Summer Concert Series: ZZ Top: That Little Ol' Band From Texas (2019)

ZZ Top is often a band whose look and eccentric style have often over shadowed their actual musician ship. However after watching this documentary, it is hard not to feel that this is unjustified. These men are extremely talented musicians and they have put out some really good music. The music is always the focus of this documentary, which is perfect for ZZ Top. As the film discusses, the band always kept their private lives private, preferring to let their music speak for itself. As the movie brings up this is why the band's eccentric look works for them, it makes them feel as if they were somehow something bigger than life, while helping obscure who these people are. While of course listening to the members of the band talk about their music, will give us a look into their personalities, little else is given away about who these people are offstage. We find out a little about Dusty's childhood as well as Frank's marriage and drug addiction, but nothing else. From this film alone, you don't even know if Dusty or Billy ever married or had children and this is fine with me. Mystery only helps to make musicians so appealing (this may be part of why I'm a Bob Dylan fan) and do we really need to know anything about ZZ Top besides that they are really cool guys with beards (well except for the one whose last name is beard) who play a mixture of the blues and rock and roll? Once you get down to this, it is clear speaking about the music is the best way to make a ZZ Top documentary. This movie does give us a lot of insight into the music as well as where the eccentric style of the band came from. It also gives us some dang fine music and listening to them perform songs like La Grange, Brown Sugar and Blue Jean Blues show the band has lost none of their talent for performing these songs, and hold up just as well as clips of older performances of ZZ Top songs like I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide.

This documentary only follows the band up to their 1983 album, Eliminator. While this may disappoint some fans, I feel it is a wise thing to do. Too many documentaries try to fit too long of careers into too short of a time. To be fair there are still times the movie feels rushed but it is never distractingly so.

I definitely recommend it to both fans of the band and newcomers.

-Michael J. Ruhland