Three Friends

 

When ZZ Top's bass player died in 2021 There was a huge void in good ole Texas Blues.  If you grew up in the late 1970's or early 1980's like I had ZZ Top was on the radio all the time. It was the smash album Eliminator made them a gazillion dollars. The Texas Blues they were so good at was all gone and to most people this was a brand new and up and coming Rock trio. I know my dad knew of them, but he thought this was the best thing going,  He also liked the hot rod Ford on the front cover. He played the album all the time and to this day it's my least favorite ZZ Top album. 

When I was a bit older My dad took me to see ZZ Top and I was in love with their music. It was awesome to hear the old songs done live. It was also good education for my dad who only new a handful of their songs. It was also funny to watch him react to songs he knew but did not know it was ZZ Top. Looking back on this I thought it was funny hearing my dad mention that he knew very little on the early years of ZZ Top. If he was alive today I think we would have a great laugh at my dad's fanboy 

all things 1980's ZZ Top. 

As a huge Classic Rock listener, I would hear them on the radio all the time.  When I did my internship at the Classic Rock radio station anytime I would do ZZ Top I would call my dad and tell him to listen in to what I was playing. One day the DJ I was training with let me give a shout out to my dad for listening to the ZZ Top. The DJ was the one who gave us the tickets to see ZZ Top in the winter of 1991 for the Recycler tour. It was one of my dads favorite shows that we have seen together. 

It was later on that I decided to revisit some of the early music of ZZ Top and soak in all their Blues and Roots music that made them popular in their state of Texas. I was in for a surprise. The handful of songs I heard on the radio sounded ten times better then in the studio listening to them. The other songs from the albums that these songs came from sounded cooler then the ones I heard on the radio. A great example of this is from the album I'm featuring Tres Hombres. A song called "Move Me on Down the Line." Killer tune and great riffs and some of Billy Gibbons best work. Another great tune is "Master of Sparks," Both of these great tunes are not the hits you hear on the radio,  It was this album that I'm sure made people aware of ZZ Top.

When I first heard this album it was on one of those two on one cassette with another great album Fandango. I think I wore this cassette out. It was all I was playing compared to my dad with his 80's ZZ Top. This is the ZZ Top I loved. It was not the over the top 80's. but the classic 70's that is saturated in Blues and Boogie.  It's to this day the era of ZZ Top musical legacy that makes my head spin. 

If you want to start your modern Texas Blues and Boogie, go no further and pick up this album. Some of the songs you will remember, but the songs that they don't play often on radio and Spotify will be your new favorites. Over the summer I did a few radio shows with a friend and played some of the songs I mentioned and we were both surprised how well they held up for over fifty years. If anything this might convert you into the true ZZ Top fan with this great album. Tres Hombres is a classic through and through. Enjoy! 
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