The gospel according to ZZ Top…
4/22/2003 11:11 AM
We only had one way to see videos in the small burg of East Troy. It was “Friday Night Videos” Friday nights 11 pm. I would stay up late on Fridays reading...Waiting for the magic hour. Make no bones about it the show did SUCK. But I tell you there are certain sounds that get your heart racing. Next to the Family Feud theme nothing strikes me to the core than that 3-chord intro to FNV. BWAHH! BHWANT! BRRRRUMMMmmm… My anticipation and the 4 Cokes I drank waiting for the show to start made my heart murmur. Initially it used to be an hour, which meant at most you got about 25 or so videos. At the most and those were usually the ones they ran from the week before…Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Duran Duran and the staple…the Michael Jordan of 80’s videos. ZZ Top. Now I was never a ZZ Top fan but for a short time I really thought ZZ Top was the center of the “Cool Universe”…They were dusty, old, biker men but I’m telling you. Chicks dug them. Slutty, made-up, 80’s chicks. Chicks that I wanted to dig me. I mean obviously they had something going on. Every one of those women wanted to get in that car. Today we bitch about how shallow Backstreet Boys, Brittney Spears and Christina Aguilera are. Let me tell you, true believers…we weren’t much different. If I was a dad back then and seeing those videos I would have flipped too knowing that my daughter was headed to a ZZ Top show and may wind up in that car. Because let me tell you the ratio of women to men in that car was 3 to 1 and I’m pretty sure one of the women drove while everyone else banged in the back seat. I didn’t love ZZ Top but let me tell you I spent hours throwing a ball against the firehouse wall praying that little red bang wagon would roll up and take me away to sexual nirvana. Because I was an awkward male teenage with 0 self-confidence and according to videos that was all those women were in search of. If that were the qualifications then I’ve god the Golden Frigging Ticket. Then by the time they are through having hours of meaningless sex with you they throw you out on the street and you are now Johnny Cool, self confident and smooth. And the sweet girl you were interested in is completely turned on by you. When in all actuality if this scenario REALLY happened she would be so disgusted by you because not only are you an awkward teenage boy but apparently you are all for jumping into the car of a stranger and having hours of anonymous sex with the ZZ Top sluts. Is it any wonder that 98% of the men of my generation are so screwed up by sex? This is the image of intimacy that a lot of us were sold on. I’m not completely pushing off my intimacy problems on ZZ Top. But I can’t neglect the fact either. My rant has taken a bit of a meandering route…my apologies. But such are the life lessons that I gleaned from my middle school years of watching FNV. I give ZZ Top credit because as empty and shallow as their videos were at least they gave a moments thought to a story for it. To this day I have no idea what “Hungry Like The Wolf” is about according to the video. And apparently to my skewed video influenced reality besides ZZ Top only make up wearing, heavily costumed British men were having any luck with the ladies so really it was more likely for me to count on the ZZ Top scenario because I wasn’t British, well funded or the only make up I would be able to lay my hands on would be my sisters Dr. Pepper flavored lip smacker. Besides if I had been daring enough to flirt with eye liner the my peers, the violent youth culture of East Troy, would be sure to beat it from me. MTV eventually made it to the cable waves of East Troy. But my Mom would never approve of such a thing. “Pay for TV?...ridiculous. We can watch ‘All Creatures Great And Small for free on PBS”(its really no wonder I am the dork that I am). FNV felt the pain and eventually got cut to a half hour giving you maybe 12 videos…if you were lucky. Followed immediately by “America’s Top 10 Video Countdown” hosted by Casey Kassem. I didn’t know what was cool but I was pretty sure if a 50-year-old deejay was telling me what was cool than it was cool then it was cool about a year ago. But a lot of my friends got it and it was enough of a video fix to keep me in the know of what was going on in popular music with out the phrase “and now…back to the countdown” following it. I can only hope the signal goes on into the deep reaches of space and the first notes of human existence will be announced with the opening power chords of Friday Night Videos…”BWAHH! BHWANT! BRRRRUMMM!…Tonight on Friday Night Videos…ZZ Top”.