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Music CD - ZZ Top: Eliminator
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Music CD: Eliminator
Artist: ZZ Top
List Price: $18.98
Our Price: $8.00
Your Save: $ 10.98 ( 58% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Warner Bros / Wea
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Tracks:
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1. Gimme All Your Lovin
2. Got Me Under Pressure
3. Sharp Dressed Man
4. I Need You Tonight
5. I Got The Six
6. Legs
7. Thug
8. TV Dinners
9. Dirty Dog
10. If I Could Only Flag Her Down
11. Bad Girl
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Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0075992377423
Label: Warner Bros / Wea
Manufacturer: Warner Bros / Wea
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: Warner Bros / Wea
Release Date: 1990-10-25
Studio: Warner Bros / Wea
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: "Might as well face it, you're addicted to love"
Comment: Eliminator is one of my favourite albums. It works on several different levels, and it works well. On the surface it is a great collection of catchy pop songs. I can dance to them, hum them, play air guitar to them, shave to them, paint the ceiling to them etc. There isn't a boring song on the record, and the album isn't too long. It doesn't cost too much and the cover looks nice. I can hold it up in front of my face, and pretend that I am a car. Eliminator also works as a coherent whole. The music is uniform, but instead of being repetitive and dull, the album instead feels like an excellent half-hour composition divided into movements.
On another level, Eliminator is a thinky album. It's a writey album. I like to ponder it, it sets my mind in motion. Eliminator is a clever scientific musical experiment. It was a conscious attempt to change ZZ Top's style, to make the band more contemporary, and it was an enormous success, on both an artistic and a commercial level. I'm sure that old-time fans of the group might have been upset at the disco rhythms, but only the most uptight square could fail to be moved by "Gimme All Your Lovin'" or "Sharp Dressed Man". I imagine that kids in 1983 might have thought that ZZ Top was a brand-new band, a modern boogie group with a clever retro style, and videos with hot women in them. You know, like Robert Palmer. He made records in the 1970s, but when he did that video for "Addicted to Love" in 1985, an entire new generation assumed that he had just come from nowhere, with a bevy of hot women. Did I mention hot women? Robert Palmer had hot women, and ZZ Top also had hot women. I know this because I have just checked on the Youtube. ZZ Top's women are not as hot as Robert Palmer's women, although it has to be said that any woman would look hot when stood next to ZZ Top. Perhaps that was ZZ Top's way of attracting women. Robert Palmer, on the other hand, did not have to do anything special to attract women, in fact he had to shoo them away, they pestered him so much that he moved to Switzerland, and died young. But I digress.
With Eliminator, ZZ Top did something that Genesis and The Rolling Stones and Jefferson Airplane and The Who and Paul McCartney failed to do, they moved with the times without trashing their reputation. Of the band's contemporaries, I can only think of Yes having achieved the same feat, although that was done by essentially ditching all that was Yes about Yes except for the vocals.
So, as a musical experiment, Eliminator works brilliantly. I cannot think of another album that combines disco and guitar rock and synth-pop so well without sounding awful. It's a deceptively simple record as well. The drums are basically straightforward four-to-the-floor pulse beat, all the way throughout every song, a mixture of drum machine and real live human drummer. Ordinarily this unvarying drum style would be monotonous, and in a way it *is* monotonous, but it's monotonous in a good way, hypnotic rather than boring. The twin guitar lines are often very complex, but they are mixed so that they become a backdrop. The synths are generally tasteful, restricted to pulse-bass and a few swooshy pads. The vocals have a distant, unemotional quality that sounds cool rather than affected. The songs are classically structured rock tunes, none of them have a rapping bit.
On a further level, and perhaps this is unintentional, Eliminator has a timeless quality. It's a period piece, but it has dated well. There's nothing offensive about the overall sound. The music is classical. The dual-guitar playing is technically impressive and the guitar tone is still awesome, although subdued. The lyrics are generally dumb beyond parody, with sexual metaphors that would make Roy "Chubby" Brown feel uncomfortable, but that just adds to the charm. ZZ Top were real men, you see, from an era that did not value manly manliness. Nowadays they come across as endearingly retro and harmless. Eliminator has dated much, much better than "Afterburner", the band's next album, which came out in 1985. Afterburner really does sound like a mid-80s record, with fake drums and fake guitars that could have come out of an arcade machine. They're both cheesy records, in the sense that you couldn't take them to a posh dinner party without people laughing at you and mocking you and deriding your taste, but Eliminator is likeably cheesy whereas Afterburner is just an anonymous mid-80s synth rock record.
