MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: Z.Z. TOP - GOIN' 50

They may be celebrating 50 years, but we all know not much happened after the '80's. And while all five of their albums after that get a token cut on this 18-track best-of, they are at the end so those buyers scratching their heads can ignore them. It's no surprise that the meat of the collection comes from the band's glory days in the '80's, when they were discovered by the MTV generation, with the beards and spinning guitars and "Legs" and all that.

Too bad more room wasn't devoted to the group's better days in the '70's, when they were kings of Texas boogie, John Lee Hooker fronting a rock band. The great "La Grange" and "Tush" are included, but that's it from the superior Tres Hombres-Fandango!-Tejas period. Thankfully there was room for two cuts from 1979's Deguello album, the wonderfully amusing "Cheap Sunglasses" and "I"m Bad, I'm Nationwide." They were truly a funny group in those days, in a skewed way, not the cheap laughs of "Sharp Dressed Man" and the winking sexism of "Legs."

There are decent cuts from that era, notably "Velcro Fly" and the atypical ballad "Rough Boy." But multi-million success saw the band lose the plot, and if you haven't paid attention the last 25 years, you haven't missed much. Instead of going for the hour-long single album collection, I'd spend the extra ten bucks and get the three-album version, which has a full hour of the first decade's material.