So I went to see ZZTop last night at another vineyard, this one was a fair way out off towards Livermore. The make up of the land round here is interesting you have areas that are massively built up like the bay area but go slightly out of that and suddenly it’s empty scrub land as far as the eye can see with only broken pickup trucks and old falling down barns indicating any human habitation. Then get over the next hill and it’s grape vines for miles.
Anyway I got to the Vineyard fairly easilly and wandered to my seat. This setup was mostly a sort of meal and a concert affair but I was too cheap to pay the extra for a meal so I was sitting way at the back in the terrace with the rest of the cheap skates. Even so the seat were not bad for view I was center front row and the terrace was raised so we had a very good view over the Jackarses who decide to stand up and dance obscuring everyone elses view. Anyway there was no warmup act just right in on ZZtop which was pretty good.
Those guys have a really great sound for only a three piece band sometimes it can feel a bit empty without some extra backing but they make up for lack of instruments with sheer volume. They played a great set some blues some tracks I didn’t know a few I did and even a Jimi Hendrix cover.
The venue was both good and bad it was a nice layout and seemed well set up but there were loads of insects so I was getting eaten alive intially which was unpleasant.
They had some pretty good lighting it was easy to see the guys on stage they did have this smoke machine which either by design or by mistake made it look like the drum kit was on fire I’m not sure how the drummer (The man with no beard, Frank Beard) could see what he was doing most of the time.
The band were excellent it was a pleasure to watch them perform they have been doing this for quite (as the man himself Billy Gibbons said “four decades same three guys same three chords” 
) they really know how to put on a show and they can play some really intricate stuff. Some of the lead ins to songs Gibbons would just mess about on the guitar for a bit. They knew how to work the crowd and it was a great time.
Heading back was a slog as always with these events it takes a while to leave the carpark and then the small roads round the vineyard were clogged up. It also didn’t help that they were redoing the interstate I drove in on so I had to drive 3 miles in the wrong direction before I could facing the right direction then the road became one lane.
Anyway it was a great show and well worth the trip. Later this week I have Kihncert 2010 which has lynyrd skynyrd, blue oyster cult, and the greg kihn band so that should be good.
