ZZ Top

I know, I know, when I say “ZZ Top,” you’re thinking about dudes in matching suits and beards and sunglasses, you’re thinking about cheesy video clips with fast cars and loose women, you’re thinking “Gimme All Your Lovin’” and “Legs” and “Viva Las Vegas” and maybe “Tush”... But before the commercial success of their radio friendly hard rock, ZZ Top were accomplished Texas blues rockers, in league with fellow Southerners Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Marshal Trucker Band. If you like your blues hard with a Spanish tinge, their first three albums are sure worth your money.

I only recently became aware I’m actually quite partial to Rio Grande Mud (1972) and Tres Hombres (1973). They may not be Southern blues jammers like The Allman Brothers Band, but then who is? “Just Got Back from Baby’s” and “Backdoor Love Affair” are hard rockin’ Southern blues tunes from their First Album (1971). “Francine” could almost have been a lick by the Stones of the Mick Taylor era. In my book, “Just Got Paid” and “Waitin’ for the Bus” are the kind of rockin’ stomps that earn ZZ Top a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, with great slide guitar and blues harp respectively. “Jesus Just Left Chicago” is a true tribute to the electric blues of Muddy Waters. Even by the time of Degüello (1979) they could still come up with gems like “A Fool for Your Stockings,” with its hard thumbing bass line and razor sharp licks. Let’s not forget “La Grange,” of course, the one-chord “How howhow how” blues tune ripped straight off John Lee Hooker’s “Boogie Chillen.” And then there’s the rowdy “Beer Drinkers & Hell Raisers,” which Motörhead covered so well early in their career. Check ‘em out!

Heavy Metal

I’ve been listening to so much heavy metal recently, I’ll just throw the list at you (with only the barest parenthetical comments) and see what’ll stick: Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow (melodic hard rock) and Ronnie James Dio (Rainbow’s first lead singer, who went on to take over Ozzy Osbourne’s job in Black Sabbath and then formed his own heavy metal outfit Dio); Alcatrazz (mid-80s virtuoso metal with Yngwie J. Malmsteen and Steve Vai successively on guitar, and with Rainbow’s second lead-singer Graham Bonnet at the helm); Tokyo Blade (now-forgotten footnote to the 80s New Wave of British Heavy Metal); Anvil (the granddaddies of speed metal and practitioners of the “Thumb Hang!”); Queensrÿche (progressive metal, first leaning towards heavy metal like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden, but more recently tending to sound like radio-friendly hard rock); Alchemist (Australian psychedelic/progressive thrash/death metal); and Carnage (Mike Amott’s grindcore band before moving on to Carcass and then Arch Enemy). All come highly recommended, but I doubt there’s a single one of you even remotely interested... Heh.

Kiss

“Kiss?” I hear you ask. Yes, Kiss: those guys in make-up, high heels, and flamboyant outfits. Last year (I think I’ve already reported) my friend Sander got me volume one of the Kissology DVD set (covering the years 1974-77). You all know songs such as “Rock and Roll All Nite (and party every day),” “I Was Made for Lovin’ You,” “Shout It Out Loud,” “God Gave Rock ‘n’ Roll to You,” and “Christine Sixteen” ... otherwise you’ve been living under a rock on Mars with your ears closed. Kiss were perhaps my first real musical love. At least I don’t remember being so moved by music, so excited about it, the way I was with Kiss. For me it began with “Sure Know Something” ... and from there my friends and I bought as many of the earlier albums as we could find until the three of us together had most if not all. But even for a fan like me watching umpteen versions of “Firehouse,” “Cold Gin” or “Black Diamond” gets tedious. So, I’ve been checking out a few songs at a time. Looking back, I find it hilarious that people could actually believe these guys were neo-nazis because of the lightning flashes in the SS of their logo... Look at their song titles, man, “Makin’ Love,” “Let Me Go, Rock ‘n’ Roll,” “I Want You,” “Hotter Than Hell,” “C’mon and Love Me,” I mean, really, what do you think these songs are about? The holocaust? Seriously. My favorites are still “Detroit Rock City,” “Cold Gin,” “Parasite,” “Shock Me” (in which guitarist Ace Frehley sets his guitar on smoke while soloing) and “God of Thunder” (in which Gene Simmons breathes fire and spits blood).

For me the larger-than-life characters were part and parcel of the appeal: the spaced-out Space Ace axe man, the starry-eyed Starchild singer of romances, the Demon of sin with his devilish tongue, the wild Catman behind the drum set; there was something in each of them that struck a chord. I was mesmerized by the enormously elaborate sets and brilliant pyrotechnics. Perhaps most of Kiss’ songs aren’t technically complex, but neither are most songs in the Beatles’ catalogue, to name just one obvious example. The strength of many songs lies in their anthemic quality (if that’s not a term it now is), their arena rock aspirations (even in the early days), and thus exactly in their relatively (yet deceptively) simple, uncomplicated structures and arrangements. Listen closely, though, and Ace Frehley’s licks and leads, his riffs and solos are full of melody and pathos! And of course, just like Chuck Berry hit a nerve with every teenager, Kiss sing about sex and love and rock and roll. As a teenager, who wouldn’t wanna rock and roll all nite and party every day?