More Shelf Life
Pet Clark said it and I believe it: It’s a sign of the times--the way the two discs of this DVD reflect their respective eras and adamantly refute each other. As Billy F Gibbons points out on the latter, “The sound stays pretty much the same; we’re pretty consistent.” He’s, of course, on target. Check the set lists, beard lengths, seemingly effortless and eminently cool stage moves. Same band onstage at Essen, Germany’s Rockpalast, 1980, as in the rock doc culled from some 70 domestic and international ZZT shows in 2008. But what a difference three decades makes in presentation.
The band’s on fire throughout this program, yanking more energy, color and humor out of the blues than any band before or since. They score high on outright rockin’, slyness and subtlety (no mean achievement, since most acts who excel at the first too often fail at the other two), and they’re just so damned fun to watch. And that’s where the German concert gets the edge. It’s simply that: a full show, shot straightforward, 22 songs. It’s heavy on songs from DeGuello, then the band’s most recent LP, so a rough, tough cover of Sam & Dave’s “I Thank You” kicks things off, and soon-to-be classics like “Cheap Sunglasses,” “I’m Bad, I’m Nationwide” (with two searing Gibbons solos) and “I’m a Fool for Your Stockings” get major play and placement. The same album’s the source of “Manic Mechanic,” perhaps the super-stylized trio at its most idiosyncratic (its off-kilter syncopation and Gibbons’ deliberately stilted vocal makes it sound like an outtake from Captain Beefheart’s Clear Spot). Non-DeGuello songs include “Heard It on the X” and the encore trifecta of “Dust My Broom”/ “Jailhouse Rock”/ “Tush.”
The second-disc concert doc is thoroughly contemporary in the way we’ve all come to acknowledge the term. The only things about the Toppers’ performance that have changed are the smoke, stage screens and air-raid-drill lighting (OK, and Gibbons and Dusty Hill’s acceptably ravaged voices). But now, after decades of MTV, audiences can no longer be trusted to simply watch a show; the performance must be punctuated, so the thinking goes, with b&w or Super-8 or solarized footage of band interviews, photo-shoot downtime, even recalcitrant crowd-surfers being hustled off by cops. It makes for disconcerting viewing, especially if you’d like, say, to see Gibbons shred a solo in real time or catch him and Hill spontaneously getting off on the other’s licks. Not allowed: We’ve got some killer fan-shot stuff of the road crew setting up the Oklahoma City show and it’d work perfect if we insert it right here to, you know, give “La Grange” a little more punch.
Such lily-gilding notwithstanding, Double Down Live has plenty to recommend it. Namely two and a half hours of one of the most distinctive outfits in all of pop music breaking it up onstage, drawing fresh inspiration from the oldest and deepest cultural well we’ve got. That should be enough.
ALBUM OF THE WEEK
