The night’s mission was simple: to figure out if ZZ Top guitarist/vocalist Billy Gibbons really is the coolest man alive.
All signs pointed to the affirmative, from the pictures of the man I’ve been looking at for the past 30-odd years to the endlessly and effortlessly swingin’ and swaggerin’ licks every ZZ Top album is filled with.
But tonight, when ZZ Top played the Save-On-Foods Memorial Centre, was the first night I would ever lay eyes on the man himself. And this much I can report: he is the coolest man alive (skinny, too; skinny).
So as the night begun with “Got Me Under Pressure” off of their classic Eliminator album, and Gibbons laid down his swagger, his cool, his ageless croak and flowing facial locks proving he is the grand wizard of rock, it was clear that this was going to be a good night.
And it was: the second and third tunes were the first and second tunes off of the band’s third album, Tres Hombres. If that’s hard to follow, simplify as such: two timeless rock songs were played in Victoria tonight.
And the hits kept flowing: “Legs,” “Sharp Dressed Man,” “La Grange,” “Tush”… it’s enough to make me stop saying “I really wish they would have played ‘Master of Sparks'” and just appreciate what was a great night. And no rubbish: no huge AC/DC song endings, no extended jams, no solos. In and out and waiting for a bus at a reasonable enough hour, agreeing with the woman walking past me saying “I wish they played ‘Pearl Necklace’!” but also happy that the band cares enough about themselves to play new material that the audience, as is always the case, politely sits through.
But, man, when the band locked in to the mighty groove of so-glad-they-played-it “I Gotsta Get Paid,” off of their most recent album, La Futura, you just shake your head and think how rare of a machine this is: the same three guys in the band since 1969, and they’re still cranking out great material.
The band members may appear to be older than time, but they still got it.
And, cool. The coolest.
Read our recent ZZ Top interview here.