Raised with one foot firmly planted in Latin Jazz and Afro-Cuban music and the other foot planted in soul and R&B, Poncho Sanchez has long enthralled listeners, dancers and party goers with his innately soulful brand of Latin Jazz. That was OK for Afterburner, since it was released at the tail-end of the new wave era, but on every album since, they retained the steady click track, even as they stripped away the synthesizers. The problem was, the massive success of Eliminator made ZZ Top reluctant to abandon that sound. They suggested this even before 1983's Eliminator, but that record was a bizarre, unpredictable masterstroke after all, nobody would have predicted that a blend of Texas blues-rock and new wave drum machines would work, let alone flourish.

The real problem is that the band long ago sacrificed organic rhythms for a steady synthesized pulse. So why does ZZ Top sound so stiff and useless on XXX, a record celebrating their 30th anniversary? Part of it could be that the songwriting is decidedly weak, but a band as seasoned as ZZ Top should be able to make third-rate material at least listenable. King and the Rolling Stones, have aged gracefully, albeit in varying degrees. After all, countless blues-based musicians, from Lightnin' Hopkins and Muddy Waters to B.B. “ Theoretically, aging wouldn't be that difficult of a trick for ZZ Top to pull off, since the little ol' band from Texas is thoroughly grounded in the blues, an ageless music that can sound equally good from the young and old alike.

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