ZZ Top - BBC In Concert, Donington Park, Castle Donington, Britain, 8-20-1983

ZZ Top is an American band that I imagine doesn't make it over to Europe that often. So it's not surprising that they've rarely performed for the BBC. As far as I know, there's just this concert in 1983 and a 2016 performance at the Glastonbury Festival. 2016 is way past their 1970s and 1980s prime, so I'm not really interested that. So that leaves us just this concert when it comes to ZZ Top meeting the BBC. It took place at the annual "Monsters of Rock" hard rock festival.

The good news is their BBC concert was well-timed. ZZ Top had boogied their way through the entire 1970s, but their best selling album had sold a million copies in the U.S. Then they put out "Eliminator" in 1983, unexpectedly mixing New Wave styled synthesizers with their usual blues rock. It was a massive success, selling eleven million copies in the U.S. alone. So it's not surprising that the BBC couldn't resist having them on the air.

The bad news is this is only a small portion of a long concert. Oftentimes, the BBC have edited concerts down from a typical hour and a half to an hour, but in this case, they edited a concert all the way down to a mere half-hour. The one lucky break is that when "Eliminator" got rereleased many years later, some bonus tracks were added, and three of them happened to be songs from this show that hadn't made it to the BBC broadcast. Those are the three songs at the start. With those added in, a 29 minute long recording extended to 41 minutes. 

Better, but still, I'm frustrated that we can't hear the whole thing. That's especially true because it seems that excellent sounding live recordings from ZZ Top after their 1983 commercial breakthrough seem surprisingly rare, at least until way after their prime. There's also surprisingly little officially released live music, with no live albums between 1980 and 2007. If any of you know of a worthy soundboard or FM bootleg in the 1983 to early 1990s range, let me know what it is and I'll post it here.

I'm also a bit frustrated, because while the sound quality is good, it's not excellent, like you'd normally expect from the BBC. That's even true for the first three songs, which I've mentioned have been officially released. But I've compared this with other bootlegs from 1983, and this at least beats all of them. That's probably why this show was chosen for those bonus tracks. 

One odd thing about the recording is that there is very little crowd noise at the ends of songs, even on the officially released ones. I considered adding in more applause, but I decided to just let it be.

There's a bonus track here that probably doesn't belong, but what the heck, I snuck it in anyway.It's a Freddie King blues song, "I Love the Woman," that the band never put on album and only rarely played in concert, so I figure it's worth at least bonus track status. It's from a concert in Dortmund, Germany, in 1982. A professional video was made of the concert, and I took the audio from that. Ironically, that means the bonus track arguably has the best sound quality of all the songs here.

01 I Got the Six (ZZ Top)
02 TV Dinners (ZZ Top)
03 Got Me Under Pressure (ZZ Top)
04 Gimme All Your Lovin' (ZZ Top)
05 Waitin' for the Bus (ZZ Top)
06 Jesus Just Left Chicago (ZZ Top)
07 Sharp Dressed Man (ZZ Top)
08 Party on the Patio (ZZ Top)
09 Tube Snake Boogie (ZZ Top)
10 La Grange (ZZ Top)
11 Tush (ZZ Top)

I Love the Woman (ZZ Top)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15943393/ZZTop_1983_BBInConcrtDonngtnParkCastlDonngtnBrtain__8-20-1983_atse.zip.html

Believe it or not, the cover photo comes from this exact concert... kind of. It was taken at this concert, but backstage, either before or after the show.