Late-period AC/DC - S&D

A decade later, let's complete this, heh.

"Safe In New York City"!

was just thinking about this, this morning! Was being rocked by the Who Made Who album & thinking about the other BJ crud & wondering what to listen for.

"Big Gun" is the shit

The demixes of "Shake Your Foundations" and "Sink The Pink" on Who Made Who are the bomb. Makes me wish they'd go back and fix all of Fly On The Wall. After that, I remember the singles and little else. I know I bought Razors Edge and Blow Up Your Video but I haven't heard either in 20+ years. The live album from the 1990 tour is a keeper though.

You know, I might have a copy of Ballbreaker. That's the one with "Cover You In Oil"? One of my friends loves that song because he thinks it's the most questionable of Brian's many questionable lyrics.

I have the cd single of "Cover You In Oil"--the cover was a hologram!

I like pretty much all their albums post "Razor's Edge" comeback. I mean, on that album alone, "Thunderstruck" is nearly top 10 for me, at least as far as post-Bon goes. But "Stiff Upper Lip" is great, as is that last one, and while Rick Rubin deserved to work with better songs than he got on "Ballbreaker," it's a pretty OK album (and, iirc, Johnson didn't bother writing lyrics, making the other guys do it for him).

"Thunderstruck" is totally one of the all-time greats.

"who made who" doesn't sound quite as great to me these days as it did when i was a kid, but i still like it a lot

"Who Made Who" is an all-timer.

I've always loved "Sink the Pink", "Shake Your Foundations", and "Fly on the Wall".

I was so late to classic rock/heavy metal - until 1983 I lived in a place that only had AM radio - that I didn't hear AC/DC until 1984 when I was 14. The first song of theirs I heard was "Danger". Not the greatest first impression!

Where do you all stand on "Moneytalks?" It's sort of their "Centerfield," and certainly the poppiest they've ever gotten. I like it when it comes on the radio.

Stiff Upper Lip seemed to me to the best Brian album since Back in Black, though I must confess to having only heard bits and bobs of all the ones post Flick of the Switch up till then. I liked the spareness of it. The last one was OK - Rock'n'Roll Train was great, but there was some crap on it. War Machine? Big Jack? No thanks. A typical post BiB AC/DC album, really.

I like the live version of "Moneytalks". I think the studio production on those 80s albums from Fly onwards is almost irredeemably bad.

'who made is who' is one of the best things this band ever did imo. 'thunderstruck' (obv), 'safe in NYC' and 'moneytalks' deserve mentions

I think I like "Who Made Who" more than everything on Back In Black save "You Shook Me All Night Long"---is that a challop?

"Thunderstruck" is great too; when it came out my friend had just gotten a new car stereo & we rocked the fuck out of it with that song & the first Eazy-E record, good times, great oldies

Also Simon Wright had zero sense of groove compared to Phil Rudd.

"Flick of the Switch" is a phenomenal track by the way.

The loss of Phil hurt this band immensely. Not enough focus on that in the AC/DC story.

Yeah, I think a big reason The Razor's Edge succeeded the way it did was because Chris Slade is a much better drummer than Wright. But yeah, Rudd is such a crucial member of the band. Just listen to Black Ice, that record swings.

That Malcolm/Cliff/Phil triumvirate is hard rocking perfection.

Phil Rudd is one of, like, three or four drummers period whose feel is soo good and spare (with lots of cymbals!) style is so distinctive that non-drummers air drum along with him.

<i>That Malcolm/Cliff/Phil triumvirate is hard rocking perfection.

― EZ Snappin, Monday, April 9, 2012 1:46 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink</i>

these guys are basically the MGs of metal

Rudd was back for Stiff Upper Lip. Listening again, that album has about eight good songs to Black Ice's three. Similarly, Flick Of The Switch sounds way better to me than For Those About To Rock aside from the title track and "Let's Get It Up." Fly On The Wall and Blow Up Your Video mostly suck. The versions of "Sink The Pink" and "Shake Your Foundations" on Who Made Who are an improvement over the Fly versions, but still aren't that great. I know Ballbreaker was supposed to be a big improvement with Rubin producing, but The Razor's Edge still has better songs.

