This was a long overdue collection which purged all of the sins committed by the infamous "Six Pack" box set re-issue back in 1987. 4 discs of material, including some early tracks from the Billy Gibbons' pre-cursor group The Moving Sidewalks, paired with sizeable portions of the London Records catalog in its' original format! The only quibble I have is the second half of the last disc, which consists of assorted B-sides like go-nowhere 12" dance mixes of "Velcro Fly" and a Spanish-language version of "Francine" ("Francene"). I rather would have had more of the album stuff, but oh well. If you don't want to hunt down the records, then this is your next best deal.

That they selected this particular title tells you all you need to know. It’s not like you could accuse ZZ Top of ever being on the cutting edge of anything, but you could rely them for some basic things – irreverent Texas blues rock, humorous hi-jinks, sly put-ons, and a take-it-as-it-comes overall attitude about life. Much, if not all of this, is missing from Recycler, but then again, a lot of those characteristics were missing from the previous two albums as well, and it did not stop them from – a) being massive chart successes, and b) being enjoyable. Recycler, actually, did fit the first criteria. In fact, the band made a hokey appearance in “Back to the Future III”, and the song “Doubleback” was prominently featured on the movie soundtrack. But enjoyable album? I’m not so sure the band themselves enjoyed making this one. The band sounds like it is going in a couple of a different directions at once – trying to stick with the electro-robotic sound from the past two albums, but also reaching a bit for the old blues-rock boogie from the 70’s as well. The end result is, at best, mixed. The first four tracks here are about the most non-descript things the band has cut in a long, long time. I mean that not in a good way. Probably the first real signs of life are when “My Head’s in Mississippi” comes on, which has faint “La Grange” echoes if you really think about it. I would say the tracks on the second side are moderate improvements but then again, that is not saying much, either. Back in the day, I do not remember thinking very highly of singles like “Give It Up” or “Doubleback”, regarding them as inferior to Eliminator or even Afterburner in comparison. My opinion has not changed much since then. I think ZZ Top put this out to safely coast on their laurels. Whether you think it’s entertaining or not, is up to you. ONE SENTENCE RE-REVIEW: Not as bad as the title suggests but there's every indication here the 80's crept into 1990.

The previous album put ZZ Top in an interesting position – now that they were big stars, in an era where being a big star was so much more of a commodity than it is now, they had to think about how to build upon this new-found stardom. The guys in ZZ Top are not what you would call complicated, and unlike other musicians, I would not say blind ambition is at the top of their priority list – although I could be wrong about that. The response for their camp was this album, the curiously-titled Afterburner, which in many places sounded like the band was not likely to mess with the formula which brought them success on the previous album. About the only real changes of note were a more pronounced teeny-bopper vibe, in the form of upbeat dance-pop rhythms on quite a few of these songs, in order to appeal to many of their new found fans gathered from the previous aural conquest. Afterburner, as I remember, had a slew of MTV-friendly videos and radio hits, among them – “Sleeping Bag”, “Stages”, “Rough Boy”, “Planet of Women”, and “Velcro Fly”. It goes without saying this is beyond dated to the mid-1980’s – although I think where this is most painfully noticeable is on a few of the deep cuts like “Can’t Stop Rockin” and “I Got the Message”, which fall woefully short of what would pass for filler on ZZ Top albums as late as El Loco. But even on the known quantities – for example, “Planet of Women” (which cops “Got Me Under Pressure”) – the boys are too busy rehashing the Eliminator script to notice that it is getting a bit too long in the tooth already. Conversely, that is also the perverse charm of Afterburner – that ZZ Top dared cut such a direct clone of its’ predecessor, as if they were admitting in advance this is the inferior, far less substantial copy, but still have fun with this anyway. The funny thing is, in many places, they still get away with the gambit. Tracks like “Sleeping Bag” and “Velcro Fly”, to name two. And “Rough Boy”, despite all of its’ robotic trappings, is still a heartfelt sentiment to listen to after all of these years. Gibbons’ guitar lines definitely makes this track cook. It would take the band five more years to compile a final commentary on the 80’s, which in some ways I find quite disappointing, since they did play a major effort in shaping the pop culture of the decade. ONE SENTENCE RE-REVIEW: Take the title literally - this is the sound ZZ Top coasting (or drum machine thwacking) through the 80's.

And here it is – with this album, the transmogrification of ZZ Top was complete. People view Eliminator with amusement nowadays, wondering how this rinky-dink piece of plastic ended up selling over 10 million copies and making icons out of the band. The end result wasn’t a radical change to people who were either jaded followers of the group or just jaded after following them for 10 plus years. To the band members, the making of the album was most likely something truly different. From most accounts, inspired by New Wave and the band’s own piecemeal experimentation with synthesizers on tracks like “Groovy Little Hippie Pad”, the album was essentially a collaboration between Billy Gibbons and sound engineer Linden Hudson. Frank Beard and Dusty Hill, for the most part, sat on the sidelines, their contributions not needed as they had been replaced by banks of synthesizers and drum machines allegedly programmed by Hudson. Of course, they received credit in the form of fame, fortune, and notoriety thanks to the numerous amounts of airplay the videos for tracks like “TV Dinners”, “Gimme All Your Lovin”, and “Legs”, while Hudson had to fight out in the courts to get any sort of compensation whatsoever. I point this all out because when you actually listen to the album, it’s hard to get away from the assembly line feel of the affair. Nearly every song follows the same tempo, and the tone never really changes from one track to the next. About the only real difference here are the lyrics – if anything, they push the envelope even further from El Loco to this album, in that they are dirtier and more sexist than ever before. This, of course, was reflected in many of the videos as well – especially “Legs”, “Got Me Under Pressure”, and “Gimme All Your Lovin”. This is a big reason why Eliminator worked on such a visceral level at the time. The hot rod, the ZZ key, the spinning fuzzy guitars, the model chicks in the videos – this was the window dressing which added to the allure and the grandeur of the experience, and it would wear thin soon enough. I don’t think it is an accident that Gibbons slipped in lyrics like “she likes cocaine/and flippin’ out with Great Danes”, as he did for “Got Me Under Pressure”, or that the entirety of “TV Dinners” is a spoof about microwave food we probably have not heard before or since this record. It all seems frivolous now, yet taken as a whole it refuses to be ignored. Simply put, Eliminator is a strange, stiff, extremely sexist, yet still fascinating beast of an album which should be put on occasionally as a reminder of just how truly discombobulated an era the early to mid-80’s really was. ONE SENTENCE RE-REVIEW: I'm not sure they ever made a record that was more or less like ZZ Top than this one…that is, until the next one!

Not a stop gap record. This stumbling jumble of Tex-Mex ridiculousness grows on you the more you dig into it.