ZZ Top 'a tough bunch’

Press, 17 March 1977, Page 19

ZZ Top ' a tough bunch’

By

JUDE FAHEY

ZZ Top “Tejas” (London SAH 6398): These cowboys breed like rabbits. Pretty soon we’ll have to call all the Southern boogie bands together for a shoot-out to get the numbers down to manageable proportions. Lynyrd Skynyrd will win, of course, they’re the toughest and classiest, but

ZZ Top will look after themselves. Although still a shock to most ears outside Texas, ZZ have made five albums. There are only three in the band — Billy, Dusty, and Frank — and you wouldn’t get a tougher bunch in a “Trinity” movie. You practically have to shake the dirt out of their album sleeve. Actually there’s not a lot to analyse here. It’s just your competent basic boogie, with suggestions of Mountain in weightiness and the Allmans in subtle and ethereal contrast.

Billy or Dusty (they both sing) have powerful voices, and a hypnotic way with them that often brings Jim Morrison to mind.

Recommended tracks are the out-and-out rocker “Arrested for Driving while Blind” and the quieter “El Diablo” that follows it.

Barclay James Harvest “Octoberon” (Polydor 2383 407): These four Britons have been together for 10 years and have turned out eight albums. While their contemporaries in progressive rock have come and gone or at the least, long since found success, BJH have been unfairly dismissed for their “lack of identity.” But this "lack” might be preferable to the identity that has turned into set formula in their contemporaries like the Moody

Blues, Pink Floyd,- Tull, and Genesis. BJH do seem a little timid, but this is probably through lack of confidence, and at any rate their music is richly warm and melodic. It deserves oui attention as much as any more famous band of their genre does. You may remember BJH’s tribute to the Beatles, "Titles,” which had minor chart success here last year, and this attractive song is typical of their fluency. On “Octoberon” one track — “Rock ’n’ Roll Star” — seems to describe the group’s philosophy. It cautions against flash-in-the-pan success and defends their own quiet stability, but there’s a hint of envy. Bass guitarist Les Holroyd wrote that song and two others, and w'hile his songs are quiet and at bad times nondescript, guitarist John Lees’s counterbalances with more positive compositions. His “Suicide?” especially is a piece of inspiration. We hear the lift go up to "a floor with a view,” the feet that walk out on to the balcony, the voices that shout, the hesitation

. . . it’s as gripping as a cinematic drama. Keyboard man Stewart Wolstenholme also acquits himself well as a writer in “Ra,” a blazing, mystic piece with a slow, cautious opening of horns (mellotron no doubt) that is quite striking.