### ZZ Top: Tres hombres

#### 18/02/11 || Daemonomania

If ever there was an album that makes you want to move to Texas, grow a big beard, smoke a cigarillo, and drink some cheap beer – this is it. Replace the beard and the cigarillo with wearing jeanshorts and punching someone in the face, and you’d have “Cowboys from hell”. Sure, ze ze Top is not metal per se, but that doesn’t stop folks like Phil and Down from giving the band props on a regular basis. So metal by metallic commendation, then. Read on, for some good quality classic Southern rock with a hard edge awaits the hombre tough enough to forgo double bass and tremolo picking.

This is the disc that broke the fuzzball three big – the sweet sounds of “La grange” made it up to 41 on the Billboard Twat 100. Not a headscratcher as to why they chose this track as the single. ‘Tis a cool driving tune with a very bluesy feel coupled with an excellent hard rock riff (a riff they would copy and drive into the dirt over the course of the next 38 YEARS). Leaving the grange home on the range, the rest of the album is solid but at times gets bogged down in its own laid-back attitude. Hence the lack of 666 treatment. Ain’t that the music is hard to listen to, but sho nuff it ‘taint much inspirirationin’ neither.

Enough whining. There’s a reason this shit is still in print. Like Arnold in “Commando”, there’s a time to drive a bulldozer through the wall of a mysteriously weapon-filled surplus store and there’s a time to impale a chainmail wearing Freddy Mercury lookalike with a steampipe. What does “Commando” have to do with “Tres hombres”? You figure it out, asshole. Wonderful ear-ticklers include “Waitin’ for the bus” (what IG’s momma does after a night of hookin’), “Jesus just left Chicago” (and everywhere else if Aeon has anything to say about it), “Beer drinkers and hell raisers” (Pinhead’s bachelor party), “Have you heard?” (that Boston sucks), along with a surprisingly effective ballad. Yes, a ZZ Top ballad. That is effective. I’ll let you discover which track that is for yourself, asshole.

Yep. If the idea of two dudes with a future involving gigantic facehair and one ironically named dude without laying down some blues-based rock ‘n roll in 1973 sounds righteous to you, then by all means pick up “Tres hombres”. Beware, however, as there has been an insidious remixed version circling about for the last few years with a production that supposedly sucks more ass than a pack of cheetahs in a Wesley Willis song. Legends hold that those who buy the alternate version will never, ever have a shot at owning their own cadzilla. And that’s a sad story indeed.

- Information
- Released: 1973
- Label: London
- Website: www.zztop.com
- Band
- Billy Gibbons: vocals, guitars
- Dusty Hill: bass, vocals
- Frank Beard: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Waitin’ For The Bus
- 02. Jesus Just Left Chicago
- 03. Beer Drinkers & Hell Raisers
- 04. Master Of Sparks
- 05. Hot, Blue And Righteous
- 06. Move Me On Down The Line
- 07. Precious And Grace
- 08. La Grange
- 09. Shiek
- 10. Have You Heard?