In its day, Eliminator was a big popular success, although the critics thought it was just another modern pop-rock record. Today it is grudgingly respected as a classic of the period, but I believe it deserves more. There are few albums that entertain me all the way through, that I can listen to in one sitting without being bored. Kraftwerk's "Computer World" is one. This is another. It's the musical equivalent of one of those films that you can just sit and watch; Raiders of the Lost Ark, or Where Eagles Dare etc. It's easy to overlook that kind of entertainment, but it's precious and rare and should be cherished. I would love it if Eliminator goes into the time capsule.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: "All the girls go crazy 'bout a sharp-dressed man"
Comment: Hey, if you're gonna sell out, sell out in style. Don't just abandon your roots for the newest trend: make it sound cool. In other words, take cues from this album. Make no mistake about it: Eliminator is a pop record, and an '80s pop record at that. But here's what lifts it above most the rest of '80s pop: it's melodic, and the guitar playing is fantastic. The group was rewarded with four hits: the sleazy rockers "Gimme All Your Lovin'" and "Got Me Under Pressure", "Sharp Dressed Man", easily one of the coolest songs of the entire decade, and the group's signature tune, "Legs", with tremendous riffs. The enjoyable synth goof "TV Dinners" also made the radio a lot. The main star here is Billy Gibbons, who casually tosses off several awesome guitar solos as if it was easy. Now, if you don't like what he's doing then you should probably stay away from this record, since Dusty Hill gets pushed into the background by all the guitar overdubs and Frank Beard isn't doing anything more than keeping up a straight 4/4 beat. If Billy couldn't play, this would be a waste of a record, but he really, really can, giving "I Need You" a fascinating double-tracked solo. There's no variety here (other than the funky "Thug", which is bad other than the slap bass solos), but you have to remember it's ZZ Top we're talking about. The tunes are constantly enjoyable, both the big hits and album tracks (Dusty Hill's obvious but amusing innuendo tune "I Got the Six", with more Gibbons solos of ubercoolness), and there's so much hedonistic fun to be had here it doesn't matter, despite a couple of horny groaners ("Dirty Dog", "If Only I Could Flag Her Down", "Bad Girl"). It may not be ZZ's best album, but it's up there.
Customer Rating:
Summary: One of the best southern rock groups ever!!
Comment: ZZ TOP has always been know for their blues rock this album is no exception.
Sex, Drugs and ROCK & ROLL this album has the sex with "LEGS","WELL DRESSED MAN" & "GIVE ME ALL YOUR LOVING".
This album still rocks this is one of their best albums, if not the best!!
If you like simple southern rock this is the one of the best to own.
I rate this CD a 9 from 1to10!!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Eliminator
Comment: ESSENTIAL ALBUM!!! Easily Top's best & most consistent album. This was not only a commercial breakthrough for them (they had never reached the public like this before), it still retains Z Z Top's signature sound & songs (unlike their follow-up Afterburner). Here we have "Gimme All Your Lovin'", "Sharp Dressed Man" & "Legs". These singles helped to fuel this album into the Billboard Top 10. "Legs" even garnered extensive play in dance clubs. This was the album that focused the public's attention on Billy Gibbon's restored automobile that was featured on the album cover; also the Z Z Top keyring became a hot item. There are some great album cuts also, such as: "I Need You Tonight" (one of my favorite Z Z Top songs) & "Got Me Under Pressure".
Customer Rating:
Summary: Just how big is this???
Comment: Yep, it's hard to imagine that ZZ Top with their gimmick beards and simple fat fingered blues constructs were one of the biggest bands on the planet circa 1983. Eliminator with it's MTV friendly videos as a massive hit and what is interesting is that the Top really did it the old fashioned way, beavering away on album after album and grafting away, honing their sonics and gradually moulding them into the sort of chunky hard rock that spoke to people in simple grooves, shifting millions in the process.
And groove laden this is, gradual slow burn songs attacking with a simplicity reminiscent of AC/DC, even the more anonymous tracks on this album containing a certain charm in their simple yet effective rifferama and both bands are obviously in love with the idea of brazen everything louder than everything else rock `n' roll, as opposed to outright metal. And that is perhaps the key to the longevity of both bands. Take for example the relentless blues based structures on this album, such musical workouts probably just ooze out of Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill and you just know these guys listen to some awesome blues guitarists whose names have been forgotten by the mainstream music world - in fact Billy Gibbons gives full credit to his musical inspirations in his book.
Personal favourites of this bluesy hard rock mega hit would have to be Got Me Under Pressure with its' clipped and lively delivery, Sharp Dressed Man for it's non-sensically catchy rhythms and the lead cut Gimme All Your Lovin which is a guilty pleasure but a pleasure all the same. Ditto for Legs.
The rest of the albums cruises down the highway in a relentless barrage of heavy boogie rock and in so many ways this album is one of those perfect road trip albums as the bouncy delivery and production qualities means that this is a reliable choice for drivin' tunes just about no matter what company your in. Heck, my father thinks the musical world begins and ends with country and western (we have both kinds....) Yet he's never batted an eyelid when I've slipped this into the stereo as background to music to a burn down the highways and byways of Australias East coast.
A highly recommended good time album that doesn't set out to change the world nor argue any particular viewpoint. An album that plugs in and rocks out without any fuss.
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Editorial Reviews:
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ZZ Top's ninth studio album truly captured the mood of the times. Released as MTV was learning to crawl, the videos of the Lone Star trio's droll, masculine anthems were staples on the nascent music channel, making the world think that all the women in Texas looked like Jerry Hall--which wasn't far from the truth in 1983. And even if it wasn't completely accurate, listeners could at least visit a world where both cars and woman were fast and available. Billy Gibbons's roaring guitar licks streaked across songs with the speed of a young Hendrix. Even though the lyrics are often ham-fisted, all is forgiven for the pleasure of just letting the ZZ Top locomotive mow you down. While "Gimme All Your Loving," "Legs," and the satirically dynamic "Sharp Dressed Man" ruled the airwaves, the real gems here are the thundering "I've Got the Six" and the equally bombastic "Bad Girl," which showcase's Dusty Hill's heart-stopping drumming and Frank Beard's sturdy bass. Eliminator also marks the first time that the rough-and-tumble outfit turned to studio wizardry to goose up their meat-and-potatoes boogie. And while some early fans may have been dismayed, truth be told, their new studio sophistication added finesse and depth to ZZ Top. --Jaan Uhelszki
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