ZZ Top - Eliminator, Afterburner, REcycler

Let's start with a little background on what ZZ Top was. If you're like I was as a kid, you probably only know ZZ Top as the guys with the beards who are listed last on jukeboxes. Their legacy is oddly null, which is surprising because their history is rich and, for one world-beating period in the mid-1980s, undeniably fascist.

To understand what makes mid-1980s ZZ Top fascist, you have to understand that they existed as an earthy, somewhat heavy, workmanlike blues-rock three-piece in the 1970s. This was the Top incarnation that produced "La Grange," which boasts what has become the ultimate cliched guitar riff. Anyway, 1970s Top was solid but destined for a parenthetical legacy, like Mountain or Foghat. After all, "La Grange," their biggest hit in this era, only peaked at #41 on the charts.

Against this background, 1983's Eliminator was a revelation. They kept their heavy guitars, but organic drums were replaced by clinical synthesized blips, the songs got a glittery production sheen, and these middle-aged bearded guys started showing up on a nascent MTV as mysterious kingpins, singing about cocaine and Great Danes and often bestowing magic on young people with the help of a 1930s Ford (the "Eliminator" shown on the album cover).

That the Top so effortlessly transformed from roots bluesmen to crypto-pop stars, seizing establishment dominance in the process, was first-order fascist stuff. Why did they do that? How? Those questions would never be answered, nor asked. Rather, ZZ Top was unblinkingly welcomed into the pop firmament on the strength of a hugely successful string of singles (including the admirably literal and odd "Got Me Under Pressure" and "TV Dinners") and would release two more albums to more (though diminishing) commercial success before settling back into obscurity.

In addition to the musical coup d'etat, some fascist commendation is in order for the album titles: Eliminator, Afterburner, and Recycler. Generations have been satisfied with the explanation for the Eliminator album title being, "It's the name of the car." As explanations go, that's insane. The car didn't have to be on the cover. Even granting the cover to the car, it doesn't necessarily follow that they'd name the album after the car. Cars have names? Why were they messing with a 1930s Ford at all? Did it have significance other than being the magic car from the videos? Did they conceive of the videos before coming out with the album? Was the car, in fact, magic? So many questions, with the only clear fact being that the conventional explanation is no explanation at all. "Eliminator" was a consciously chosen word, and it's about the most fascist one they could have chosen. "Afterburner," I guess, is how the machine continues to operate even though freedom fighters have unplugged it. And "Recycler" is a similarly inscrutable title, eliciting a forboding, metallic sense of unstoppable automation and repetition. (It helps that the members of ZZ Top are presented on the album cover as shadowy thugs.)  Again, ZZ Top consciously selected each of these titles. No explanation seems to make sense except their desire to further their own fascist narrative. Which they did, to their lasting credit.