Rhythms

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Rhythms
Studio album by ZZ Top

Publication
(s)

17th September 1996

Label (s) RCA Records

Genre (s)

Blues rock

Title (number)

12

running time

53min 55s

occupation

production

Bill Ham

Studio (s)

Ardent Studios (Memphis),
Charlatan's (Hollywood),
John's House of Funk (Houston)

chronology
Antenna
1994
Rhythms XXX
1999
Single releases
1996 She's just killing me
1996 What's Up With That
1996 Bang bang
1997 Rhythms
Chart positions
Explanation of the data
Albums
Rhythms
  DE 9 09/23/1996 (11 weeks)
  AT 31 09/29/1996 (7 weeks)
  CH 8th 09/22/1996 (8 weeks)
  UK 32 09/21/1996 (2 weeks)
  US 29 05/10/1996 (11 weeks)
Singles
What's Up With That
  UK 58 06/29/1996 (1 week)

Rhythmeen is the twelfth studio album by the American blues rock band ZZ Top . It was released on RCA Records in September 1996 . With around 310,000 units sold in the US, it was the band's first album since Tres Hombres , which was released in 1973, to achieve neither gold nor platinum status in the US .

Emergence

During the recordings, the band did not use any overdubs , but played the tracks as a “real trio”, similar to the test recordings. In addition to the wishes of the band's long-time fans, the recordings for the piece She's Just Killing Me for the soundtrack to the film From Dusk Till Dawn were decisive for this . Under enormous time pressure, the band wrote the song in 30 minutes and recorded it within another 30 minutes. Director Robert Rodriguez liked the harsh and raw sound of the piece, so it wasn't reworked. Rodriguez later recorded a music video for the song with the band . For Billy Gibbons , the recording of this song was a sign that the music of ZZ Top could work without the superposition of up to eight separately recorded sound tracks .

Some pieces of the album the band had already during the Continental Safari Summer - tour played to them in the summer of 1996 by Europe , Russia and South Africa had led. Both band manager Bill Ham and the management of the record company wanted to test the musical reorientation of the band to the rhythmic Texas blues of the 1970s in advance and handed the song What's Up with That to a radio station in Chicago . The reactions of the test listeners were consistently positive, and the single was released in the US in early September. The promotional campaign included appearances on the Letterman Show and the Billboard Music Awards, as well as the official launch of the band's website.

The album title Rhythmeen should stand for mean rhythm ( German : "nasty rhythm"), which in the opinion of the band should be the basic structure of a true ZZ-Top record.

Track list

  1. Rhythms (Gibbons) - 3:53
  2. Bang Bang (Gibbons) - 4:28
  3. Black Fly (Gibbons) - 3:31
  4. What's Up with That (Gibbons, Hardy, Ingram, Rice) - 5:19
  5. Vincent Price Blues (Beard, Gibbons, Hill) - 6:04
  6. Zipper Job (Beard, Gibbons, Hill) - 4:14
  7. Hairdresser (Gibbons) - 3:48
  8. She's Just Killing Me (Beard, Gibbons, Hill) - 4:55
  9. My Mind Is Gone (Gibbons, Hardy, Moon, Wonder) - 4:06
  10. Loaded (Gibbons) - 3:47
  11. Pretty Head (Beard, Gibbons, Hill) - 4:37
  12. Hummbucking, Pt. 2 (Beard, Gibbons, Hill) - 5:13

reception

Stephen Thomas Erlewine from Allmusic sees the band back in the blues with the album. The music on rhythms sounds more like garage rock and blues than on its predecessor Antenna , but the band did not manage to write enough good songs. So it turned out to be an album for long-time fans, but others would ask themselves while listening to where the hooks went . Hanno Kress from Rock Hard wrote that the album needed time because there was no hit on it at first. The band forego "simply too poppy arrangements and bombastic production", and after listening to it several times you discover "a very nice, bluesy-hard album". Daniel Böhm from Rocks magazine describes Rhythmeen as “by far the hardest album in its history”, ZZ Top is finding “back to the real blues and cutting all musical ties with the eighties”.

Individual evidence

  1. a b Sources chart placements: DE ( Memento of the original from October 11, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. / AT / CH / UK / US @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.musicline.de
  2. Melinda Newman: Industry Analyzes Mariah Carey Deal . In: Billboard Magazine . February 9, 2002, p. 3 .
  3. a b Steven Rosen: ZZ Top: From A to ZZ. (No longer available online.) Guitar World, October 22, 2009, archived from the original on January 9, 2010 ; accessed on March 16, 2010 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.guitarworld.com
  4. a b c d Jim Bessman: ZZ Top Returns To Its Blues Roots . In: Billboard Magazine . August 17, 1996, p. 11, 13 .
  5. ^ Hanno Kress: ZZ Top - Rhythms . In: Rock Hard . No. 112 .
  6. Daniel Böhm: Album of the Week: Rhythms (1996). (No longer available online.) Rocks Online March 9, 2010, archived from the original on February 25, 2016 ; Retrieved May 6, 2010 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.rocks-magazin.de

Web links