ACDC Retrospective: The Lists

The entire time that I have been listening through all these albums, I have been keeping a list of "good" songs.  These are songs that I felt were a good listen and not something I would change the channel on if it came on with the radio.  In the end, not including duplicates or live versions, I came away with over 80 songs.  That is a surprisingly large amount of "good" songs for a band and further exemplifies why ACDC is the most successful rock band of all time.  I could easily to throw all these songs on a playlist and be done with it, but there's a couple of problems.  First, frankly I am a fan of well done, live songs.  Many times this adds a rawness back to the original studio song.  The complication added in with ACDC is that this is the only way to get a Brian Johnson sang version of the classics as well.  Then we have the "goof off" and super "sleazy" songs of the Bon Scott era.  I actually like "Big Balls", "Can I Sit Next To You Girl" for what they are, but its not what I listen to ACDC for.

Pass Number One: Mega List

So the first time I went through the huge song list with a quick listen to each song, lingering only with songs that I knew less of, I came out with a "Mega-list" of ACDC that is 60 songs long.  The Brian Johnson era was not immune from my culling, as I got rid of some of the very similar songs between "Ball Breaker", "Stiff Upper Lip" and "Blow Up Your Video".  Next I went through and substituted the "Live" versions of songs like Back in Black, Thunderstruck, and a handful of others.  When I came to a point, such as "The Jack" where the Scott and Johnson songs are different enough, or both had their own merits, I went ahead and doubled them up.

Pass Number Two:  Personal Favorites

The Mega-list serves its purpose; a whole collection of ACDC history right there for me to just randomly fly through.  I realized that I had songs on there that I do not necessarily consider my personal favorites, but are so iconic I could not leave them off.  Songs like "Sink the Pink" and "Riff Raff" are used in tons of movies and you might not even know their names, but chances are you've heard their riffs.  I wanted to have an even more personal list of favorites that I never get tired of, and I'd never want to skip ahead to a "better" song from.  I will share that list of 35 songs here in album release order:

*denotes a new song I learned or only learned to appreciate from doing this adventure

Its a Long Way to the Top
TNT(Live version)
Dirty Deeds(Live version)
Let There Be Rock
Hell Ain't a Bad Place To Be
Whole Lotta Rosie(Live Version)
*Rock "N" Roll Damnation
*Gimme a Bullet
Highway to Hell
*Girl's Got Rhythm
*If You Want Blood
Hell's Bells(Live Version)
Back in Black(Live Version)
You Shook Me All Night Long(Live Version)
*What You Do For the Money Honey
Have A Drink On Me
Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution
For Those About to Rock
*Let's Get it Up
*Rising Power
*Stand Up
Who Made Who(Live Version)
*That's the Way I Wanna Rock
*Meanstreak
Heatseeker(Live Version)
Money Talks(Live Version)
Thunderstruck(Live Version)
*Let's Make It
Hard as a Rock
*Cover You In Oil
*Honey Roll
Rock 'N' Roll Train
*Skies on Fire
*Stormy May Day
*Decibel

Notably absent would be "Ride On' in this list since I talked about being surprised by it so much, but one of the reasons it surprised me was how uncharacteristic it was of the Bon Scott era.  Its a detour of the rock sound and so while its in the mega-list, its not in my favs list.  I'll use both lists still depending on my mood.

And with that, I conclude my Retrospective on ACDC.  I have probably quadrupled the amount of songs I like from ACDC and learned many new favorites as well.  Several new songs are songs I would love to be able to play on guitar one day.  While my favorite ACDC song did not change over the course of this, I did discover just how many great songs are in the Bon Scott era that I never realized were his(I assumed there were only a couple of albums with him).  I found Ballbreaker is my new favorite whole album(though Back in Black is still my fav overall), and I gained an appreciation Razor's Edge and Dirty Deeds.

ACDC Retrospective: Album by Album

I'm going to go album by album and give a quick run down.  In the description I will put the predominate sound/genre/style, my favorite track, small review and a star rating.  I do not include compilations or live albums.  I chose the international versions of albums as well.

