Zed Zed Top Complete Studio albums (6-10-2013)

The biggest boogie band on planet earth? Probably these Texan rockers I'd say.
Just arriving through the door will be this box set  recently issued by Rhino/Warners that has the first ten albums (Self titled to Recycler) by the band seing them through classic blues boogie to their synthesizer reborn era of the mid 80's.

What makes this set particularly appealing  even though the discs are held in just card replica sleeves in a card outer box is that for the first time every album from Z Z Tops first album through Tejas will be issued in their original mixes on cd for the very first time.
In the early cd era (1987) Warners and Bill Ham, ZZ Tops producer, decided to issue  6 early albums in a 3 cd set called the ZZ Top Six pack back to back and the replaced the original drumming with a machine and edited a number of the songs.
In the opinion of many fans making 70's songs sound mid 80's in this way was beyond a travesty and even when separate cd issues were done these mixes remained in print although in 2006 Fandango! and Tres Hombres were remastered from the original recordings with bonus tracks but Rhino didn't follow though until now.
For years fans made do with their original London and later Warners re-issue vinyl with some even digitizing them and making available as unlicensed downloads

This is how they look in the box. Note how they look like small scale vinyl lps with Tres Hombres and Tejas being gatefolds.
For this set the mastering from 2008 of Eliminator and 2006's Fandango are used, slightly altered clones are used of the original Deguello and El Loco masterings and straight re-issues of Afterburner and Recycler with the remainder freshly mastered.

As you can see on the rear of the box is a list of the albums with song information and a thumbnail of each album.
For the modest £22 including mailing  it simply has to be the best news in eons for digital fans of this band.