There were so many Q102 tees on display at the Music Hall at Fair Park Friday night you'd have thought it was 1983. Or maybe it was just ZZ Top's short-n-sweet setlist, which consisted of four of the 11 songs off that year's Eliminator, the record that turned a Little Ol' Band from Texas into a heavily bearded cartoon-character MTV staple. Among the offerings doled out to the loud and proud : "Gimme All Your Loving," "Legs," "Sharp Dressed Man" and the set-opening "Got Me Under Pressure." And each song sounded like it has for the last 32 years -- arena-sized classic-boogie-rock tinged with just enough pop to make it bounce.
At this late date there aren't many surprises at a Top show. It's a fairly wham-bam businesslike affair, even in front of the hometown crowd. (Billy Gibbons recounted Dusty Hill's afternoon excursion to his alma mater, Woodrow Wilson High School, which ended with a few autographs ... and, apparently, not much else of note.) It was just three guys and two modest-sized TVs just big enough to fit into one of Mark Cuban's guest bathrooms (and one of them kept glitching out, not a pleasant experience).
Dallas' set list was the same as those doled out in earlier tour stops, save for one minor adjustment: The band actually cut a song -- "My Head's in Mississippi" -- leaving only 17 to barrel through in the span of just less than 90 minutes. And three of those (including "I Gotsta Get Paid") came from the most recent (and misnamed) album, 2012's La Futura, which is really just a blast from the past -- more roadside choogaloo from three guys who make it look easy because they don't really have to try that hard.
It's been a long haul: 15 records since '71, with some lengthy pauses in recent years, and the durability's to be commended, celebrated. The great Gibbons (on guitar and vocals, natch), Hill (bass and vocals, for those not keeping track) and Frank Beard (drums) sound as they always have -- like the bar band that sneaked onto the big stage and played the blooooze louder than any band that wasn't, you know, "metal" or "English." The Music Hall at Fair Park didn't do them any favors; that place could make a crystal bell sound like flatulent. But like the song says: Have mercy. Besides, the echos of classic-rock radio fill in the blanks; what you couldn't hear, you memorized decades ago anyway.
If there's a problem with a ZZ Top show at this point, it's the lack of surprise and sweat. Would it kill 'em to mix in something with speed, like "Heard it on the X"? Or "Just Got Paid"? Or even that jazzbo freakout "Snappy Kakkie," which 39 years later still sounds about two weeks ahead of its time? A few deep dives would go a long way -- at least longer than the cover of "Foxy Lady," which probably sounded much more enthusiastic, let's say, when the Jimi Hendrix Experience performed it at the Music Hall in February 1968.
The current tour pushes no new product; this is strictly a time-to-tour tour, more hit-it-and-quit-it than marathon. So, they ran through the standards: "La Grange," "Cheap Sunglasses," "I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide," the Tres Hombres two-fer "Waitin' for the Bus" and "Jesus Just Left Chicago" and, natch, "Tush," which will always be Texas' dazed-and-confused anthem and might as well have been the closer. But it wasn't. "Sixteen Tons" was -- yes, the Merle Travis song and Tennessee Ernie Ford hit rendered almost unrecognizable. It had the crowd streaming for the door even before the lights came up and the pre-recorded music came on. The band had to go though; gotsta get paid, dig?
