rousing "Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers," bilingual "Francine," punk rock "Theme from The Beverly Hillbillies," and a nice cover of Ray Charles' "Let's Go Get Stoned." With bassist Dusty Hill taking the vocal, they pulled out a great, down home reading of Muddy Waters' "Two Trains Runnin'," then juxtaposed it with their (i.e, not the Rolling Stones') "Brown Sugar", a blues from ZZ Top's First Album deeply indebted to Muddy. ZZ Top's backdrops can get pretty epic; the Deguello tour, for example, is legendary for recreating the entire state of Texas on stage. This show was appropriately scaled down for the small room, but was not with out some nice touches. Drummer Frank Beard sported some performance rims on his kit, while the amplifiers were outfitted with sombreros and maracas. Hill and guitarist Gibbons still sported Nudie-style Western suits and displayed their arsenal of unique axes, including the famous fur Explorers and the Gretsch given to Gibbons by Bo Diddley. For guitar heads, the evening had to have reached its peak when Gibbons brought out a vintage Gold Top Les Paul and laid down some heavy slide guitar on "Just Got Paid." Gibbons remains an absolute marvel on the instrument. Without ever sounding "technical," the man is an absolute encyclopedia of technique, playing the guitar with the type of English Minnesota Fats applied to the pool cue. Gibbons showed an understanding of all styles of blues, displayed skills using both hands on numbers from "Legs" to "La Gragne," and always found a killer tone on his amplifier. ZZ Top's booking at the House of Blues promised a special evening, and the concert emphatically delivered. At the risk of sounding more critical than I actually am of a great performing band, ZZ Top has, in concert, usually left me wanting a little more. There's nothing wrong that approach, really, as they err on the side of an excellent, well-paced show--I can name many more artists who have tried to do too much and ended up turning in a performance that was either over or underwhelming. This time, however, ZZ Top got it just right. Following the encore of "Jailhouse Rock," a "La Grange"-based medley, "Tush" ('Holly-WO-od') and "The Beverly Hillbillies" with its rugged interpolation of the "James Bond Theme," we left the show completely sated. |
