Todavia Tres Hombres

On my way down to Mexico, there was trouble on the rise

A A A Comments By Dave Queen Tuesday, Oct 28 2003

Filthier than a buck-nekked dip in the Rio Grande downstream from a maquiladora. Filthier (in every sense; there's even a "motherfucker") than XXX, which itself was better than anything to come out of Japan since Locust Abortion Technician, if not "You're Gonna Miss Me." And that's no slight on the honorable Japanese, compañeros. They made cars once, but maquiladora is the new "industry." To quote Pigface—"Welcome to Mexico . . . Asshole!"

photo: Michael Waring

Still using what they heard on the X

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ZZ Top
Mescalero
RCA

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Mescalero is structured like a blues show with really old guys—unsurprisingly as the ZZ arc = Stones arc reversed (i.e., Deguello/El Loco/Eliminator = Exile/Bleed/Beggars). Except ZZ aren't "done" yet. (Next album = Reconquista!) The new album's first third is Afterburner-type stuff (i.e., "chords"), except with vocoders. Daft? Zizi! Then just when you're resigned to another Afterburner the constant involuntary-volume-raising starts, and you're like "Master of Sparks" Jeb Bush cranking the lever up and down. Then they bring back Alfredo Garcia's head, then "Dusted" "combines IDM and rock" a lot more effectively than some other popular bands I could name, then you take the Alamo and bless it in the name of the tres hombres and Billy says (over a Don Brewer-type drum solo—that is the genius of this record in particular, in that the '80s bits are like being in the '80s except better, and the '70s bits are exactly like the '70s bits that everybody probably missed because they'd passed out by the time J. Geils or ARS or whoever was opening finished), "Bitch took my liquor."

Jesus was actually going to New Orleans to talk to Mr. Trafficante, by the way. Heard it on the (Camp)X(Ray), when I was swimming to Cuba. From Mozambique. ZZ Frelimo!? How do they know about all this shit that went down, anyway? Well I think it's something sinister. They were the bikers at the Capitol Altamont, and if you don't feed them their liquor'n'dust ("Piece": "gimme a piece . . . gimme a piece . . . of YER LUUUUUUUVE"), the reconquista promised since the foreboding Rio Grande Mud(whose cover shows them wading across it) is gonna be muy ugggly. Quite a lot of Mescalero is in Spanish, which leads me to believe it will play a major role in Project Eliminator in the bloody early days of New Aztlan. Viva la muerte!

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