(Personal Vinyl Collection) AC/DC BLAST!

As I'm trying to roll, somewhat alphabetically, through my collection - and I don't want to have this be an AC/DC blog for the next 5 months - I'm going to do a BLAST of the rest of my AC/DC vinyl collection here and now, with a few words about each slab o' wax and maybe some links and videos to add some filler here where my reviews may be lacking. Let's get crackin'. Ba-na-na-na-na-na-nuh - ANGUS!!

AC/DC - '74 Jailbreak

This is one of my favorites. Raw, Bon era AC/DC. Ordered this from Columbia House when I was a YOUNGSTER. I had to be like 11 years old.

Side One:
Jailbreak
You Ain't Got a Hold on Me
Show Business

Side Two:
Soul Stripper
Baby Please Don't Go

AC/DC - Let There Be Rock


My Dad saw the boys on the tour just before this album. This one is down and dirty, unfuckwithable, Bon Scott goodness. This one gave us "Let There Be Rock", "Problem Child" and "Whole Lotta Rosie" ("Rosie" is another Dad memory for me. The first woman I remember my Dad dating seriously after he and Mom split was a big, zaftig woman named Rosie. Dad never wore shoes and Rosie took advantage of his bare toes by stomping them in a spirited argument). Essential.

Side One:
Go Down
Dog Eat Dog
Let There Be Rock
Bad Boy Boogie

Side Two:
Problem Child
Overdose
Hell Ain't a Bad Place to Be
Whole Lotta Rosie

AC/DC - Powerage

There's just not bad Bon album in the bunch and this is one of the best.

Side One:
Rock 'N' Roll Damnation
Down Payment Blues
Gimme a Bullet
Riff Raff

Side Two:
Sin City
What's Next to the Moon
Gone Shootin'
Kicked in the Teeth

AC/DC - Highway to Hell

I can remember being just a bit frightened by this album cover as a small child. It was in my Dad's collection, all three of my Uncle's collections, my Aunt Penny's collection and my first step dad's sister's collection. Around the time I turned 12 it was in my collection. This is my all time favorite (barely edging out Dirty Deeds and Back In Black) AC/DC record. I spent about a solid year in an intensely creepy love affair with this album as I had also just discovered serial killer Richard Ramirez and his fascination with the boys as well as acquiring my first copy of Anton LaVey's The Satanic Bible from the library. 'Twas a match made in preteen Hell.

Side One:
Highway to Hell
Girls Got Rhythm
Walk All Over You
Touch Too Much
Beating Around the Bush

Side Two:
Shot Down in Flames
Get it Hot
If You Want Blood (You've Got It)
Love Hungry Man
Night Prowler

AC/DC - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

This is AC/DC at their filthiest and snottiest. A near tie for my favorite of all the albums. This album made an enormous impression on me at a VERY young age.

Side One:
Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
Love at First Feel
Big Balls
Rocker
Problem Child

Side Two:
There's Gonna Be Some Rockin'
Ain't No Fun Waiting Around to be a Millionaire
Ride On
Squealer

AC/DC - Back In Black

After Bon's passing the boys were faced with the decision of whether or not to carry on. With the help of Bon Scott fan Brian Johnson, the boys carried on and turned in what would arguably be one of the all time greatest rock records in the history of the genre.

Side One:
Hells Bells
Shoot to Thrill
What Do You Do For Money Honey
Given the Dog a Bone
Let Me Put My Love Into You

Side Two:
Back In Black
You Shook Me All Night Long
Have a Drink On Me
Shake a Leg
Rock And Roll Ain't Noise Pollution

AC/DC - For Those About to Rock We Salute You


Another one that was in the collection of pretty much everybody I knew - Aunts, uncles and everyone in between. I've seen this record cover used as a rolling tray perhaps as often as Lynyrd Skynyrd's Second Helping or Zep IV.

Side One:
For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)
Put the Finger on You
Let's Get it Up
Inject the Venom
Snowballed

Side Two:
Evil Walks
C.O.D.
Breaking The Rules
Night of the Long Knives
Spellbound

AC/DC - Flick of the Switch

Side One:
Rising Power
The House is on Fire
Flick of the Switch
Nervous Shakedown
Landslide

Side Two:
Guns For Hire
Deep in the Hole
Bedlam in Belgium
Badlands Brain Shake

AC/DC - Who Made Who

Thank Stephen King for this collection. Better than any basic "Greatest Hits" package, this one plays like a new album and has a cohesive spirit. I spent ALOT of time with this black spiral spinning on my turntable.

