Popular Culture Review Vol. 2, No. 2, July 1991 | Page 85

ZZTop and the Regional Lyric Poetry of Texas

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an angel pulled me aside.
The rhythm and music give the song an almost hymn-like
quality, but the phrase "it felt like a blow" is a amazing conflation of
meanings suggesting not only religious experience but also violence and
sexuality.
The songs on the Tres Hombres album fuse Christian imagery
with language suggesting drugs, prostitution, and violence to create a
hardened, streetwise version of religion. In McDonald's "High Plains
Orchards," tornadoes "swirl down out of clouds black as bibles," and
the poem "Dust Devils" marries the harsh landscape with "the
spirit of peace":
Here is where heaven starts,
wind like the spirit of peace
blowing sand in our eyes
for weeks. Spring on the plains
is a month of static and storms
without clouds, the blustery days
dry as fields fallow all winter,
the sand like our own souls
naked, harrowed and seedless,
waiting to be given wings.
The poem is an extraordinary example of how McDonald grafts
together beauty and harshness. McDonald suggests that feeling the
plains wind on your face is simultaneously rapturous—the mystery of
perceiving "the spirit of peace"~and painful—the stinging, gritty
whip of a sandstorm drawing tears. The sand itself is "like our own
souls / naked," waiting for the promised day of resurrection. There is
bitter irony here, but the harshness of the irony is thoroughly woven
into the beautiful fabric of the stark landscape. The sublime and the
painfully real are so intertwined that one cannot be experienced
without the other. A similar effect is achieved in ZZTop's song
"Precious and Grace." Images such as "the lambs,” "Precious and
Grace," "Good God Almighty," and "supernatural delight" lend the
song a certain religious tone, but the lyrics are literally about drugs
and prostitution. Once again, the song is more than a simple parody
of Christian ideas; it bonds the preciousness and grace of God with
the grim picture of urban street life.