New Wave: Crime Against Humanity

March 12, 2006... You might not think that a person could make the case that New Wave was a crime against humanity by using the music of Z.Z. Top, classic southern rock trio, to illustrate. You would be wrong.

ZZ Top - Arrested for Driving While Blind

Sure, sure, I know, Z.Z. Top were second string. They never did anything that Jimi Hendrix and a bunch of other, dead coloured fellows hadn't done before and better. Still, they did it well for a while. I mean, how could anyone who loves the sound of an electric guitar blaring out of an overdriven amplifier not love the song "La Grange?"

Sure, sure, I know, Billy Gibbons was never more than second banana as a guitarist. He used three or four tracks of guitar in most songs to fill out the sound. Still, it was just little Billy, his 'lectric geetar and an amplifier turned up to eleven and smoking.

Eventually, drummer Ozgood Zbeard came into his own, too. Check out his playing on "Heard it on the X" or "It's Only Love," for example.

ZZ Top - Heard It on the X(cerpt)

After a while, though, things began to change... 'Round about 1980, Billy, and/or the record exec rakes that pull his strings, discovered The Police. (You know, the Police: Stewart Copeland's band. The one Andy Summers played in.) Suddenly, it was no longer just Billy, his 'lectric geetar and an amplifer turned up to eleven and smoking. Nope. It was Billy, his geetar, a rack of effects pedals and, presumably, somewhere, an amplifier.

ZZ Top - Pearl Necklace (excerpt)

No de-do-do-do de-da-da-da-doubt about it: even songs about "girls" doing the "Tube Snake Boogie" or wanting a "Pearl Necklace" couldn't mask the emasculation of the band's sound. But worse still was yet to come.

ZZ Top - Legs (excerpt)

Rock bottom for Z.Z. Top came in 1983 with the release of Eliminator, an album named after an excretory organ. With its guitar tracks and drums buried beneath throbbing, focus-group-approved, synthetic beats, Eliminator was purpose built to appeal to the mentally retarded children of the MTV generation ... and make the aging greybeards in the band billionaires in the process. Ironically enough, the biggest beneficiaries of this calculated ploy may not have been Z.Z. Top at all, but instead punk bands like Bad Brains and Black Flag, into whose tattooed arms dross like Eliminator drove many former rock fans.

Anyway, that's what I think. And I blame New Wave.

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