Screwed & Rocked: ZZ Top, DJ Screw, Fat Pat, Lil Keke and the new ZZ Top EP

been digging the new ZZ Top EP Texacali, which features a quasi-cover of Fat Pat/Lil Keke's houston classic 25 lighters:

http://www.classicrockmagazine.com/news/murder-drugs-and-cough-mixture-the-hip-hop-roots-of-zz-tops-new-single-revealed/

^cool article really doing my head in that DJ Screw went to the same studio as Red Krayola and Roky Erickson

the new EP is pretty good! gotsa get paid (the 25 lighters cover) is great, and the two middle songs are pretty good mid 70s ZZ....the last song is a ballad, which it occurs to me outside of rough boy they never really did ballads, and this is like a ballad-ballad (more than rough boy is)

reminds me of those transitional albums like deguello

whoah

that guitar sound omg

I'm sort of surprised by how much this is flying under the radar, I mean new ZZ Top! Produced by Rick Rubin! It is pretty good!

didn't he do their last couple records?

idgaf about Rick Rubin personally this just SOUNDS really great (and as noted in the article Rubin didn't even know the original song when the band brought it in). it sounds like what ZZ Top records should sound like

No this is first one w/ Rubin, who I don't really have an opinion on more just like I'm surprised it isn't like a hyping point people are jumping on.

And jah, classic that famous hip-hop producer Rick Rubin is unfamiliar with a rap song but Billy Gibbons is

This is Rubin's first time working with ZZ Top. However, I think Texas hip-hop has been a stealth influence on them (or at least on Billy Gibbons) for several years at this point - their 2003 album had a song called "Stackin' Paper," and a lot of their songs have that slow-riding groove to them. I like the EP quite a bit, and am interested to hear the full album in October.

Actually looks like it is out Sept 11, sweet!

they cover 25 lighters????? wau

this is not on UK spotify

weird, the soundcloud embed works, but when you go to their soundcloud page there's no tracks there

sounds great btw. billy sounds like he's coughing up about 5 of those lighters at once

outside of rough boy they never really did ballads

Sure Got Cold After the Rain Fell...? I think there's a few others

there's one on Afterburner i think, not that good

i'd love to hear "thug" screwed & chopped

just found it - "Rough Boy"! slow-rock Miami Vice steez

Kinda bummed that the four songs on the EP are the first four songs on the album. Was hoping only, say, two of 'em would make the full-length.

BTW, this picture kills me (Frank Beard's coat!):

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51L7e5jPbdL.jpg

that guitar sound omg

― Shameful Dead Half Choogle (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, August 22, 2012 9:15 AM (58 minutes ago)

Billy is mostly beard at this point

props to B.Dot.G.Dot's chocolate mousse/big caboose rhyme on "Chartruese"

"Billy's more beard than man"

this is a really awesome viewpoint on music and how gibbons looks at it and connects lightning hopkins and rap music:

“I became fixated with this ‘hypnotic chronicle of the toil of a ghetto hustler’,” says Gibbons, “and I was determined to use it as the basis for something ZZ Top could record.” 14 years later, Gibbons, Hardy and Moon, inspired by DJ Screw’s ‘chopped and screwed’ technique for deconstructing hip-hop, worked out how to adapt 25 Lighters into a new song. “It’s a combination of hip-hop and the blues of Lightnin’ Hopkins, a homage to these heroes of the Houston ghetto.”

Billy told The Hollywood Reporter recently: “Since the very beginning, we have been inspired and influenced by the musical and cultural eccentricities that have emanated from Houston’s ghetto. If you look back, you’ll find [fellow ZZ Top members] Dusty [Hill] and Frank [Beard] had served as Lightnin’ Hopkins’ rhythm section before we all joined forces in ZZ. We often ask ourselves, ‘WWLD?’ – meaning ‘What Would Lightnin’ Do?’ That circumstance came from exactly the same place – both geographically and spiritually – that this new one does. We fully acknowledge this as we continue to pay tribute to those known as ‘the heroes of the Houston ghetto.’”