High Voltage(3 stars), Blues Rock
-This is the roughest sounding of the albums, but this also means its one of the most raw.  A big take away from this album is you will swear you've heard Chuck Berry or Little Richard play the riffs before.  Angus hasn't yet started doing his classic riffs yet.  My favorite is "Its a Long Way To the Top".

Dirty Deeds(4 stars), Blues Rock
-A direct continuation of High Voltage.  The mature parts got more mature, and the raunchy parts got even more raunchy.  They tried to up themselves and in general I feel they did.  My favorite is a hard choice... but Dirty Deeds is just iconic.  With Dirty Deeds we start seeing Angus take center stage in solos.

Let There Be Rock(3 Stars), Blues Rock
-We're getting more rock than blues by now.  A few of the songs start sounding like what you'll get for the next 20 years, but the band is still rooted in the bar room blues rock here.  My favorite song is easily "Hell Ain't a Bad Place to Be".

Powerage(3 stars), Rock and Roll
-This is the first strong "ACDC" album that will set the tone for the rest of the band's history.  The band will go back to some blues rock some, but this is where they start pioneering Hard Rock.  There are still some blues and some Chuck Berry influence, hence the Rock and Roll classification.  My favorite song is Rock and Roll Damnation, and marks the first "favorite" off an album that is a song I had never heard before.

Highway To Hell(4 stars), Hard Rock
-Powerage gets kicked in the ass by Mutt Lange and Hard Rock is fully realized.  The last of the slow and sleazy Bon Scott era songs appear here, and while other songs on the later albums might try and copy, they just don't get the feel like this era.

Back in Black(5 stars), Hard Rock
-Not much I can say about this album, it is the best selling rock album of all time around the world.  My favorite song?  Holy crap is this the hardest one to choose my favorite by far... In the end I have to choose "Shook Me All Night Long" because I've known it longer and love its video too.

For Those About To Rock(2 stars), Hard Rock
-The sound is there for this album, but this is the start of really repetitive  choruses that go a few bars too long.  This will haunt the entire Brian Johnson era.  My favorite is by far the title track.  The band brought it, the lyrics just sort of slipped by

Flick of the Switch(2 Stars), Hard Rock
-The band tries to reconcile the older Bon Scott era with the new Hard Rock era and success.  Its a decent album, I just wish the lyrical content was less repetitive.  I'm not expecting Shakespeare, but repeating choruses just grates me.  My favorite is Landslide.

Fly on the Wall(3 Stars), Hard Rock
-It really is a shared sound with Flick and Those about to Rock.  Only there are a handful better songs than Flick of the Switch.  My favorite is probably Stand Up.

Blow Up Your Video (3 Stars) Rock
-SO close to being an amazing album, but it loses its momentum after the first 3 songs.  The band was flirting with more "modern" forms of blues, giving them a sort of Rock and Honky Tonk sound.  My favorite song is Heatseeker, which I learned to like with ACDC Live.

The Razor's Edge(5 Stars) Hard Rock
-Brilliant.  They flirt with Arena Rock style guitar shredding, but stay grounded in the Hard Rock sound they established with Back in Black.  My favorite song from this album is currently my favorite ACDC song of all: "Money Talks".

Ballbreaker(4 Stars) Rock and Roll
-Really good.  The group revisits what they tried with Blow Up Your Video, but do it much much better and more successfully.  My favorite ends up being Hard As A Rock because the riff is so simple and memorable, like older ACDC.

Stiff Upper Lip(1 Star) Rock and Roll
-The only album I was disappointed in.  Its the closest thing to phoning in or doing the rock version of elevator music.  There is almost no change in the songs throughout the songs.  The problem of repeating chorus lyrics is finally matched by repeating instrument parts as well.

Black Ice(5 Stars), Hard Rock
-Brilliant again.  While there are a couple of questionable choices by the producer(Brendan O'brien), the band came back strong and rocked things hard.  Songs about wanting to rock, living like a rock star, and continuing to rock all the time.  In the end, Rock and Roll Train is addictive in lyrical content, and the guitars are memorable and catchy, one of the "perfect" ACDC songs.


The star ratings are my thoughts over all, but it doesn't mean the highest star ratings are my favorites.  For example, I like Ballbreaker better overall than Black Ice despite being rated 1 less star.  And even though I have Highway to Hell higher stars, I think I like the Dirty Deeds album better than it also.

