ZZ Top Album: “Tejas”

Tejas, released originally on vinyl in 1976 or 77 is ZZTop's best album. It is the one that established them as musicians and not just three guys trying to blow up amps... although their simultaneous detonation of "Backdoor Love Affair" on the live size of Fandango is among my top 2 or 3 openings in all of rock and roll. Tejas was a brilliant, dry, gritty album with some great hits - "It's Only Love" (does anyone besides me get flashbacks to "Brown Sugar" listening to this?), "Driving While Blind"... one of the best singalongs ever "She's a Heartbreaker", and the tight chording on "Pan Am Highway Blues". Unfortunately, Bill Ham remixed the first six ZZ Top albums for CD before anyone caught on that great things don't need to be re-invented. The CD version of Tejas is the worst CD re-mix ever, out of over 600 in my collection. It basically sounds as if the whole album has been recut with a drum machine (a bad one too) and fed through an echo box. It's nothing but an insult. At the time, one of the audio magazines reviewed it (after I already bought it) and declared it the worst CD remix of the year. Nice to see no one was listening. I suppose the other ZZTop six-pack remixes are just as bad, but Tejas was my favorite album so it stands out. I bought the sixpack 10 years ago, and from reading the other reviews, Tejas still hasn't been fixed. I should mention that the LIVE half of Fandango has not received the drum machine treatment, making 1/12 of the sixpack the saving grace. It has been 10 years, please you guys, re-mix this album like the original, so I can use this one for target practice.

As part of an attempt to capitalize on the success of their Eliminator sound, ZZ Top decided to go back into the studio and remix and also re-record parts of their first 6 albums thinking it would make them more money and entice fans of their newer sound to go back and buy their earlier records. Well guess what, in the process their older fans who were used to the original versions on the old cassettes and albums were shocked when they listened to any of these first generation CD releases. They heard bogus reverbed drums, and entire sections of both music and vocals re-recorded. Talk about tarnishing the legacy of a great band's output. Well someone finally wised up and now at least Tres Hombres and Fandango are now available in original mix, remastered form. So stay away from this trash and wait for the entire back catalog to be released in it's original mix, remastered form on CD.

When this album was remastered, the original drum tracks were altered to coincide with the band's more recent sound on albums like Eliminator, etc. What a tragedy! This was a great album and should be reissued in its original form. I am only grateful I still have a turntable and can play the original. I threw the cd out. I could not get past the altered drum tracks. I cannot believe the band chose to "revise" the album. I hope that it is eventually put out on cd as it was originally meant to be heard. Nothing on the packaging even warns you that it is not in the original form. Dishonest and disappointing is all I can say.

IN REFERANCE TO THE BAD REVIEWS FOR THE NEW RE-MIX I MUST AGREE. HOWEVER I AM REVIEWING THE OLD VERSION STILL AVAILABLE. THIS IS BLUES-ROCK AT ITS BEST. BILLY GIBBONS IS A TRUE TALENT AT GUITAR. "ASLEEP IN THE DESSERT" IS A GREAT INSTRUMENTAL & "ARRESTED" IS ZZ AT ITS TOP. I FOUND CASSETTES OF THIS & THE OTHER EARLY ZZ TOP RELEASES AT MY LOCAL 24 HOUR SUPER-STORE FOR FIVE BUCKS EACH. GREAT DRIVING MUSIC.

Even though this is advertised as the "2011 edition from Japan", it's still the crappy revisionist mix from the 1980's. I had high hopes that this album was FINALLY available on CD in it's original mix. Maybe I should burn and sell CD copies of my 1976 vinyl copy of this great album. Even with the surface noise, the record sounds much better than this garbage CD.