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XXX (ZZ Top Album)
''XXX'' is the thirteenth studio album (also including live material) by the American rock band ZZ Top, released in September 1999. The album's title commemorates the band's 30th anniversary. Overview The album is part studio, part live album, similar to the band's 1975 release ''Fandango!''. It was also ZZ Top first album without Bill Ham at the helm as producer, ''XXX'' was produced by Billy Gibbons instead. The live track, "Sinpusher", is an altered version of the band's 1994 song "Pincushion" with different lyrics and a slightly heavier guitar riff. Reception Allmusic only gave the album one and a half stars, and in its review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine, he states: "After all, countless blues-based musicians, from Lightnin' Hopkins and Muddy Waters to B.B. King and The Rolling Stones, have aged gracefully, albeit in varying degrees. So why does ZZ Top sound so stiff and useless on ''XXX'', a record celebrating their 30th anniversary? Part of that could be that the songwrit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ZZ Top
ZZ Top is an American rock band formed in 1969 in Houston, Texas. For 51 years, they comprised vocalist-guitarist Billy Gibbons, drummer Frank Beard and vocalist-bassist Dusty Hill, until Hill's death in 2021. ZZ Top developed a signature sound based on Gibbons' blues guitar style and Hill and Beard's rhythm section. They are popular for their live performances, sly and humorous lyrics, and the matching appearances of Gibbons and Hill, who wore sunglasses, hats and long beards. ZZ Top formed after the demise of Moving Sidewalks, Gibbons' previous band, in 1969. Within a year, they signed with London Records and released ''ZZ Top's First Album'' (1971). Subsequent releases, such as ''Tres Hombres'' (1973) and ''Fandango!'' (1975), and the singles " La Grange" and " Tush", gained extensive radio airplay. By the mid-1970s, ZZ Top had become renowned in North America for its live act, including the Worldwide Texas Tour (1976— 1977), which was a critical and commercial success. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture. The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the call-and-response pattern (the blues scale and specific chord progressions) of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes (or "worried notes"), usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove. Blues as a genre is also characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times. It was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common current str ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Keyboard Instrument
A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument played using a keyboard, a row of levers which are pressed by the fingers. The most common of these are the piano, organ, and various electronic keyboards, including synthesizers and digital pianos. Other keyboard instruments include celestas, which are struck idiophones operated by a keyboard, and carillons, which are usually housed in bell towers or belfries of churches or municipal buildings. Today, the term ''keyboard'' often refers to keyboard-style synthesizers. Under the fingers of a sensitive performer, the keyboard may also be used to control dynamics, phrasing, shading, articulation, and other elements of expression—depending on the design and inherent capabilities of the instrument. Another important use of the word ''keyboard'' is in historical musicology, where it means an instrument whose identity cannot be firmly established. Particularly in the 18th century, the harpsichord, the clavichord, and the early ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bass Guitar
The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and scale length, and typically four to six strings or courses. Since the mid-1950s, the bass guitar has largely replaced the double bass in popular music. The four-string bass is usually tuned the same as the double bass, which corresponds to pitches one octave lower than the four lowest-pitched strings of a guitar (typically E, A, D, and G). It is played primarily with the fingers or thumb, or with a pick. To be heard at normal performance volumes, electric basses require external amplification. Terminology According to the ''New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', an "Electric bass guitar sa Guitar, usually with four heavy strings tuned E1'–A1'–D2–G2." It also defines ''bass'' as "Bass (iv). A contraction of Double bas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Singing
Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without accompaniment by musical instruments. Singing is often done in an ensemble of musicians, such as a choir. Singers may perform as soloists or accompanied by anything from a single instrument (as in art song or some jazz styles) up to a symphony orchestra or big band. Different singing styles include art music such as opera and Chinese opera, Indian music, Japanese music, and religious music styles such as gospel, traditional music styles, world music, jazz, blues, ghazal, and popular music styles such as pop, rock, and electronic dance music. Singing can be formal or informal, arranged, or improvised. It may be done as a form of religious devotion, as a hobby, as a source of pleasure, comfort, or ritual as part of music education or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strings against frets with the fingers of the opposite hand. A plectrum or individual finger picks may also be used to strike the strings. The sound of the guitar is projected either acoustically, by means of a resonant chamber on the instrument, or amplified by an electronic pickup and an amplifier. The guitar is classified as a chordophone – meaning the sound is produced by a vibrating string stretched between two fixed points. Historically, a guitar was constructed from wood with its strings made of catgut. Steel guitar strings were introduced near the end of the nineteenth century in the United States; nylon strings came in the 1940s. The guitar's ancestors include the gittern, the vihuela, the four- course Renaissance guitar, and the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kal Mann
