November 21 - I Thank You

I originally wrote and posted this Thanksgiving week 2008, but I am thinking it still holds up today... And reposting it is in the spirit of ZZ Top - after all they did release an album called Recycler...

It's Thanksgiving week here in the United States, and with that in mind, I start a series of songs about thankfulness - or sort of thankfulness. The first band out is that lil' ol' band from Texas - ZZ Top. It really is a shame that most people I grew up with only knew about them from flashy MTV videos with a spiffy car and scantily clad models. At that point they had almost abandoned their trademark blues/boogie rock and were all about click tracks, heavily treated guitars, and synthesizers. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, but when you contrast songs like Gimme All Your Loving', Sharp Dressed Man, and Velcro Fly to classics like La Grange, Tush, and I Thank You (and the list goes on...), there's just no comparison if you ask me. 

Anyway - I would in all likelihood have been completely oblivious to the splendor of ZZ Top if it wasn't for Arve Hjalmar Holmen, who has been among my closest (if not the closest) friends ever since he decided that he wanted to take on the biggest kid in class upon returning to our school in sixth grade after a three year absence (that's what living on the wrong side of town for a few years can do to you). A teacher broke us up, which probably was for the better, as I was getting my rear whooped. We were taken inside and told to make nice, and the conversation that started that day has really not stopped - the pauses only get longer, as neither one of us lives in Norway anymore. 

I don't know where Arve got his interest in ZZ Top from or where he had heard them, but the result was that for every birthday and Christmas through middle school I bought him a tape of an old ZZ Top record. ZZ Top's First Album, Rio Grande Mud, Tres Hombres, Fandango, Tejas, Degüello, and El Loco all found their way into his collection of tapes - and I copied them to tapes of my own. Years later, after buying a CD player, the ZZ Top Sixpack was purchased as soon as I could afford it - but Degüello had to be purchased separately, and purchase it I did. It is packed with spectacular songs. I Thank You opens the album, and it hardly ever slows down. Yes, there are a few fillers in there, but most of the songs are so good that Degüello has to be ranked among the best ZZ Top albums.