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High Voltage Rock & Roll!!!


Big Al

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Lately I've had a SERIOUS jones for the no-nonsense balls-out grit & crunch of AC/DC! For my money, nobody hits the raw nerve of rock like these guys, especially when Bon Scott was the lead screamer....er, singer! Double-entendres out the wazoo, delivered with a devilish sense of humor that a lot of today's self-obsessed grunge whiners could learn a lot from.

And there's a lot of people who dig Angus Young's fiery lead guitar, but you know who my favorite's always been? His brother Malcolm! Man, NOBODY can play a rhythm guitar like this guy. This guy sounds like Chuck Berry with the amp cranked to 20! If it weren't for Malcolm, we wouldn't have those unforgettable riffs from "It's a Long Way to the Top," "The Jack," "Highway to Hell," etc. Teamed with his brother, these guys put together one of the most ferocious twin-guitar attacks I've ever heard.

Not only that, they are the ONLY rock group that has literally scared the shit outta me. True story: 1978, I was 8 years old, and my cousin took me to the mall to pick up his brother and sister from the ice rink. We walked by the record store, and there in all it's bloody gory...er, glory is If You Want Blood, You've Got It. (This was before I knew what special effects were). Man, that cover frightened the hell outta me. Years later, I found out the record inside was just as ferocious! What I would've given to see those guys live back then. :excited::excited::excited:

This is not to diminish or short-change latter-day Brian Johnson AC/DC. But there was something special about the Bon years. Something I can't really describe. But I do like it that 25+ years later, they're still kicking ass left and right.

Oh yeah, one other thing: "Ride On," baby. Beautiful.

Anyone else?

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Guest Mnytime

Did you know they recently reissued their early recordings, I believe through Back in Black with new remasterings? I haven't picked them up yet but have been told they really sound excellent. Overall I prefer Bon Scott as well but my favorite AC/DC release is still Back in Black.

Edited by Mnytime
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Saw them on the Rock & Roll H of F ceremonies the other night. Still kicking ass, though I thought it was a HORRIBLE decision to let Steven Tyler (who inducted them) sing with them. The more I see Tyler, the more annoying I find him. I used to think he was a pretty cool guy ... oh, well ... :D

They've never been a favorite of mine, but I respect them for persevering this long!

Edited by mikeb
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I much prefer Brian Johnson. Bon Scott was dead long before I had my first cassette tape, so the AC/DC I grew up with was the Brian Johnson version. I've heard plenty of both, and I think Brian has a stronger voice, more power in it. I like that. "Back in Black" is an absolute classic. "The Razor's Edge" is also a favorite of mine, as is the 2-disc "AC/DC Live" that was released not long after "The Razor's Edge."

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YEAH. No bout a doubt it. These guys fuckin' ROCK! For raw, uninhibited, blues-based 3 chord sludge-rock, no one does it better than these guys.

Like Vibes, my awareness of AC/DC started at Back in Black, with Brian Johnson at the mic. I worked back to Highway to Hell and some other Bon-led earlier stuff. A favorite of mine is the Dirty Deeds album, and a few years forward to For Those About to Rock, whose title track is KILLER with the volume at 11.

I go through phases with them. I'll buy a few cds, listen to them for a week, and then not return to them for years. Thanks to the Great Al, I feel a phase comin' on right now!!

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AC/DC write great, evil-sounding, sexually provocative songs that instantly turn you back into a fist-pounding, hormone-raging teenager when you hear it cranked up! Power-chord craftsman who keep it simple and to the point. No philosophical meanderings, just ass-kicking slash-n-burn. Both eras are great, IMO, but I lost interest for a little while in the Phil Rudd-less years. That bald drummer on the double Live album is pretty good, but he's no Phil Rudd. I'm really glad he's back.

Of the new remasters, I've only picked up Highway To Hell. It totally delivers! Only selected titles have been released so far, with more to follow in April and May. Hard to believe the stuff Mutt Lange is writing/producing with Shania when you hear his stamp on AC/DC. All killer, no filler!

I must agree that Steven Tyler almost ruined AC/DC's set at the RNRHOF ceremony. I think he's just enthusiastic, but they are different bags.

I really got started listening to them with Back In Black, when I was 15. Some of my fondest memories are being in the back seat of a high-school buddy's '73 Cutlass in the high school parking lot, stoned out of my brain, totally blown away by Brian Johnson's scream of "FIRE!!!!" echoing into outer-space during the part of "For Those About To Rock" when the tempo goes into overdrive. Oh, I can just close my eyes and I'm transported.

They kick so much ass, they will continue to blow teenage minds for years to come!

