• AllMyVinyl #77
• Band: ZZ Top
• Album Title: Eliminator
• Release Date: 23 Mar 2023
• Date purchased: 24 Jan 2024
• Location purchased: Amazon
• Color of vinyl: black
• Number of discs: 1
• Links: [ Wikipedia | Discogs | Band Website | Complete album on Youtube ]

This album came out right when I was getting ready to graduate high school – it was PEAK MTV at the time, and as such, these videos were ALL OVER there.   I was just about to turn 18, and well, yeah – rock, girls, and cars – of course this was targeted at me.

Oddly back in the day I didn’t buy this on vinyl, I bought it on cassette tape, and then later on CD, but my original 1983 purchase was cassette tape.  That copy is no longer with me (the CD is, though), but I picked up a copy on vinyl when I saw a good deal earlier THIS year – 2024.  It was marketed as a 30th anniversary reprint – but the album has been around for 41 years now, so yeah, I’m gettin’ old.

This was my on ramp for ZZ Top.  I knew they existed, but owned nothing of theirs before.  I remember hearing at the time long time fans didn’t care for this sound, but I had no problem with it, because I had no backstory with the band and loved what was put in front of me.  This was my first ZZ Top album and I loved it.  Still do – the songs are almost all ones I really like – has a bunch of attitude and heaping pile of Billy Gibson’s guitar, which is always a good thing.

Despite owning this album since it was new 40 years ago, there’s not a ton of intro this time, I just wanted to get to the songs.

Gimme All Your Lovin’ – Catchy song – good hook, very singable lyrics. Couple that with some great guitar licks and you have a great way to start off the album.  Given I was still in high school, the use of the lyrics for “schoolboy” got my attention.  haha.  The first video from the album – had the girls and the car, and yeah – BANG.  Great way to start the album.

Got me Under Pressure – Another high energy track, following Gimme was a great choice in placing it on the album.  It’s a good solid album track.  Not as catchy as the singles here, but it’s not bad in any way.  Great song to keep the album vibe flowing.

Sharp Dressed Man – One of the other super big hits from the album,, and another with a video.  Has the car and some of the girls here.  I also have to say at the time I kinda bought into the “Every girl’s crazy about a sharp dressed man” lyrics.  I remember reading about this song at the time someone say it sounded like Billy Gibbons mastered the art of playing both lead and rhythm guitar at the same time – on one guitar.  Interesting take.  Three in a row that are what I call high energy.  I particularly love the guitar solo part of this song.

I Need You Tonight – After three high energy songs to start, they take it down a bit for track 4.  The sound that purists probably don’t care for as much is here in spades I think.  It’s also one of the songs I don’t care for so much.  It’s just “ok”, although hard to diss Billy’s guitar solo – that works, but the rest of it seems stuck in low gear and doesn’t go anywhere.

I Got The Six – Back to high energy with a double entendre of a song.  “I got the six, gimme your nine” and “spank your monkey”.  Yeah, OK – deep lyrics there.  Goofy lyrics aside, I like the beat.  It’s the only song on the album not sung by Billy Gibbons – the late Dusty Hill sings this one.  Not the deepest song musically, but I like the fast pace of the track.

Legs – Now we come to this.  This album is very well known for its videos, and I suspect this one was the most popular of it.  Tells a funny story of boy meets girl and those who stand in their way.  It LOOKS fantastic.  However, the song itself is an odd beast.  The version that’s used in the video isn’t the one on the album.  The version in the video is the “single” version, and the on the album is different.  The video won the MTV Video Music award for best group video in 1984 – it’s easy to see why.  Great sense of humor, looks great, sounds great.  It’s probably due to that issue that I far prefer the single version to the album version, as it’s cut differently.  I listened to both today (video and album), and nothing’s changed – far prefer the single version – which is an oddity as it’s normally the other way around for me.

Absolutely adored the fuzzy guitars here – I have to imagine they were hell to keep clean. :)  Who watching this didn’t want the ZZ Top keychain?   It’s also incredibly hard to separate the video from the song in my mind.  It’s impossible to listen to the song and not see the visuals from the video in my head.  The thing with ZZ Top themselves appearing as “ghosts” of sorts was used in a music video by the band W.A.S.P. in their song “Blind in Texas” when ZZ Top appeared there and did the same thing.  ZZ Top themselves showed up in Back to the Future III playing the house band at the party scene where they winked at the crowd by doing the “spin the guitars” while playing once in the background of the party / dance scene.

Thug – OK, we’re way off the rails in terms of the classic ZZ Top sound.  Has a funky sound that feels like it’s both a bass guitar and a synth at the same time.  While the album’s formal credits list everything as “Gibbons, Hill, & Beard” the reality is quite different in places.  This song was actually written by one of the production engineers Linden Hudson – which explains its radically different sound.  Towards the end there is a very fat bass sound which I do like, so it’s not a total washout, but definitely not one of my favorites.

TV Dinners – This one is an oddity.  It was the fourth song to get a video.  I’ll say for the record my wife actively HATES this song.  She saw ZZ Top live once on the Afterburner tour, they played this and said it was torture how bad it was.  While it’s not one of my favorites, I can’t say I feel quite THAT way about it.  It’s a slower (but not slow) paced ZZ Top track, and while the lyrics are quite weird (talking about actual Swanson TV Dinners), but I still like the way the song goes, and there’s a guitar sound I very much like which is singled out by having the band stop playing except for that small part.  Quite loved that part of it.  Yeah, it’s “ok”.  Not bad in any way, just kind of “there”.

Dirty Dog – A deeper album cut here – this one returns to the faster vibe of earlier in the album.  I always liked this track, but felt nobody paid attention to it because it wasn’t one of the big three or four songs.  Not one I can give you a concrete reason why, I just like the track – and honestly that’s all someone really needs.  Why isn’t relevant – just works for me.

If I Could Only Flag Her Down – Another one I always felt could have used more attention.  It’s not as slick as some of the more well known songs, but I loved the boogie feel that runs through it.  Great song.  By the time this was over I found myself bopping in my chair in my office, so yeah – got into this.  Underrated song.

Bad Girl – My memory said this didn’t appear on the original print of the album from 1983 – or it was some “bonus” track on the CD or some other format. I can’t recall that now.  It has the vibe of “bonus extra” as it’s a live track (I think – a fake live track?) – and nothing else on the album is.  It was a B-Side to the Legs single, I believe.   It’s a stereotypical B-Side – an extra track.  That’s about all I’ll say about it.

This is an album where the big songs are monumental, and the other stuff is just there.  That doesn’t mean those three or four songs are the only good ones, but it does make the album feel a little disjointed in that regard.  Still, it’s got Billy Gibbons guitar on it, and much like Tony Iommi’s guitar, it’s hard to make something bad when you’re that good.

Bottom line – it’s a good album with some VERY high points to it – the kind of tracks that everyone knows, and this album has a few of them.

Their next album after this upped the synth game a lot, and really went off the rails for people.  But I don’t own that on vinyl.  Kind of wish I did, so I could spend time writing about it.  :)