EDMONTON - Last time I saw ZZ Top, not only was beer being served, but beer was being spilled, flung around and hurled into the air.

A whole lot of marijuana was being smoked. Fights broke out. People were making out.

It was outdoors. For a crowd both bad and nationwide, the mythical magic hotrod of the very last classic rock band of the alphabet had plenty of room to roar.

Good gig, I think.

That's why it was so weird to see these legendary Texas troubadours from the point of view of the soft seats of the Jubilee Auditorium, soon to be home to The Nutcracker -- which isn't the title of ZZ Top's next album.

This is the price of getting old, I guess. Bush parties given way to a night at the symphony, even if it's just a three-piece orchestra of rockin', ballsy, bluesy goodness.

Observers needn't have worried. This 40-year-old band delivered a powerful show last night, more suited to an arena than a theatre.

Many of the 2,600 fans who turned up didn't even use their soft seats.

While a video screen showed spark plugs, wrenches, wheels, road cases and other automotive paraphernalia, the show was packed with classic rock hits, performed with typical verve and plenty of eccentric, all-out guitar solos from Billy Gibbons.

They opened full throttle with Under Pressure, backed it off a bit for Waitin' for the Bus, set the night to cruise, took a few side roads, bumped through a version of Hendrix's Foxy Lady and held in reserve the musical nitro charges guaranteed to send the crowd over the top.

You know them, you love them: La Grange, Tush, Tube Snake Boogie, Legs.

Generally speaking, all of ZZ Top's songs are about sex, unless they're about cars, in which case they're metaphors for sex.

The topics these bearded wonders sing of hold up today. It remains true that every woman is crazy about a sharp-dressed man, that if the girl on the hill won't do it, her sister will, and if you are looking for some tush, downtown is usually the best place to go.

And when the big fuzzy guitars came out, you know all bets are off.

It helped that the volume was set at a level where one's scalp vibrated like a bowl of scrambled eggs in an earthquake, while the intimate venue allowed listeners to hear previously hidden subtleties in the music of ZZ Top.

Ha! Just kidding.

There's nothing subtle about this band, nothing subtle about this show. It was a solid wall of straight-ahead, bare-bones, basic rock 'n' roll.

Some folks found it a wee bit too loud, complained about the absurdity of staging rock shows in the Jube, but they were in the minority.

Most of the fans gyrated and boogied and happily had their eardrums blown out. What fun. The turbo-disco stomp of Legs shook the rafters.

The encore was even louder, featuring Tube Snake Boogie, a convoluted version of La Grange and the song probably everyone hear came to hear: Tush.

Very little has changed in 40 years, save for the colour of the hair, length of the beards and the price of the concert tickets.

Sure, there's some newer material, some filler, and most of it just plows along on one, two, sometimes even three chords like everything else.

Gibbons, bassist Dusty Hill and drummer Frank Beard haven't changed their basic sound one bit -- putting them into the league of Timeless Rockers Unaffected by Prevailing Trends, along with AC/DC.

As singer Billy Gibbons put it following a spirited rendition of I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide, "Same three guys right here ... And same three chords, that's right."

He was reacting to a fan in the front row who was waving a vinyl copy of the band's 1973 album, Tres Hombres (rough translation: the three amigos) -- "Man, that's old," Billy said -- which the band members graciously signed right then and there.

They stopped the show and everything.

The man was clearly touched, and it got him talking beyond the usual drawling Texas gibberish he says to get the crowd going.

Gibbons admitted that ZZ Top is just a rock band that "learned how to play from the blues guys."

They were "interpreters," he added.

This explains -- and forgives -- a few things: like how they stole all their riffs from John Lee Hooker. And the ridiculous beards came from Charlie Daniels, of course.