6, it’s the Garcia Project, on tour performing full, classic Jerry Garcia Band setlists and celebrating what would have been Garcia’s 80th birthday. ► The week at Payomet Performing Arts Center (29 Old Dewline Road, North Truro) starts out with tribute concerts to beloved bands of the past. Read more about the musicians' journey below, plus here are five more concerts to consider for the weekend: And one of ZZ Top's stops this year is the Cape Cod Melody Tent in Hyannis. All it could have took was one guy moving down from New York.The death last year of longtime ZZ Top bassist Dusty Hill led many fans to speculate that the band's run was over, but that's not the case. “‘Tush,’ as in ‘that’s a nice tush on that girl,’ that’s definitely the same as the Yiddish word,” Hill told Spin in 1986. Dusty Hill whipped up “Tush” in 10 minutes at a soundcheck in Florence, Alabama, but it’s a landmark of Yiddish blues poetry. (Sadly, Nomi became one of music’s first AIDS deaths.) The late German performance artist was an obscure cult figure in his lifetime, best known for his 1979 SNL performance with David Bowie. A 1983 profile in NME revealed the intriguing detail that Dusty Hill decorated his wardrobe case with two photos of Elvis Presley and one photo of Klaus Nomi. That might help explain why they had no fear about jumping into the anything-goes spectacle of music videos, or why they sided with the misfits. In other words, this was a band that knew what it was like to get hassled and beaten up for striking a pose. Man, I still shudder whenever I hear someone say, ‘Hey, music man’ - that’s how we always used to get called out.” It didn’t work in fact all it ever got us was into fights. “And we thought it would be kinda neat if everybody dyed their hair blue. “We used to be in this band called the American Blues,” Hill said. Then She Spiked Itīut unbeknownst to their fans, ZZ Top had glitter roots, from their early days as glam poseurs. Madonna's 'American Life' Video Was a Bold Statement About War and Celebrity. They understood video was drag, just as their beards and shades were drag, so they slid into MTV without losing any of their Tube Snake Boogie Realness. But ZZ Top had a different story to tell. It would have been easier, and more conformist, to make videos where the vixens hook up with the boys in the band. ZZ Top are the Greek chorus, giving a collective thumbs-up. The video vixens are superhero feminist avengers, storming into any scene and instantly taking charge. But as film scholar and babe-culture exegete Abbey Bender has pointed out, “The ZZ Top babes are the feminine mirror image of the band itself.” There’s always a trio of them. The Eliminator Trilogy was a classic combo of beards, babes, and cars. The 16-year-old girls!” To appreciate this quote, keep in mind that in the Eighties, no American male rock bands were willing to admit having teenage-girl fans, at least not without treating those girls as a sexualized punch line. Then the videos came along, and now we’ve recaptured the 16-year-old girls. You know, our audience grew up with us until the videos, and they were beginning to get a little long in the tooth. As Dusty Hill told Creem, “The videos have given us a younger audience. These videos made them heroes to New Wave misfits, winning them a new female fandom. These guys always got the joke, at a time when other bands were still just nervously lip-syncing in front of brick walls. ZZ Top reveled in the humor and ridiculousness of it all, busting their synchronized dance moves and spinning their white-fur guitars. Against all odds, the weird beards turned out to be the old-school rockers who best adapted to the Eighties music-video revolution. (The channel turns 40 this Sunday.) But they changed everything about their story with their synth-y reinvention on Eliminator and the classic video trilogy of “Gimme All Your Lovin’,” “Sharp Dressed Man,” and “Legs,” made with director Tim Newman. ZZ Top had a long career before MTV even existed. As Billy Gibbons said, shrugging, “Dusty and I don’t fit too well with Giorgio Armani.” And they did it without cleaning up their look: beards, hats, cheap sunglasses. The little ol’ band from Tejas, the most proudly unfashionable rockers around, became MTV’s unlikeliest superstars ever. But Dusty was more than just a legendary bluesman - he and ZZ Top helped define music videos in the early Eighties, conquering MTV with their Eliminator Trilogy. He was a beer drinker, hell-raiser, sharp-dressed broom duster, and bassist in the same trio for more than 50 years. The world is mourning today for the late, great Dusty Hill of ZZ Top, who died Tuesday.
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