No one’s gonna turn Flag off, but it’s probably not anybody’s favourite, either. It’s all there, but there’s nothing special about it. Like most of the album, it’s got ‘The People’s Tempo’ (120 bpm, incidentally), the slithery synthesized guitar sounds, the cardboard drums, and the girls-and-cars-are-interchangeable lyrics. The problem – and it’s a very slight one, granted – is that Flag is a little too formulaic for its own good. If the formula works, what’s bad about it? Coca-Cola and AC/DC are both formula-driven products, and everybody’s fine with ‘em. It is not an insult to call Eliminator formulaic. Bad Girl is basically middle-of-the-road boogie-rock, a sort of throwback to repetitive 60s frat-party slop like Wooly Bully or Louie Louie. If you never made it this far on Eliminator, don’t worry, you didn’t miss much. It’s also the last song on the album, and this was still back in the days when placement on the record really meant something. Bad Girl starts with crowd noises, and it’s not a live track. I have found, in my many years of rock journalism (and many decades of rock listening) that if a song starts with crowd noises and it’s not a live track, then it’s probably some bullshit throwaway ‘jam’. NYT is a slow-burning, bloozy neo-ballad, which would’ve been perfectly fine on any of their first five or six albums, but we are fast-forwarding to the digital age here, so who’s got time for six and a half minutes of this mush? Also, I realize it came out five years later, but INXS’s Need You Tonight is basically the same song just, you know, better. It’s not sultry.Īgain, not so much bad as out-of-place. The fellas in the band probably thought it was sultry. Thug is hard to describe, it’s sorta gothic machine-funk that constantly threatens to devolve into Love My Way by the Psychedelic Furs or maybe some bass-popping R&B jam by Debarge or somebody. But it is almost comically out of place on what is essentially a futuristic pop-metal record. It’d be fine on the soundtrack for the Lost Boys, for example. “You will be missed greatly, amigo,” Beard’s and Gibbons’s statement added.This might not even be that bad if it was on another album. You may have even seen him on screen in various appearances such as “Back to the Future Part III” and on “Deadwood.” The band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2004. “Per Dusty’s request, ‘The show must go on!” the band had written in a statement.Īlthough Gibbons was the lead vocalist for most of the band’s songs, Hill stepped up to sing “Tush,” an early hit. The band’s longtime guitar tech, Elwood Francis, stepped in for Hill. Last week, the band’s official site shared that Hill was being sidelined due to a “hip issue.” Hill was born in Dallas, and after trying to break into the music scene there, he eventually moved to Houston, where he met Gibbons. Among their most famous hits are “La Grange,” “Tush” and “Gimme All Your Lovin’.” Hill performed alongside Beard and Gibbons and together they went on to have a string of hits and put out 15 studio albums. Hill joined not long after, staying with ZZ Top for more than five decades, until his death. “We, along with legions of ZZ Top fans around the world, will miss your steadfast presence, your good nature and enduring commitment to providing that monumental bottom to the ‘Top’.” “We are saddened by the news today that our Compadre, Dusty Hill, has passed away in his sleep at home in Houston, TX,” the statement, from surviving members Frank Beard and Billy Gibbons, said. Dusty Hill, the bearded bassist with American blues-rock band ZZ Top, has died, according to the band’s official website.
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