Blessed are those who find their calling early in life, grow pointy, abdominal-length beards and sing dirty, swampy songs about hot rods and beautiful women.
ZZ Top lead singer Billy Gibbons acknowledged the Texas band's longevity Friday night after the final note of "I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide," before a big, comfortable crowd at the Mississippi Valley Fair on a mild evening.
"Some of you've known us for a long time. Some of you haven't," Gibbons said with his deep-as-a-well voice that's as gruff as endless pots of black coffee and a nicotine habit can get it. "And guess what? It's the same three guys, playing the same three chords. And we've been playing the same songs for 35 years."
And he pulled away from the microphone cackling, drafting his head from side-to-side with a big smile on his face. The Davenport crowd, which hadn't seen the group play on the Iowa side of the Quad-Cities since it played with KISS in 1974 at Palmer Auditorium, couldn't have accepted the revelation any better.
The grizzled bluesmen played the hits as well as they ever had, saving the holy trinity of "Gimme All Your Lovin,'" "Sharp Dressed Man" and "Legs" for the final 10 minutes of the one-hour main set. With almost four decades of work banked up, Gibbons, bassist Dusty Hill and drummer Frank Beard could have made the night sufficient using any number of pick-em set lists.
Opener "Got Me Under Pressure" and "Pearl Necklace" had the kind of sharp-tongued guitar licks flying from Gibbons' side of the stage that could have ignited a charcoal grill and cooked a rack of quarter-pound burgers in record time.
Gibbons and Hill, resplendent in matching red-sequined blazer jackets, broke into their synchronized, junior high dance shuffle . swinging their neon green guitars in-step and moving slowly like a couple suave and prowling alien beings. Its simplicity was somehow theatrical and exciting. They transferred their weight from foot-to-foot and their strawberry orange beards would whip up with the light summer breeze, pointing like weather vanes to the west.
Gibbons went into a convoluted soliloquy about bearing different crosses in life before laying out a hot rendition of "Cheap Sunglasses" that came with a smattering of lights that covered the trio in kaleidoscopic statements, needing all 64 crayons to do it.
They owned everything they did, from the shades and the choreography, to the taut, rehearsed end stops to songs and the fuzzy white guitars. They personified the image that they've never wavered from . that of three hombres dead serious in their hard living with all the trappings and their hard rocking with a gritty, well-worn formula.
Elvis made two appearances in the show, once midway through with long-time staple cover "Viva Las Vegas" and in the first song of the encore, "Jailhouse Rock." A smashing go of "Tush" ended the night.
Sean Moeller can be contacted at (563) 383-2288 or at smoeller@qctimes.com.