• AllMyVinyl #82
• Band: ZZ Top
• Album Title: Fandango!
• Release Date: 18 Apr 1985
• Date purchased: Unknown
• Location purchased: Unknown
• Color of vinyl: black
• Number of discs: 1
• Links: [ Wikipedia | Discogs | Band Website | Complete album on Youtube ]

Once again, I have a ZZ Top album that confuses me.  I have Fandango! on vinyl – I’m playing it now as I type.   However, I have zero memory as to how I came across this.  I have no memory buying it – in fact my memory from the past says the first ZZ Top I bought was Eliminator on cassette.  So how I came across this I have no idea.  It’s the same story for ZZ Top’s Deguello & their first album, which I also have on vinyl, but no idea why or how.  My gut says they belonged to someone else and either let me borrow them and never got ’em back or they were bequeathed.  Either way, it’s a mystery for me.

The album itself is a bit on the strange side.  It’s their fourth album overall and it turns 50 next year.  Its age aside, it’s a half live album and half studio album.  The first side of the album is the live stuff, which was recorded between 12 Apr 1974 and 23 Mar 1975.  Given the album was released in Apr 1975, that’s a super short time between recording and public release – makes me wonder if the 18 Apr date isn’t accurate.  Or the recording date isn’t accurate.  No idea either way.

My specific copy is a 1979 reprint on vinyl from the 1975 original.  Not long after this, the album was remixed for CD in the 80’s, but mine contains the original mix.  It’s not an original print (I found that out with the help of discogs and the matrix etchings on the disc itself, because it doesn’t say 1979 anywhere on this.

The live stuff is mostly a mix of blues rock covers.  The first one (Thunderbird) is a song by the Nightcaps that ZZ Top recorded, but the Nightcaps never copyrighted the song, and ZZ Top did, so…  The other tracks are a mix of other stuff like Jailhouse Rock (Elvis), WIllie Dixon, John Lee Hooker, etc…  The song “Backdoor Love Affair” was written by Gibbons and would be a proper ZZ Top track, but the bulk of the live side is covers.  As such I’m not writing a ton about individual tracks here, since they’re live – and covers (mostly).   Although the bulk of this is a 9:45 medley of four other things which has a different feel in the middle part due to it being a medley.  I did like it, however.  Some of the medley reminds me the old “One Bourbon One Scotch One Beer” track in that it’s slow blues and a “story” being told.  Then I looked up the credits.  That part of it was called “Long Distance Boogie” and was written by John Lee Hooker who wrote the original “Bourbon” track.  No shock there.

On to the studio side…

Nasty Dogs & Funky Kings – Such a “ZZ Top” song title.  This is one I don’t remember terribly well, but oddly the main guitar riff sounds familiar, like I’ve heard it somewhere before.  Can’t place it.  Typical ZZ Top track of this era.  Not the best track they’ve ever had, but in no way is it bad – just kind of “there”.

Blue Jean Blues – An EXTREMELY slow song – even by slow ZZ Top songs this is a slow one.  A big time blues track, which shouldn’t be a surprise given it says Blues right in the title.  This was enjoyable, but I can def see where this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.  This album has a bit more pop and noise when I’m playing so the fact that this song is SO slow, I can hear it more vs the live stuff or a more upbeat studio track.  If you love slow blues, you’ll love this.  If you don’t, you’ll probably skip it.

Balinese – This is a track I’ve completely forgotten, rather liked it.  It’s a fairly straightforward ZZ Top track, but the guitar riff here has a little part that sounds out of the ordinary, the kind of thing I really like in a track like this.   This is another track sung by Dusty Hill vs Billy Gibbons.  Nice guitar solo – flows well with the rest of the song before and after it.

Mexican Blackbird – The vocals here are delivered differently than most ZZ Top songs.  It gives the song a different sound for sure.  Lyrics are a bit interesting – the original are far more blue than some of the re-releases, go look into that.   Saw this when reading about the song..  “BiIly Gibbons explained it in a Circus Magazine piece after Fandango came out, he said a black gentleman had gone to a brothel in Mexico and ”bought him a whore” to quote the article.”

Heard it on the X – A great fast track – my favorite – quick, fast and right to the point.  Great vibe to track, that kind of chugging riff I like a lot.  When people talk about better ZZ Top songs, this one usually gets left off, but it should be right there with the song after this on the album and stuff like La Grange.  Didn’t know until relatively recently it’s about a real radio station – “X-Rock 80“.  That was cool, but the station went offline in 2022 apparently.

Tush – the song ends with its most well known song.  Another one sung by Dusty Hill, this one is just 2:14 – but gets right to the point.  The guys wanted to get laid, and this song’s pretty much all about that.  Super catchy riff that runs through the whole thing.  Due to the lack of length, it is hyper focused with its energy.  One of my ZZ Top songs, and I adore what Billy Gibbons did with the guitar sound in the last handful of notes right before the end – raising them much higher than the rest of the track.  Great stuff here.   When I saw Billy Joel in Texas in 2019, he played Tush live, which was a lot of fun.  I’ve included that video on my blog page below.

This album has a really weird feel being half live covers (mostly), and then a single side of studio work.  It’s hard to pin down an overall feel for the album as the studio tracks go all over the place in their sound.  There’s no one style to the songs one can go “OK, yeah – that’s what this album is known for”.  Has fast stuff like Tush and Heard it on the X, yet slower blues numbers too – and of course the early rock stuff from Side 1.