recapturing zz top

there was some interesting news from billboard last week, that zz top has signed with american recordings & will head into the studio with rick rubin in hopes of recapturing some of their early-seventies glory...it's hard not to be a little skeptical, especially after the trio has spent the past twenty years living off the slick grooves, canned drums, & cheesy (though admittedly awesome) music videos of their eighties heyday (turning out a dynamite performance in back to the future part 3 in the process, i might add)...still, it would be pretty cool if rubin could strip away all that glossy polish that's built up over the years, & turn out a dirty, bare bones, blues-rock record...kind of like the group's criminally underrated first album, which was recorded almost forty years ago, before the fully grown beards & cheap sunglasses, when zz top actually was just a lil' ol' band from texas...even better, why not just rerelease that record with the special treatment that tres hombres got from rhino a couple years ago...as of now, the only way to hear the original mix is on vinyl, so here are a couple rips.

download: zz top - (somebody else been) shaking your tree
download: zz top - brown sugar
download: zz top - goin' down to mexico