Tortoise Skip the ZZ Top Section at Amoeba Records

Posted on Nov 12th 2009 4:00PM by Benjy Eisen
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It's impossible as all heck to try to pin down Tortoise's sound, so just what the heck do the guys in the band listen to for fun? Bassist Doug McCombs and drummer John Herndon were caught shopping at Amoeba Records lately and bared the contents of their shopping bags for Amoeba's film crew. Interestingly, both band members separately purchased the vinyl edition of Earthless' 'Live at Roadburn.'

"I bought this live record because they were on my mind, because we're playing a show with them tomorrow," says McCombs. "Earthless kind of reminds me of Jimi Hendrix playing with the Wipers." Realizing that he didn't have a single Hendrix album, McCombs then added 'Axis: Bold as Love' to his cart. Herndon remained silent about his own Hendrix collection, but in addition to Earthless, he purchased albums by Madlib, Skream and the Plasmatics.

Turns out, their vinyl shopping doesn't really clarify anything about Tortoise's alluring but elusive sound. However, we do learn this tasty bit, at least: McCombs claims to own every single ZZ Top album ever released. Yeah, you can continue scratching your head.