yeah that was righteous

really digging I Gotsta Get Paid

the music director for Sons Of Anarchy should already have them on the phone

this is a really awesome viewpoint on music and how gibbons looks at it and connects lightning hopkins and rap music

it's a good quote even though it reminds me of the corny monologue DJ Qualls gives in Hustle and Flow. "from Back Door Man to Back That Ass Up ... "

yeah it's very easy to be blase about the world of Kid Rock types who've made connecting threads between different genres seem hacky and smh but man for a guy like that, a member of one of the longest running classic rock bands still standing, to have such a nuanced perspective on all these musical traditions that came before and after them, it's really cool.

agreed

apart from being a Republican Gibbons has always seemed exceptionally cool - and surprisingly erudite about music and music history

I guess my big question is, why is it surprising? Does Gibbons come off like a dumbass in other contexts? To me he's always had a quiet-intelligence vibe about him. Maybe others see him a different way, I don't know.

I guess it was just initial surprise when I was first really digging into their catalog. I had never read or seen him interviewed anywhere prior to, I think, that Roky Erickson doc and maybe their VH1 Storytellers thing shortly thereafter and then I was like whoah dude knows his shit

When I look at the cover of El Loco, all I can think is "erudite".

yeah maybe forgive me for assuming that the average musician is thick as molasses

That wasn't a dig at you; I agree with everything you said.

Where I come from dudes with big beards and glasses are usually assumed to be intelligent

http://www.uta.edu/ra/real/images/0/1177_0_1252.jpg

"Get yourself a pair of cheap sunglasses"

ZZ Top was once supposed to play some outdoor shed with ... someone shitty. That shitty band cancelled, and without a date ZZ Top relocated its entire arena rig to a small club here. Saw the show. It was awesome. They have these goofy ritual handshakes they give each other between songs.

^^^JEALOUS

I hate arena shows but I would kill to see them in a small club

xpost

IIRC, that "shitty band" was Aerosmith.

they are shitty

Yes, these days they do. In other news, ZZ Top to play Semi-Pro Ballpark in Sugar Land Tx.

Aerosmith has sucked for approximately 90% of its career. ZZ Top ... maybe 10%?

this album is fuckin sick

It's great.

It's also funny 'cause I picked up Rhythmeen--their album from '96 (and the last one to make any impact, radio-wise)--cheap this weekend, and it's like an attempt at doing something like La futura, but undermined by cd bloat and lesser songwriting.

I've been revisiting their 90s/early 00s albums recently too. Did Frank Beard even set foot in a studio at any time between El Loco and La Futura? I feel like he'd been strictly their live drummer for about 30 years.

excited to hear this

Did Frank Beard even set foot in a studio at any time between El Loco and La Futura?

I think he came back around Antenna in '94, although--despite ditching the fairlight--they were using percussion loops (probably an influence from Hip Hop and Techno) in addition to live drums.

On another ZZ Top thread, there was a link to a Q & A w/Terry Manning, who engineered them from about '72-'90. He revealed that the percussion on Eliminator was a sequencer w/Manning & some session guys overdubbing matching parts on live drums for harder rhythm tracks.

I've been listening to Antenna today, and I can't hear anything that sounds like a live drummer anywhere on it. In fact, half the album sounds like a Billy Gibbons guitar-and-drum-machine demo, with Dusty Hill brought in for lead vocals on a couple of tracks. There is some nice almost-metal guitar on it, but it never, ever sounds like a live band playing. Unlike the new album.

TBH, I haven't heard Antenna outside of the singles when they were new. There are some live drums on Rhythmeen tho...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjF0o1AtxhA

Did Frank Beard even set foot in a studio at any time between El Loco and La Futura? I feel like he'd been strictly their live drummer for about 30 years.

i don't understand, is it that he was not drumming on record because they didn't need him (replaced by robot), because he didn't want any part of it (offended to work beside robot), or because he is just into playing live and not fucking around in the studio (weird, if he is going to be playing the music anyway)?