Kal Mann (born Kalman Cohen; May 6, 1917 – November 28, 2001) - accessed June 2010 was an American . He is best known for penning the words to 's "", plus "", a hit for both Charlie Gracie and [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bernie Lowe
Bernard Lowe (born Lowenthal, November 22, 1917 – September 1, 1993) was an American songwriter, record producer, arranger, pianist and bandleader. Born in Philadelphia, Lowe started Teen Records and in 1955 was working with Freddie Bell and the Bellboys. He asked Bell to rewrite the lyrics of " Hound Dog" to appeal to a broader radio audience. Teen Records and the group had a regional hit with this version of the song, which was one of four songs the group did with Lowe. It was this same version that Elvis Presley heard in Las Vegas, Nevada, adopted, recorded, and made his own. Lowe went on to co-pen with Kal Mann the chart-topping song, "Teddy Bear", for the same singer. Lowe sometimes masqueraded as 'Harold Land'. This enabled him to be affiliated with both ASCAP and BMI. Lowe founded Philadelphia, Pennsylvania's Cameo Records in 1956, and Cameo was later expanded into the Cameo-Parkway Records label. The owners then signed a then unknown singer, Ernest Evans, to their bu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ross Mitchell
Ross Mitchell Brown Jr (born January 12, 1955) is an American radio news anchor and voice-over artist. Mitchell is known most widely as the former announcer on the nationally syndicated ''Coast to Coast AM'' radio show with Art Bell and George Noory and ''The Savage Nation'' with Michael Savage. Mitchell is currently the radio announcer for ''Red Eye Radio'' and ''Eye on Washington'' on KKOH. Mitchell began working in radio at age 13. He graduated from the University of the Pacific with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications. Mitchell was a disc jockey, news director and reporter in California. In 1983, he moved to Reno, Nevada and joined what was then KOH. He co-hosts ''Ross and Ryan in the Morning'' on weekday mornings from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. along with Ryan Nutter. Mitchell was also the voice of XM Talk on XM channel 168 from 2009 to 2013. Phil Hendrie has parodied Art Bell for many years on his own radio talk show, and impersonations of Mitchell's program introductions h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frank Beard (musician)
Frank Lee Beard (born June 11, 1949) is an American drummer best known as a member of the rock band ZZ Top. Early life Beard was born in Frankston, Texas, and attended Irving High School in Irving, Texas. Career Before joining ZZ Top, Beard was a member of a fake version of the British band the Zombies, which toured in the US without authorization from the original band members, and also was part of the Outlaws with later ZZ Top member Dusty Hill. Other bands Beard and Hill played with early in their careers included the Cellar Dwellers, the Hustlers, the Warlocks, and American Blues. In May 1969, Beard joined The Moving Sidewalks, a band that would become ZZ Top in July 1969. Beard also introduced Gibbons to Hill. After honing their trademark "Texas boogie-blues-rock" style, they released ''ZZ Top's First Album'' on London Records in January 1971. Beard is credited under the nickname "Rube Beard" on the ''ZZ Top's First Album'' and on ''Tres Hombres'', the band's th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dusty Hill
Joe Michael "Dusty" Hill (May 19, 1949 – July 28, 2021) was an American musician who was the bassist of the rock band ZZ Top for more than 50 years. He also sang lead and backing vocals and played keyboards. Hill was born in Dallas, Texas, and as a child, he began performing music with his brother, Rocky Hill (musician), Rocky Hill. In 1968, he and drummer Frank Beard (musician), Frank Beard joined guitarist Billy Gibbons in ZZ Top, and went on to release albums, including the bestselling ''Eliminator (album), Eliminator'' (1983). Hill favored simple compositions and a "big", Distortion (music), distorted sound. Critics described his basslines as a critical part of ZZ Top's sound, complementing Gibbons' guitar showmanship. Hill was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of ZZ Top in 2004. He died in 2021 after a period of declining health. He was replaced by the band's longtime guitar tech Elwood Francis, in line with his wishes. Early life Hill was born in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Billboard 200
The ''Billboard'' 200 is a record chart ranking the 200 most popular music albums and EPs in the United States. It is published weekly by '' Billboard'' magazine and is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists. Often, a recording act will be remembered by its " number ones", those of their albums that outperformed all others during at least one week. The chart grew from a weekly top 10 list in 1956 to become a top 200 list in May 1967, and acquired its current name in March 1992. Its previous names include the ''Billboard'' Top LPs (1961–1972), ''Billboard'' Top LPs & Tape (1972–1984), ''Billboard'' Top 200 Albums (1984–1985) and ''Billboard'' Top Pop Albums (1985–1992). The chart is based mostly on sales – both at retail and digital – of albums in the United States. The weekly sales period was originally Monday to Sunday when Nielsen started tracking sales in 1991, but since July 2015, tracking week begins on Friday (to coinc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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