AC/DC: 21st Century Masters

As wonderful as the creative possibilities of music streaming are for fans, the economics for artists are atrocious. Thankfully, I purchase enough physical media to feel comfortable using Spotify as a discovery and sharing tool, and will blather to anyone who’ll listen about how artists need to be more proactive, unionizing to reclaim rights from labels and only sharing select tracks with predatory tech companies (renting access to music is a nice replacement for radio promotion, but a terrible one for sales!).

Sharing my How I Like Low playlist makes perfect sense in this context. I intentionally made a brief non-definitive sampler, actively encouraging further exploration of a decades-deep discography. But what about bands where a record-length compilation would represent all I think you need to hear? Is it ethical to tell a dozen or two (or three! Maybe more!) nerds that I’ve done the culling for them, like a snarky, reductive Rhino Records from heck?

In the case of AC/DC, I’d say yes. Those guys have lived a life of ease and riches for decades, despite having basically one new idea since 1981 (Angus playing hammer-ons so fast it sounds like a sequencer, a trick first heard on 1986’s “Who Made Who” and most associated with 1990’s “Thunderstruck”). Their children and their children’s children should be set for life thanks to umpteen stadium tours and a hundred or two songs about the gift and the curse of p-in-v and an alcohol-heavy tour rider. For me to suggest that they've recorded a cumulative LP of material worth hearing this century is a compliment, considering their setlists consist overwhelmingly of songs written during the Cold War.

For the uninitiated, AC/DC (as we know it) happened in 1974, when three Scottish guys whose families had moved to Australia decided their previous bands weren’t rocking hard enough. Guitarists Angus and Malcom Young got a glimpse of the rock & roll good life through big brother/Easybeat George Young, eventually joining up with weathered never-been Bon Scott, more than five years their senior. Bon thought they might be too young, the Youngs thought he might too old, but their chemistry was astonishing: a bouncer’s bawdy tales over blues-rock flashy enough for metal and danceable enough for glam (thanks largely to the no-nonsense thump of drummer Phil Rudd and bassists Mark Evans and later Cliff Williams). Gods in Australia by 1977, the group was crossing over big time overseas when Scott tragically died from alcohol poisoning in early 1980.

Encouraged by Scott’s family, the Youngs decided to keep on, grabbing Brian Johnston, a British blues-rocker who’d toured Australia plenty, as their new singer. While Johnston lacked the sly charisma of Scott, he shrieked like Steve Perry drunk on rubbing alcohol, and looked even more like someone who casually headbutts. With arena rock innovator Mutt Lange producing, 1980’s Back In Black was exponentially more successful than their previous albums, even if the quality drop between singles and album tracks was considerably more extreme.

The blueprint set, the band chugged away for years and years. Brian shrieked in his newsboy cap, Angus duckwalked and soloed in his schoolboy outfit, Malcolm and Cliff thrummed downward, shaking their manes in front of the drummer (Phil, eventually replaced by Simon Wright, and then Chris Slade - who helped Peter Garrett and Sinead O’Connor make 1990 a very bald year for MTV, and then Phil again).

Thoroughly established as a reliable, unparalleled commodity in the world of Big Rock, new albums have come out every five to eight years to the delight of true believers, Mainstream Rock stations, and few else. More than half the average setlist still dates from the Bon Scott years, a new single usually in the place of the last new single. Even when Malcolm died, Phil got arrested, Brian got tinnitus/fired and Cliff went “wtf I’m out,” leaving Angus to tour with his nephew Stevie (no Wolfgang Van Halen - he’s over 60!), Chris Slade and Axl Rose(!), the next album somehow still featured Brian, Angus, Cliff, Phil and the ghost of Malcolm (who kindly left the band a bunch of riffs on his computer). So I’ll understand if you’ve never investigated their “recent” albums, or if you don’t particularly remember investigating them, beyond saying “not bad!” two tracks in and turning it off after the seventh.

For those about to rock with efficiency, here’s AC/DC: 21st Century Masters! Culled from more than twenty years of work and almost as good as what they managed in 1977! YouTube links in bold, Spotify playlist at the bottom.

1. “Realize” (Power Up, 2020)

That incessant cymbal work! That angry gargle! Those undead backing vocals! The riffage! They’ve still got it!

2. “Play Ball” (Rock Or Bust, 2014)

A song that equates getting hammered while watching sports with playing sports. I respect that.

3. “Big Jack” (Black Ice, 2008)

If hearing this chorus riff slide in above the mighty whallop doesn’t make you go, “Holy shit, they could do this forever! They’re immortal!” I honestly don’t know why you’re listening to a playlist of 21st century AC/DC songs.

4. “Rock The Blues Away” (Rock Or Bust, 2014)

While I am a Bon Scott diehard, I can’t imagine him pulling off Brian’s more melodic material. The stuff that sounds like a less pretentious Sammy Hagar (I know, right?). How do you keep your throat right on the edge of shredding for 30 years?

5. “Anything Goes” (Black Ice, 2008)

At this point some fans might claim I’m a softie who’s going to pick every catchy dance-rock number and leave behind anything too heavy or uncommercial. And they're right. It’s called taste!

6. “Through The Mists Of Time” (Power Up, 2020)

“Dark horses/ roam in my sleep/ mystic voices/ conjure up our dreams” - poetry! Though as far as 4/5ths of the band is concerned, this might as well be about phallic construction equipment.

7. “Safe In New York City” (Stiff Upper Lip, 2000)

“I feel safe in New York City!” A boast that was goofily anachronistic upon release, then given new meaning by 9/11, now goofily anachronistic again. At least the band is on some ‘70s shit, Angus darting about over a rolling bassline, very "Let There Be Rock." So you can pretend The Warriors might come out and play.

8. “Witch’s Spell” (Power Up, 2020)

“Ride a moonbeam/ sail the starlight” - poetry! See track 6.

9. “Hard Times” (Rock Or Bust, 2014)

“Sure, Anthony” you’re thinking, “this is all well and good. But what if I want something to twirl on a pole to?” Don’t worry, they’ve got you.

10. “Give It Up” (Stiff Upper Lip, 2000)

A song that rhymes “I’m gonna rip it” with “I’m gonna stick it.” “Wild man night” rhymed with “cream delight.” Released twenty years after Back In Black, and twenty years before Power Up, the band had not given it up, and still has not given it up. Here’s hoping there’s still more Malcom on the hard drive, and still more life in everybody else.