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.