AC/DC Week, Highway to Hell

Posted in AC/DC, Youtube Favs on July 13th, 2011 by Willie

AC/DC week won’t stop, but Bon Scott’s contributions will.  Highway to Hell was released in 1979, and it would be the last album to feature the legendary front man.  Ten days after the video below was created, Bon Scott died from choking on vomit.  Whether it was his vomit or not, no one knows, because you can’t dust for vomit.  Anyway, its an appropriate ironic send off for the man who sang hard and drank hard.  I don’t know much about Bon’s personal life, but I’d like to imagine he’s in rock and roll heaven with 72 groupies…hah!  Oh, religion…Bon’s death was a turning point for the band obviously, and who they would replace him with, and the type of songs they’d create are all stories for tomorrow.  So stay tuned!

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AC/DC Week, Girl's Got Rhythm

Posted in AC/DC, Youtube Favs on July 9th, 2011 by Willie

AC/DC week…why the hell not.  AC/DC is one of my guiltier pleasures.  Adored by a fan base that never understood that they were probably a parody band, AC/DC took rock and roll to a comical level of extremeness.  The Young brothers who founded the band were very talented rock and roll artists, but were also performance artists.  All you have to do is look at Angus’s school boy suit to get the idea.  They sing about Satan, extreme sex, hardcore drinking, and breaking the law, but they do it with tongue firmly in cheek.  Their music is all about boiling rock and roll down to its philosophical essence, sex and drugs, and then juicing it into overdrive.  Musically, its a stripped down, bare bones, and highly electric attack, but very fun.  Lyrically, its confrontational, sophomoric, and dark minded, but very funny.  They created this persona of what a hard rocking band should be singing about and doing, thus influencing the creation of heavy metal, but it was all based on the simple well-worn formula of making sure to have catchy driving songs.  Even though it was all an act, they did really live a crazy life, especially original front man Bon Scott who drank himself to death.  Perhaps he was the spiritual embodiment of the band’s crazy attitude, perhaps he was just a fuck-up, either way, he was quickly replaced by Brian Johnson, who helped take the band to even higher commercial heights in the 1980s.  More on Johnson later.  Right now I have a classic Bon Scott era song, “Girl’s Got Rhythm,” from their 1979 album Highway to Hell.  Like all great AC/DC songs, it rocks your bones and that’s all that matters.

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