''Rhythmeen'' is the twelfth studio album by the American
rock
Rock most often refers to:
* Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids
* Rock music, a genre of popular music
Rock or Rocks may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...
band
ZZ Top, released in
1996
File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A Centennial Olympic Park bombing, bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical Anti-abortion violence, anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 8 ...
. It is their last album with longtime producer
Bill Ham
Billy Mack Ham (February 4, 1937 – June 20, 2016) was an American music impresario, best known as the manager, producer, and image-maker for the blues-rock band ZZ Top. Ham also gained prominence in the country music world by discovering and man ...
.
Production and recording
“We originally had a working title of ‘Nearing The Completion Stage'. But, it was the backbeat, that mean groove, which hit us as a strong recurring element of the album. So, we did our customary play on words, shuffling words about until we came up with our own invention – a feel-good elixir named Rhythmeen.”
Gibbons uses an early 1950s
Les Paul
Lester William Polsfuss (June 9, 1915 – August 12, 2009), known as Les Paul, was an American jazz, country, and blues guitarist, songwriter, luthier, and inventor. He was one of the pioneers of the solid-body electric guitar, and his prototype ...
Goldtop guitar and is featured prominently throughout the album.
Reception
Allmusic gave it a mixed review, stating: "ZZ Top's long-awaited return to
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 Afr ...
finally arrived in 1996, well over a decade after they abandoned their simple three-chord boogie for a synth and drum machine-driven three-chord boogie."
[
The album peaked at number 29 on the ''Billboard'' 200 and at number 32 on the ]UK Albums Chart
The Official Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales and (from March 2015) audio streaming in the United Kingdom. It was published for the first time on 22 July 1956 and is compiled every week by the Official Charts C ...
.
Track listing
;Bonus track apan
Apan is a city and one of the 84 municipalities of Hidalgo, in central-eastern Mexico. The municipality covers an area of 346.9 km².
Overview
As of 2005, the municipality had a total population of 39,247.
It was an important site in the Wa ...
Personnel
* Billy Gibbons – 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 stri ...
, vocals
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 ...
* Dusty Hill – bass
Bass or Basses may refer to:
Fish
* Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species
Music
* Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in the bass range:
** Bass (instrument), including:
** Acoustic bass gui ...
, keyboards
Keyboard may refer to:
Text input
* Keyboard, part of a typewriter
* Computer keyboard
** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping
** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware
Music
* Musi ...
, vocals
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 ...
* Frank Beard – drums
A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...
, percussion
A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...
*James Harman
James Gary Harman (June 8, 1946 – May 23, 2021) was an American blues harmonica player, singer, and songwriter. The music journalist Tony Russell described Harman as an "amusing songwriter and an excellent, unfussy blues harp player".
Biograp ...
- harmonica on "What's Up With That"
*Greg Morrow
Greg Morrow is an American drummer, percussionist, session musician, mixing engineer, and vocalist.
Biography
Morrow was born in Ripley, Tennessee and raised in Memphis. At age 11, Morrow and his band performed on a local TV show, and he par ...
- percussion, drums (credited as 'Gangzz Clangzz & Percussion Thangzz') on "She's Just Killing Me" and other tracks
Production
*Producers – Billy Gibbons, Bill Ham
*Engineer – Joe Hardy
*Assistant engineers – Lizzie Harrah, Gary Moon
*Mixing – Joe Hardy
*Mastering – Bob Ludwig
Robert C. Ludwig (born c. 1945) is an American mastering engineer. He has mastered recordings on all the major recording formats for all the major record labels, and on projects by more than 1,300 artists including Led Zeppelin, Lou Reed, Qu ...
*Director – Douglas Biro
*Art direction – Sean Mosher-Smith
*Design – Billy Gibbons, Sean Mosher-Smith
*Photography – James Bland
*Studio - John Moran's House of Funk aka Digital Services Recording
Charts
Album – ''Billboard
A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...
'' (United States)
Singles – ''Billboard'' (United States)
References
{{Authority control
ZZ Top albums
1996 albums
Albums produced by Billy Gibbons
Albums produced by Bill Ham
RCA Records albums