OTHER TECH

A music fanatic like yourself must have an iPod. Yep. I think the iPod is the convenience tool that liberates one from having to pull wagons full of heavy product down the street. Carrying around all of those CD cases got to be burdensome.

Has owning an iPod helped expose you to new music? Without question. We bought a second iPod, which became part of what we called the iPod pass-around game. There were six of us involved, including Jeff Beck, and the instructions were, "Load your favorites on here, then pass it around." It was the Month of Music Marathon - you had to return it in 30 days. Many things fresh and formerly not heard have now become favorites. I was surprised to find that "Hide and Seek," a track by Imogen Heap, a girl from London whom I was first exposed to a year ago, appeared six times. Six out of six participants included it, which got me wondering: what is it about certain kinds of music that ignites this common thread of attraction? Now I'm interested in the nano. I just got one for my little sweetie.

I just got one for my wife, too. My initial reaction is that it's almost too small. You could easily lose it. I also got her a tube of super glue with a tiny little keychain tab so she could actually keep track of the thing. [both laugh]

Add a letter to the end of your 1975 song about border radio, "Heard It on the X," and you get "Heard It on the XM." What do you think of satellite radio? That's a wonderful association you came up with there. For a band like ours that has 2 hours of performance and 22 hours of travel in any given day, to have the channels open to emerging music as we go down the road is a great thing. Back in the old days, I'd be driving through the desert, listening to a radio station that was fading in and out, and I'd stop the car and pull over on the shoulder to listen to the last few notes of a song before the signal was lost. Sometimes I'd even drive backwards to where the signal was stronger!

At your two shows in New York City this past November, I saw a lot of teenagers wearing ZZ Top T-shirts and singing along to all of your songs. How do you think they found out about your music? I think they're truly of the first generation where the parents' music is being totally embraced by the offspring. That gap seems to have been closed. You actually have the parents' music being played in the kids' rooms. You put all of these elements together, and you'll eventually hear some new sounds being created. When I walked down St. Marks Place [in New York City] the other day, I heard a Led Zeppelin song followed by some Crystal Method crunch. And I thought, "That's not all that far a stretch, really."

ZZ Top has been together for 35 years and counting without a personnel change. What's the secret? It's no secret. There are two reasons, actually: One, we love to do this more than anything else. And two, we're still not sure what else we'd be doing if we weren't doing this. Besides, we only know three chords.

You could always try to learn that fourth chord. [laughs] Right! See, there's always some kind of challenge waiting for us out there.

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