Eliminator was a defining moment for ZZ Top. To many a desperate
act to keep their head above water, to others a total sell-out — ZZ Top’s
eighth album, released in 1983 (13 years after their debut), is their biggest-selling
album. Logging in at well over two years on the charts and spawning five singles
— “Got Me Under Pressure,” “Gimme All Your Lovin’,”
“Sharp Dressed Man,” “Legs” and “TV Dinners”
— the wacky trio really found their sea-legs when it came to projecting
their music via a fairly new medium to a brand new audience — music video
for the MTV generation. To celebrate its 25th anniversary, Warner Brothers has
packaged up a special Collector’s Edition, featuring a remastered version
of the original Eliminator album, along with bonus tracks and
a DVD stuffed with the popular videos from the early 80s, along with live performances
of the album’s biggest hits.
Unlike Duran Duran and Madonna, ZZ Top didn’t rely on their own sex appeal
(or lack of) to make their videos for “Gimme All Your Lovin’,”
“Sharp Dressed Man” and “Legs” bold, interesting and
popular. They used a sexy car the album was named after — guitarist Billy
Gibbons’ 1933 Ford coupe. The gleaming car was adorned with a cache of hot babes
to set the screen on fire. All the decorum was dropped into little vignettes
that were entertaining and original. The fact that the music itself retained
a basic, bluesy feel, loosely driven by dashes of slick synthesizer only enhanced
the effect. Gibbons, bassist Dusty Hill and drummer Frank Beard even made cheesy
cameos in the videos just to show it was all for good fun. Underneath the fuzzy
guitars and long beards, ZZ Top became one of rock’s wildest hayrides
going.
Truly, any band that can write a song called “TV Dinners” can’t
be all that bad. And I used to think album tracks like “I Need You Tonight”
and “Thug” were listless fillers — until I heard them brightened
up on the remaster. When you add in live versions — from England, no less
— of six of the album’s tracks, it becomes obvious that Eliminator
was a masterstroke of Gibbon’s blue-plate specialty riffs — like
lettuce and mayo on a hearty sandwich — driven by the steady rhythm section
of Hill and Beard, creating an infectious sound that goes down heartily.
Once you put the CD to bed, watch the DVD with the videos that helped propel
Eliminator to mythic commercial heights. That’s only
the half of it. There’s nothing like a little live Top to spice things
up, and the DVD delivers on that note with some intimate footage from an English
television program called The Tube. The trio run through a healthy
workout of three Eliminator tunes, then finish up with a rousing
“Tube Snake Boogie.” And it’s at this point you realize this
is a band — the longest running band with all original members —
that still knows how to turn any picnic into one helluva fiesta.
~ Shawn Perry
