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Saturday, April 12, 2014

Cusp Song of the Day: Tush




I bought the ZZ Top album Fandango in 1975 in part because it contained the song "Tush," the last song on Side 2. Unfortunately, being alphabetically last in my collection worked against the album: the shelves in my first apartment abutted a hot water pipe that served the building, and Fandango ended up molded to that pipe, an arc rather than a disc.

"Tush" makes an appearance in Cusp at Tommy's Tavern, the bar where underaged drinking was the fuel that greased the cash registers and kept the overaged drinkers coming back.

"We sit at the tall round table closest to the door, the two of us and five guys. They seem as happy to see us as we are to be with them. We make small talk about the holidays, catch up on how a couple of the guys’ baseball team, the Cunning Linguists, did during the baseball season, which seems like a million years ago. The jukebox plays countryish stuff like “Tush” by ZZ Top and old hits like Elvis’ “Can’t Help Falling in Love” from the time when the regulars were our age. It has two versions of Neil Sedaka’s “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,” from then and now. It’s like a big rainbow-shaped AM radio station/time machine."