These are all the original mixes of the classic '70s ZZ Top catalog. For those of you not familiar with the history of these recordings:

Before 1987, ZZ Top's first 7 albums were not released on the CD format. So, in 1987, to capitalize on the success of the synth and drum machine laden sound of Eliminator and Afterburner, Warner Bros Records convinced the band to go back into the studio and remix the back catalog for a 3-disc compilation of six albums, entitled "Six Pack."

Longtime fans of the band who had been listening to them on vinyl for years were very shocked when they updated their collections to CD. These new mixes were terrible. The albums that fans of ZZ Top had grown to love every nuance of for years were no longer the same - gone was the rawness of what made classic ZZ Top what it was - replaced instead with fake, overly polished, annoying sounding drums and everything was drowned in a sea of cavernous reverb. Some vocal lines and guitar parts were even re-recorded or alternate takes were used (in some cases with different lyrics), and a few songs were even shortened in order to jam two albums of material onto each disc.

Fortunatly, the band's sixth album, 1979's Degüello was spared this treatment due to a dispute with Elmore James' estate over the lisencing of the cover song "Dust My Broom." This album was left off of the "Six Pack," and replaced with the band's seventh album "El Loco," which was also spared the remix treatment, presumably because it was relatively new at the time. After the dispute with James' Estate was settled, Degüello was eventually released on CD with it's original mix intact. The 6 albums released on the "Six Pack" were also issued seperately on their own CDs, but unfortunatly they used the remixed versions from the "Six Pack," and not the original mixes.

Unfortunatly, the original versions of these great albums have been unavailable on CD for all of these years, with one exception: 1977's "The Best Of ZZ Top" was released on CD, and this did contain the original mixes. Finally, in 2003, a 4 CD box set "Chome, Smoke & BBQ" was released, which contained an abundance of these classic '70s recordings remastered in their original mixes for the first time on CD. The majority of each of these classic albums were included on the box set, but unfortunatly a few tracks from each album were left off.

In 2006, two of these albums, "Tres Hombres" and "Fandango!," were remastered (from the original master tapes of the original mixes) and released by Rhino Records. That leaves hope that the damage that was done to these albums will finally be corrected, however, as of late 2008, "ZZ Top's First Album," "Rio Grande Mud," and "Tejas" have still not been scheduled for release on CD in their original mixes.

In my attempt to finally be able to listen to these albums they were originally meant to sound, I have spent a lot of time compiling the best sources in order to make the original mixes available to everyone else whose ears were also offended by the terrible '80s butchering of these classic albums.

Included for download are the 2006 remasters of Tres Hombres and Fandango!, as well as a CD rip of 1979's Degüello, which luckily had never recieved the remix treatment.

For the other 3 albums, I have sourced the majority of the tracks from the "Chrome, Smoke & BBQ" CDs, but unfortunatly every song from these albums was not included on that box set. The songs that were not included on the box are sourced from high quality vinyl rips from the original London Records LPs.

In order to make listening to the albums seemless and not painfully obvious that there are multiple sources, I have used the Steinberg FreeFilter Direct-X plugin. With the plugin, I captured the EQ profile of both the CD sourced tracks and the vinyl tracks, and then I applied the EQ profile of the CD sourced tracks to the vinyl tracks. I also used the Waves L2 Limiter to make the vinyl sourced tracks the same volume as the CD sourced tracks. This makes all of the songs sound like they are from the same source, and you can listen to an entire album continually and not notice a difference in sound quality.

Another thing to note: In the case of "Backdoor Love Affair" from ZZ Top's First Album, I used the CD version from 1977's Greatest Hits (but I did EQ and limit it just like the vinyl tracks, for continuity).

So, now are finally album to hear these classic 1970's ZZ Top albums as originally intended. Enjoy!