By 1975, ZZ Top was on a roll. They had just come off their most
\nsuccessful album to date,
\nTres Hombres<\/i>, and had nabbed themselves a bonafide hit with
\n“La Grange”. So how could they follow this up?<\/p>\n
The answer – 1975’s
\nFandango!<\/i> – was both the right and the wrong answer. Sure,
\nthis album includes “Tush,” one of the all-time favorite hits from
\nZZ Top, but it also showed signs that the band was running out of
\nsteam creatively. Including a half-assed live effort didn’t help
\nthings either.<\/p>\n
It’s tough to translate what a trio can do in the studio onto
\nthe concert stage, though ZZ Top – Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill and
\nFrank Beard – seem to be willing to give it a try on the first half
\nof
\nFandango!<\/i>. The problem is not only that they don’t touch on
\nsongs they had become known for (“Thunderbird” was a new track and
\n“Jailhouse Rock” was a cover), but also that they took a good song
\nlike “Backdoor Love Affair” and turned it into a bigger mess than
\neating barbecue with no napkins. The constant vamping during
\n“Mellow Down Easy” (part of what they called “Backdoor Medley”)
\ngets real old, real quick – and it makes it sound like ZZ Top
\nwasn’t taking their moment in the spotlight that seriously. This
\nmight explain why we’ve never seen a full-length live album from ZZ
\nTop in their 30-year career.<\/p>\n
To be blunt, this pitiful attempt at capturing the live
\nexperience left ZZ Top in a hole for the rest of the album. If
\nFandango!<\/i> was going to succeed, it needed some killer studio
\ntracks. If only they could have consistently delivered the
\ngoods.<\/p>\n
Yes, I know that “Tush” is on this album (though the remix I
\nhave from the
\nZZ Top Six Pack<\/i> sounds atrocious – memo to Bill Ham: why did
\nyou take the rough sound off these albums and screw them up?), and
\n“Blue Jean Blues” gives Gibbons the chance to fall into a nice
\npattern of 12-bar blues like you’d hear in a smoky club. And let’s
\nnot forget about “Heard It On The X,” possibly one of the best
\n“forgotten” hits of ZZ Top’s.<\/p>\n
But that’s only half of the studio material – and the other
\nthree songs run the gamut from passable to pathetic. On one
\nextreme, you have “Nasty Dogs And Funky Kings” and “Balinese,”
\nneither of which have the power to light the speakers up, but are
\nnot bad efforts in and of themselves. On the other, you have
\n“Mexican Blackbird,” which is sung in a style that sounds like a
\nYankee trying to sound Southern. It’s tragically comedic… only
\nI’m not laughing.<\/p>\n
In fact, ZZ Top was working themselves toward a much-needed
\nhiatus, though they’d put out one more album before taking an
\nextended break. And while I understand they had to be feeling
\npressure to follow up the success of
\nTres Hombres<\/i>, I kind of wish they had taken a break instead
\nof releasing this one. You can find the hits elsewhere;
\nFandango!<\/i> is hardly fantastic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25765,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5723],"rating":[11204],"class_list":["post-36971","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-zz-top","rating-rating-c-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36971"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}