ZZ Top: A Tribute From Friends
Various Artists
(Show Dog Universal Music)

That Little ol’ Band from Texas has given us so much catchy blues rock over the years with their funny brand of cool that make tribute albums to ZZ Top are inevitable. I mean really, who wouldn’t want to try their hand at a “haw, haw, hawing” through “La Grange?”

The latest tribute album, ZZ Top: A Tribute from Friends, has some good stuff on it. Duff McKagan’s Loaded’s take on “Got Me Under Pressure” is an exciting hard-to-sit-still-while-you-listen rock track, but the best song on the compilation is “Sharp Dressed Man” performed by M.O.B., a supergroup made up of Fleetwood Mac drummer Mick Fleetwood and bass guitarist John McVie with Steven Tyler and Jonny Lang. The screaming vocals are awesome and the guitars are fast and hard. (Let’s hope they record an entire rock album together.) Nickelback’s amped up version of “Legs” is familiar to the original in a good way. The rest of the album is filled in with music spanning the enjoyable to forgettable range by rock bands Wolfmother, Daughtry, Filter, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, metal band Mastodon, progressive rockers Coheed and Cambria, country musician Jamey Johnson, and Wyclef Jean.

It’s fun to hear good covers of songs you already love, especially if you happen to be in a hometown bar drinking cheap beer with the people you grew up with. If you have to settle for the next-best thing, there are a few tracks on here to add to your playlist before you kick back with a six-pack and get started on that beard you know you always wanted to grow.