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Yes, "enthusiastic" would be a good word ... though there is just something inherently wrong with ST singing on "Every Breath You Take" by The Police. :blink: Guess you couldn't leave him out since it WAS the jam session portion of the evening.

Getting back on topic, I always enjoyed the AC/DC tune "Heatseeker", though I would suspect that true fans might flame me for that. :g For some reason, I get the idea that might have been the band's "sell out" phase ... or it might be viewed that way by some.

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My brother killed heavy metal for me. If he doesn't have a copy of every heavy metal cd ever printed I would be suprised and I heard it so much growing up it got so I couldn't stand to hear it anymore. After years of jazz listening metal sounds less sophisticated than it did when I was a kid.

That said, among the few bands I could still listen to of all that 80s metal would be Black Sabbath/Ozzy and AC/DC. My friend does pyro for lots of heavy metal bands including Ozzy and AC/DC, so I've actually seen them both live from backstage which was interesting.

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After years of jazz listening metal sounds less sophisticated than it did when I was a kid.

You said it. Although I never cared for the basic metal stuff anyway, except for Black Sabbath when I was in my teens. If I'm in the mood for gut wrenching rock, I'd rather hear early Blue Oyster Cult or Led Zeppelin. Maybe Pretty Things. I dunno...AC/DC was really kind of "after my time", and I feel that it's a group that, if you don't have the nostalgia angle working for you, it seems awfully simple minded. Even the stuff I did listen to I rarely touch these days...

Edited by Jazzmoose
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I was just going to quote the same line as Jazzmoose. Recently I was out in Cali visiting a friend, and for some driving music we decided to go with Iron Maiden. That was my favorite metal band at the end of the 80's, but after listening to guitarists like Scofield, Metheny and Mclaughlin, the boys from Maiden sound pretty weak. Granted, the album we chose wasn't their greatest, but still it seemed so much more involved back in the day. (Must have been the weed!) Still, I'm glad I've got some metal in me!

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No question about it--any hard rock or metal band sounds WAY unsophisticated compared to the music of our jazz heroes. I'd take Billie Holiday over Ozzy, and I'd take Tal Farlow over Eddie Van Halen.

Still, at times I have this jones to just rock out, and that cannot be satisfied by jazz. Hard Rock and HM are meant to be simple-minded and unsophisticated. They appeal to the organs in between, not always to our minds, necessarily. But can't we say the same about blues?

Just because a type of music is not harmonically or rhythmically complex (and HM sometimes is) doesn't mean it's without value or purpose or function. Are Duchamp's Urinal and Bottle Hanger any less artistic because they are everyday objects, and rather drab ones, too? Hard Rock and HM are blues and R&B on 11. All it is is giving a pre-existing art form another purpose or value or function, intricacy and sophistication be damned.

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Listened to High Voltage, Let There Be Rock, and Powerage all day today. Is it safe to say that not only does nobody do it better than AC/DC, but nobody else has that sound? I mean, 25 years later and still going strong, and their sound hasn't changed all that much. Which is a GOOD thing!

Parkertown hit it right on the nose. There's something about what the sound of those crunchy riffs does to ya, you just wanna crank it up, pedal to the floor, screamin' at the top of yer lungs, and to hell with all the other idiots on the road! :excited:

And make no mistake, I really dig the Brian Johnson era. He does the old songs proud, and makes 'em fit right in with the newer stuff with that ear-splitting glass-shattering backbone-crunching shriek of his. For my money, Fly on the Wall is one underrated ground-shaker.

Plus, are these guys as humble as they come across as? On the RNRHOF ceremony, they didn't have much to say, just some simple thank-yous & stuff (I thought it was cool that Bon's nephews were on stage with them). But did you get the idea that they were thinking, "Yeah this is nice; when do we get to play again?"

Rock and roll ain't noise pollution indeed!!!

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No question about it--any hard rock or metal band sounds WAY unsophisticated compared to the music of our jazz heroes....Still, at times I have this jones to just rock out, and that cannot be satisfied by jazz. Hard Rock and HM are meant to be simple-minded and unsophisticated. They appeal to the organs in between, not always to our minds, necessarily. But can't we say the same about blues?

HM still serves a purpose in my life!

I too have debated the sophistication of jazz (now) vs. the youthful times spent with HM. But I think there is a primal rawness that HM contains and allows me to tap into that jazz does not. I listened to metal before jazz and it was cathartic at 12-13 years of age, just going into high school.

Now I can only really take Back in Black, some Sabbath (Master of Reality and Paranoid, and maybe solo Ozzie) and as for Zep, now only Physical Graffitti. And this is after a few beers and maybe a hard day. Metal is very necessary and I am suprsied that in my mid 30s the need is still there.