Side One:
Who Made Who
You Shook Me All Night Long
D.T.
Sink The Pink
Ride On

Side Two:
Hells Bells
Shake Your Foundations
Chase the Ace
For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)

AC/DC - Fly On The Wall

The album cover is a real departure for the band. This is AC/DC in the high color world of MTV. Same band, same musical format. The logo never lies. There's not an AC/DC record that betrays their formula - No concept records or synth or orchestra driven epics. Just the brothers Young, a solid backbeat, an unforgiving bass pulse and Brian or Bon singing about booze and women and things that go BUMP in the night. I was losing interest in the band by the time this record came out and I always remember it as AC/DC becoming more mainstream but in reality - 80's production aside - it's a damn fine rock record that stands up with all their releases.

Side One:
Fly On The Wall
Shake Your Foundations
First Blood
Danger
Sink The Pink

Side Two:
Playing With Girls
Stand Up
Hell or High Water
Back In Business
Send For the Man

Next time I sit down to write on this blog, we enter Aerosmith country. Buckle up.

(Personal Vinyl Collection) AC/DC - High Voltage (1976)

So the point here is to revisit my record collection. To force past current favorites and hopefully jog the memory a bit and maybe rediscover some lost gems. My vinyl collection is mostly alphabetical by band and then chronological for each act - and partially by genre. That doesn't mean that I'll stick to this arbitrary rule, nor does it mean that I put the wax back in the stacks in the proper order. That disclaimer displayed, let's move on to the album that is first in my expansive rows of black gold.

AC/DC - High Voltage (1976)

I went through a pretty massive AC/DC phase as a kid - partly due to the influence of the Stephen King flick Maximum Overdrive and the accompanying soundtrack (AC/DC's Who Made Who - a greatest hits of sorts that plays as the perfect soundtrack to the desperate desolation and technological domination portrayed in this action/horror vehicle featuring Charlie Sheen's, ahem... , more "sane" sibling, Mr. Emilio Estevez). The soundtrack brought AC/DC back to a whole new generation and plopped them down in the MTV hard rock scene dominated by bands like Def Leppard and Billy Idol. This resurgence, coupled with my own father's emphatic stories about seeing AC/DC in 1976 were what cemented the band's legacy in my young brainstuff. Dad would recount with apparent glee stories of the "coke crazed" guitar player, running about the stage and headbanging so hard that his face was smeared with his own blood and snot and about the singer who put said guitarist onto his shoulders and waded into the stoned throng to spread aforementioned guitarist's aforementioned upper respiratory fluids and blood and about how the band, at the end of the set, all stepped forward to "moon" the crowd - exposing their white, Aussie arses to some 14 or 15,000 American heads.



I'd like to say that this is one of the first AC/DC records I purchased as it is one of my all time favorites but it's not. My copy was purchased as part of a lot of garage sale records in the mid 90's. A gem amongst a horde of hair metal, Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and some assorted mid-70's through mid-80's oddities.

The cover of the album is classic AC/DC - super action photo illustration of young Mr. Angus Young, clad in schoolboy attire, Gibson SG clutched in overt masturbatory pose - slashed by a lightning bolt and made to appear as though the edge of the LP sleeve is ablaze and curling upward from the burn.

The back cover is our introduction to these miscreants - "letters" from fans, angry night club managers, angry parents and of course Misters Malcolm and Angus Young's Secondary School Headmaster complaining of the boys' bad behavior.

The songs that burst forth from this masterwork read like one Blues based, Chuck Berry on bathtub crank, Rock N' Roll warcry after another.

It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock N' Roll)
Rock N' Roll Singer
The Jack
Live Wire
T.N.T.
Can I Sit Next to You Girl (Young & Young)
Little Lover
She's Got Balls
and
High Voltage

This is Bon Scott putting down the stamp of badassery that was so purely his own, backed by a bunch of goons that will ride into history as one of the greatest and tightest live bands to ever tip brews together. For me, AC/DC brings so much sensory memory flooding into my head that just one chord from the mighty SG will send me immediately into a world of tiny mustaches, denim, patches, Marlboro smoke, shoplifted tall boys of Budweiser and crumbly little sandwich bags full of 60/40 (60% stems and seeds and 40% dirty brown homegrown), stories of the band's demonic possession and their allegiance to the "Dark Lord" evident in their name (Anti Christ/Devil's Child). AC/DC is Australia's greatest export and America's favorite rebel rock quintet.