Just for those that may be curious, while Highway to Hell has to be my most memorable cover, my favorite cover is on my least liked album.  I love the statue of Angus on Stiff Upper Lip and would like a small replica for my desk.

ACDC Retrospective: Why

The Start of the Journey

Over the past few months I have taken an ACDC record one at a time and given them several listens.

I guess the first question is ask and answer again is "why".

ACDC was very integral to my formative attitude towards things.  It was a constant reminder of what it means to have a little "rock and roll" in your life.  "Highway to Hell" was one of the first records(in actual record form too) that I remember, that and some Muppet Christmas record my mom owned.  I grew up on the essentials, and remember when Razor's Edge was new.  I remember when the videos for "Shook Me All Night Long" were done.

But not just that.

I have finally, REALLY, started on the road of learning guitar in a meaningful and lasting way.  While Angus was not the soul reason that I chose to get a Gibson SG, he's easily 50% of it.  I have all my life wanted to be able to play "Highway to Hell", "Back in Black" and "Shook Me All Night Long".  The guitar of Angus and Malcolm is a pure blues-rock style guitar that I have always enjoyed and thankfully is one of the first genres you can learn competently as a guitarist.  Even Angus' advanced soloing work is fun variations and tricks within the pentatonic and blues scales.

Then there are my black-out areas of which I did not have much listening experience with ACDC.  My Bon Scott era knowledge was larger than I had believed when I started this adventure, but it was still greatly expanded by listening to the era.  My biggest surprises came from listening to early recordings.  The "Fly on the Wall" and "Flick of the Switch" era was another blackout section, and to tell the truth I did not know much about the album before those two, or after those two.  Finally the last black out era was everything after the release of "ACDC Live", other than Harder than a Rock, Stiff Upper Lip and Rock and Roll Train.  That's 3 of around 30 tracks I had never heard.

Was it worth it?

Absolutely.  With the exception of a grand total of 1 album out of 18(or 14, depending on how you count them all) that might be considered "wasted" money, I would say that is a hell of a career.  Some bands get a handful of albums in under a decade to make a career on.  ACDC has had huge success in 4 different decades.  They have a 10x US Platinum "Highway to Hell" in the 70's.  In the 90's there was the 5x US Platinum Razor's Edge.  The 2008 "Black Ice" is 2x US Platinum.  The 80's Back in Black is the SECOND highest selling album of ALL TIME in all the world.  More than Madonna, more than P-diddy, more than any Beatles album.  All this means is that over all these albums, there is lots and lots of quality rock.

I kept a listing of my favorite songs on each album.  I have 29 new "good" songs that I never knew existed, on top of the over 20 that I already knew I loved.  The hard part will be to create a "must have" playlist without including all of those.  I have found that while I love many songs on a lot of albums, there are 4 albums that I feel are a cut above the rest.  I have learned that ACDC is influenced greatly by their producers.  When family or the band are in charge, they get more and more like their idols, when they get someone else in there, they tend to get pushed to be more the "hard rock" they helped invent.  In either case, I love what they do.

I have to say that my favorite memories while going through the albums were that of "Ride on" being a huge huge surprise.  I am also proud that they did not take the route so many harder acts do; when a softer song gets popular they don't put out a new album with half being soft songs trying to bilk it.  I enjoyed being able to hear Mutt Lange's influence and understand its him in there.  This is because I know my Def Leppard and my Foreigner songs from classic rock radio, and can tell the similarities from all those albums he produced.  I love a strong come back, and ACDC has had the most legendary ones.  "Back in Black" is what every band hopes to pull off when they lose an integral member.  "Razor's Edge" is the "we can show these young'uns how to rock" come back, and "Black Ice" is the "we ain't dead yet, we're still F*ckin' rockin", and with each I was so happy to hear them doing their thing.  I also enjoyed how "Blow Up Your Video" was an "almost there" kind of album, with a detour back to hard rock, but was revisited with Ballbreaker to great success.

So there will be a few more posts coming.

1. The Album Summations
2. The Ultimate Playlist

To everyone that stuck through and read my weekly updates and posts about this, and largely I've said everything I said here before in those, thanks for reading.