I think the blues is something different entirely. Blues is universal in its own right, however I think it lacks the association that some of us North Americans find in metal (car stereos, various finger salutes, basement rec-rooms, weed, long hair, hating preppies).

When I now need to kick out the jams or purge myself it is most likely with Fugazi or Husker Du

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Big Al touched on it...their music is the essence of simplicity, and yet....it doesn't seem boring, like listening to the Ramones(Sorry! I like a few of their songs a lot, but a whole album....) There is just a ton of energy in their recordings, you can tell they just flat out like to rock! I came to them late, wasn't all that impressed with what I had heard(Just a few songs) until I heard "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" come across my radio in the Mid 80's (Imagine turning away from some crap Milli Vanilli track and hearing this! :excited: ) Just read at Allmusic about Dirty Deeds Originally released in 1975, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap did not hit the U.S. until 1981 I grew to love Bon Scott's singing more than Brian Johnson, but still liked them. Plus, how can you not like a group with two songs with balls in the title? (SHE'S GOT BALLS, and BIG BALLS) And, though I did not hear but two tracks off of their last cd, Stiff Upper Lip, one track Satellite Blues, sounded as good as anything they ever did IMO.

For all the jazz snobs here,(Jazzmoose, shame!) some non-snobbish lyrics for ya!

I'm [ever | rather] upper class high society

God's gift to ballroom notoriety

I always fill my ballroom

The event is never small

The social pages say I've got

The biggest balls of all

CHORUS:

I've got big balls

I've got big balls

And they're such big balls

Dirty big balls

And he's got big balls

And she's got big balls

But we've got the biggest balls of them all

And my balls are always bouncing

My ballroom always full

And everybody cums and cums again

If your name is on the guest list

No one can take you higher

Everybody says I've got

Great balls of fire

CHORUS

Some balls are held for charity

And some for fancy dress

But when they're held for pleasure

They're the balls that I like best

My balls are always bouncing

To the left and to the right

It's my belief that my big balls

Should be held every night

CHORUS

And I'm just itching to tell you about them

Oh we had such wonderful fun

Seafood cocktail, crabs, crayfish...

Ball sucker

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These guys were/are the kings of double-entendres!!!

Yesterday morning, I had the house to myself, and took the three AC/DC CD's mentioned earlier, plugged in the guitar and tried to play like Malcolm Young. Man, how does something so simple-sounding become so difficult to play? And the temptation to veer off the rhythm track is almost unquenchable. But I tell ya, you get locked in a groove like "Down Payment Blues" and the effect is nothing short of hypnotic! Wheeeeeeee!

"Dirty Deeds" was my first AC/DC record, too! My favorite on that record is "Ride On."

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These guys were/are the kings of double-entendres!!!

Yes, double-entendres falling from the sky!!

Honorable mention must be made, however, of Deep Purple's "Knocking at Your Back Door". For my money, this song is the most entertaining of clever rock smut. I laugh my ass off whenever I hear it.

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HELL'S BELLES!!! Saw this female AC/DC tribute band Saturday night, and were they ever SMOKIN'!!! I was a little skeptical, but they've got plenty of hype up here in the NW, and they knew how to deliver. Right down to the Brian Jones strut. And the person playing Angus NAILED it!! Right down to the one-handed solo on "Dirty Deeds". These girls threw energy off the stage all night long. They have to be seen to be believed, and I am now a believer.

(BTW, had to pass up seeing the Scott Amendola Band w/ Nels Cline on guitar to see this show. Seen the band last time they came to town, and Nels EVERYTIME he's been to town, so I risked it. It was worth it).

Edited by Jad
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These guys were/are the kings of double-entendres!!!

Yes, double-entendres falling from the sky!!

Honorable mention must be made, however, of Deep Purple's "Knocking at Your Back Door". For my money, this song is the most entertaining of clever rock smut. I laugh my ass off whenever I hear it.

I bet it doesn't hold a candle to "Big Bottom"!!

("...talkin' 'bout mud flaps, my girl's got 'em!") :g

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Cool, but do any of these lyrics really compare to, say, "Back Door Santa"?

"I ain't like old Saint Nick. He don't come but once a year!"

or Esther Phillips' "Brown-Eyed Blues"?

"I don't mind if you turn me around, just as long as it gets found!"

I love that low-down blues!

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Australia has produced some pretty good rockers, actually.

Not as strong as some others. I give you Scotland.

Catesta, recind this statement immediately, or I'll set a troup of hairy, Highland warriors on you. They wear nothing under their kilts, and sharpen their battleaxes with their teeth! :P

Edited by jmjk
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  • 14 years later...

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