ZZ TOP – Eliminator [Collector’s Edition remastered +7] HQ

As requested, here’s ZZ TOP defining, stairway to popularity album “Eliminator” in its Warner Brothers Records digipak Collector’s Edition release featuring a remastered version of the original LP, along with a bunch of bonus tracks and a juicy 20-page booklet with new liner notes.
To many people “Eliminator” was a desperate act to keep their head above water in a raising MTV era, to others, a total sell-out. Truth is ZZ Top’s eighth album, released in 1983 (13 years after their debut), is their biggest-selling album to date, and make ’em super-stars.
Logging in at well over two years on the charts and spawning five singles — “Got Me Under Pressure,” “Gimme All Your Lovin’, “Sharp Dressed Man,” “Legs” and “TV Dinners” — the wacky trio really found their sea-legs when it came to projecting their music via a fairly new medium to a brand new audience — music video for the MTV generation.

Unlike Duran Duran or Madonna, ZZ Top didn’t rely on their own sex appeal (or lack of) to make their videos for “Gimme All Your Lovin’,” “Sharp Dressed Man” and “Legs” bold, interesting and popular. They used a sexy car the album was named after — guitarist Billy Gibbons’ 1933 Ford coupe.
The gleaming car was adorned with a cache of hot babes to set the screen on fire. All the decorum was dropped into little vignettes that were entertaining and original. The fact that the music itself retained
a basic, bluesy feel, loosely driven by dashes of slick synthesizer only enhanced the effect.
Gibbons, bassist Dusty Hill and drummer Frank Beard even made cheesy cameos in the videos just to show it was all for good fun. Underneath the fuzzy guitars and long beards, ZZ Top became one of rock’s wildest hayrides going.

Truly, any band that can write a song called “TV Dinners” can’t be bad. And I used to think album tracks like “I Need You Tonight” and “Thug” were listless fillers — until I heard them brightened up on this remaster.
When you add in live versions —  recorded in England — of six of the album’s tracks, it becomes obvious that ”Eliminator” was a masterstroke of Gibbon’s blue-plate specialty riffs, driven by the steady rhythm section of Hill and Beard, creating an infectious sound that goes down heartily.
A Must Have Classic

01 – Gimme All Your Lovin’
02 – Got Me Under Pressure
03 – Sharp Dressed Man
04 – I Need You Tonight
05 – I Got The Six
06 – Legs [original album version]
07 – Thug
08 – TV Dinners
09 – Dirty Dog
10 – If I Could Only Flag Her Down
11 – Bad Girl
BONUS TRACKS:
12 – Legs [single version / different mix]
13 – Gimme All Your Lovin [live]
14 – Sharp Dressed Man [live]
15 – I Got The Six [live]
16 – TV Dinners [live]
17 – Got Me Under Pressure [live]
18 – Legs [dance mix]

Billy Gibbons – guitar, vocals
Dusty Hill – bass, keyboards, vocals
Frank Beard – drums, percussion

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www.amazon.com/Eliminator-Collectors-CD-DVD-Top/dp/B000TSJU0E