Chrome, Smoke & BBQ: The ZZ Top Box CD

Firing up 4 CDs packed with more than five hours of remastered classics - eighty tracks from 14 albums released on Tantara, Scat, London, and Warner Bros. from 1968-1992. Limited edition box builds a shrine to our Texas heroes with outrageous BBQ Shack-inspired packaging, complete with a flip-book showing the band's signature moves and cardstock paper cut-outs with all the accessories, so you can act out the perfect BBQ! Warner Brothers. 2003.

CHROME, SMOKE & BBQ: THE ZZ TOP BOX includes an 86 page book with pictures and song information by ZZ Top. Also included is a flip book.
ZZ Top: Billy F. Gibbons (vocals, guitar, fiddle, harmonica, baritone saxophone, keyboards); Frank Beard (vocals, alto saxophone, drums, percussion); Dusty Hill (vocals, tenor saxophone, keyboards, bass).
Additional personnel includes: Don Summers (bass); Tom Moore (organ); Lanier Greg (bass); Dan Mithcell (drums).
Producers: Steve Ames, Bill Ham.
Compilation producer: James Austin.
Recorded between 1968 & 1992. Includes liner notes by James Austin, Tom Vickers.
Prior to 2003's Chrome, Smoke & BBQ, ZZ Top's catalog was crying out for a comprehensive retrospective. Not that the band hadn't been anthologized before: they had two hits collections, with notably different track listings, and in 1987's Six Pack, they even had a makeshift box set, but all three of these were hampered by limited focus and haphazard execution. Chrome, Smoke & BBQ addresses both of these concerns by focusing on the trio's 20 years at Warner -- from 1970's ZZ Top's First Album to 1990's Recycler -- picking the best 70 or so songs from these ten albums and spreading them over the course of a lavish four-disc, 80-track box set. This is the first logical approach to ZZ Top's career yet, and while it isn't a perfect collection, it comes tantalizingly close to that ideal. The primary problem is that by the time the fourth disc rolls around, the collection has lost considerable momentum -- and that's without even touching any material from the forgettable albums the band waxed for RCA in the '90s. With its robotic beats and flattened production, Recycler pointed the way toward those RCA records, yet it did have some excellent songs -- "Give It Up," "My Head's in Mississippi," and "Doubleback" -- that harked back to the group's strengths, something that would have been more apparent if these songs appeared at the end of disc three, after the Afterburner material. Instead, they're stranded on the fourth disc, along with four other songs from Recycler, for a grand total of seven of ten songs from that album, to which are added six "Medium Rare" tracks -- the obligatory obscurities that are included on each box set, this time being a pretty cool Spanish version of "Francene," an OK live take on "Cheap Sunglasses" from a 1980 promo single, and four 12" remixes, none of which are very good. This disc is required listening only for diehards. Fortunately, the other three discs are damn near perfect, containing six to seven songs from each of their albums except their debut (nearly all of those records had a mere ten tracks, making this a very generous sampling) along with three tracks from guitarist/vocalist Billy Gibbons' first band, the Moving Sidewalks, and a single, "Miller's Farm"/"Salt Lick," from the "embryonic" ZZ Top, before bassist Dusty Hill or drummer Frank Beard joined forces with Gibbons. All the hits and classic rock radio staples are here, of course, along with a wealth of album tracks that illustrate that even if the band didn't have much range -- whether the production was raw and greasy as it was on "La Grange" or clean and sleek, like the Police playing the Rolling Stones, as on "Pearl Necklace," they rarely strayed from either fast blues boogie or slow blues -- they did have strong songwriting chops, witnessed by such buried treasures as the raucous "Brown Sugar" and "Just Got Paid," the monster groove of "I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide," the sweet "Leila,"Rolling Stone (12/25/03-1/8/04, p.126) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...[This set shows that] ZZ Top were true to their blues roots, and they made you feel good enough to party..."
Q (1/04, p.148) - 4 stars out of 5 - "Without the visuals, they emerge as a brisk, vaguely bluesy band who embraced the finer points of pop..."
Uncut (3/04, p.106) - 4 stars out of 5 - "This dangerous collection is well researched and packaged..."