Rated ZZ, it says at the start of the video, with “all material suited for tone, taste and tenacity.” That’s a fitting summation of Z Z Top’s career, as well as a great introduction to their 2013 appearance at Montreaux. It’s a career-spanning performance reaching all the way back to ’73.
There’s no chronological order here. The set kicks off with “Got Me Under Pressure” from ’83’s Eliminator, then jumps to the band’s first top ten album, 1973’s Tres Hombres, represented by “Waitin’ For the Bus” and “Jesus Just Left Chicago.” “Bus” is a truncated version, just a few chords in, the band slides into “Chicago.” In this version, Jesus’ journey as a blues traveler from Chicago to New Orleans to Mississippi for some fine muddy wine is sidetracked by Jesus getting wise and stopping off at Montreux before heading home to Cali. Great swampy, slinky hoodoo guitar with Gibbons growling a warning that “you might not see him in person, but he’ll see you just the same.”
Those two are great choices, but a taste of that record begs for more. “Beer Drinkers & Hell Raisers” and the soulful “Have You Heard” would have been nice to have resurrected as well.
But there are so many hits and so little time, so the band moves on, ripping through 40 years of material with the same cast they’ve had for nearly four decades.
The band revisits Eliminator once again for “Gimme All Your Lovin’,” choogling along with Gibbons’ twangin thump. The prickly lovesick ode “Pincushion” from ’94’s Antennae still has Gibbons suffering from the aftershocks of a loved one’s acupuncture, being pricked around and penetrated by his beloved.
The band revises “Kiko,” the ’63 Jimmy McGriff instrumental which recently surfaced in January on Darryl’s House. The set list jumps to the ’90s for a cut from Recycler, “My Head’s In Mississippi,” slips back a decade to 81’s El Loco for “Tube Snake Boogie, drops back another decade for ’73’s “La Grange” from Tres Hombes, then revisits Eliminator twice more for “Legs” and “Sharp Dressed Man.”
As usual, the Tops don’t do much in the way of rock star posing, just a smidgen of half-assed choreography by way of some short lived knee-shakin’ during “Sharp Dressed Man” while Beard just shakes his head and pounds out a steady groove deep enough wallow in. But that’s OK-they still deliver the goods just standing there flat-footed and twangin.’
They finish off the crowd by going back to ’75’s Fandango with a short but slippery slide into “Tush,” before toddling off, wreathed in Gibbons’ cigar smoke.
Even though they covered the bases pretty good, you can’t help but wonder why ’72’s Rio Grande Mud was excluded from the set. That gritty, rootsy sound set the tone for the band with cuts like “Just Got Paid,” “Mush Mouth Shoutin’” and “Chevrolet” and still play as well today as they did back then.
But that’s just a minor complaint. As long as the band is still in good health and together there’s always hope for an extended set list from the little band from Texas to keep digging deeper into their worldwide groove.
— Grant Britt
