#498 ZZ Top - Tres Hombres (1973)

Have Mercy!  ZZ Top's Tres Hombres opens up with these words and it's fitting.  This was the album that turned them into stars; it's polished but still raw, it's thick but not over processed.  The first two songs,  Waiting for the Bus and Jesus Just Left Chicago, open the album and are fat with attitude. Sounds like they were stuck together by studio splicing, or maybe they meant it to be that way... I've never really questioned it.  You don't mess with Texas.

Billy Gibbons on guitar and Dusty Hill on bass, take turns vocally with the lines on Beer Drinkers & Hell Raisers, the third song.  While I've heard this song before, I'll admit I've skipped it in prior listenings over the years, and frankly, it's better than that.

Master of Sparks, Hot Blue And Righteous: Probably the first time I've ever listened to two songs full through.  I can't say that there's anything specifically fetching about how side 1 of the album closes out.  Yep, that's right, remember album sides?  It bears to mention that songs were arranged to accommodate album sides, so slower tempo songs like HB&R might have been placed there for a reason.

Move Me on Down the Line: Really?  I had to look at my player twice, to make sure I hadn't played the wrong song.  Nope, it's ZZ Top.  It just had such an up tempo feel, almost like Bob Seger's "Rock n Roll Never Forgets".  Not a bad song, just out of character and missing some swagger.

Precious and Grace:  Ok, the badass spice was put back into this Texas chili.  Along with some slide soloing on the guitar that was tasty.  I'm realizing that albums like this one, which I thought I knew--I don't.  That's four songs now that I can't remember ever listening to.  Is there anything noteworthy about any one of those four?  I suppose not, but in the context of the time, the band, and the album... I think they provide a more complete backdrop.

La Grange:  I'll forgive all non-relevant songs on every ZZ Top album as long as I can have this one to take with me.  I challenge your pulse not to rise when the drums kick into full boil.  I wonder if they knew they had lightening in a bottle when they wrote this (it's the only single released from the album).  I've surely heard it hundreds of times before, yet I found myself repeating it twice more just now; so I imagine they did.

Shiek:  I giggled at the rhymes of Shiek/Mozambique and Scuba/Cuba.  No one ever claimed ZZ Top were poet laureates, I know; but those lines sounded campy at best.

Have you Heard?:   I could quickly cast this away as another filler song, but it bares mentioning that ZZ Top did write all their own songs on this album.  A risky endeavor for new blues artists, but one that paid off in a big way for the trio that was still almost 10 years away from their signature beards and their MTV celebrity.

-CTK

Next up #497 Public Enemy- Yo! Bum Rush the Show (1987)