Word is the band is gearing up to record again. I'd love it if they'd rough up the guitar sounds again like, say, Powerage, and keep it concise.

the production on black ice really sucks imo

I just listened to Black Ice the other day, for the first time since about 2009 or so. (Saw them twice on that tour, once at Madison Square Garden and once in Dublin. Fucking awesome show both times.) It holds up pretty well. I like "War Machine," "Money Made" and "Skies On Fire," and a couple of others, though the names escape me right now. I also like Fly On The Wall a lot - the noisy, ugly production job (vocals buried in the mix) really works for me.

Phil Rudd came back for "Ballbreaker," didn't he?

yes.

I love Ballbreaker almost as much as Highway to Hell. And the production is probably the best of all of their post-BiB records.

Dope.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNhn1KOqq8g

Solid, if a little ... short? Is this the classic Johnson lineup with Stevie Young instead of Malcolm, or could this be an unused Malcolm track?

Oh, wait, OK:

"Power Up (stylized as PWRϟUP) is the upcoming seventeenth studio album by Australian hard rock band AC/DC. It is the band's upcoming sixteenth internationally released studio album and the seventeenth in Australia. To be released on November 13, 2020, Power Up marks the return of vocalist Brian Johnson, drummer Phil Rudd and bassist Cliff Williams, who all left AC/DC before or after the touring cycle for their previous album Rock or Bust (2014). This will also be the band's first album since the death of their original guitarist Malcolm Young in 2017."

"All tracks composed by Angus Young and Malcolm Young."

they said they had riff tapes/song ideas from Malcolm I think?

Sounds pretty limp to me – the thrill of AC/DC has always been Malcolm's brass metal chunge chords, and there's nothing like that here.
(yes that word is "chunge", find me a better one)

(I can also offer "blang")

New tune sounds like ACDC. They have done plenty of these mid-tempo boogie numbers over the years. I'm kinda glad you can still talk about a new ACDC track.

This made me double take in YT comments. Damn time flies... Rock on brothers.

Ulf Josefsson
1 day ago
Brian Johnson. 73.
Cliff Williams. 70.
Angus Young. 65.
Phil Rudd. 66.
Stevie Young. 63.

337 Years of Rock and Roll experience.
Hell Yes.

I'd say "Stiff Upper Lip" is a better tune of this type of their post 2000 records.

The album is...fine. 12 tracks, 41 minutes. Produced by Brendan O'Brien, just like the last two. Johnson's in good voice throughout. The riffs are there.

Kind of a shame, as they're one of those bands that records albums just as an excuse to tour, but they can't really tour and also don't have the luxury of waiting to see who else might not make it.

I think at this point they're recording an album just because they're still alive to record one.

yeah, I think Angus would have been the only legacy member to tour, if times had allowed it

You don't think Phil and Cliff and Brian would have toured?

If they hadn't gotten back together to make an album, probably not.

Brian medically cannot tour, and Cliff quit at the end of the tour with Axl.

Produced by Brendan O'Brien

There's nothing technically *wrong* with any album of his I've ever heard, but somehow they still manage to be flat regardless of the artist. Looking at his resume on wiki, I see the first thing he got sole producer credit for was King's X's Dogman, which was the first King's X album that sucked. Now it all makes sense.

"Badlands" is a bad a$$ AC/DC deep cut of of Flick of the Switch. That slide is so wicked and simple in that tune, it makes you wish Angus would have played it a bit more in their repertoire.

If I am making some action movie shot out in the desert, this this a jam I want playing when they are all checking their guns and making sure their knives are sharp.

I really dig "Safe In NY City" as it is one of their best metronomic beat tunes. "A-hoy what is this motorik, we canna do betta than that shite..."

That's from Ballbreaker, right? Some good tunes on that one.

the new record having a song called "Through the Mists of Time" really threw me off
one of the highlights imo

Jesus, that sounds like the title of a Dream Theater live album. Now I'm really curious.

The live version of "The Razor's Edge" is really killer. Studio one is good, but they bring up the menace a bit more live. Both the records they did with Chris Slade are really good, it's a well recorded live album (although who knows how much it was touched up in the studio).

"The Furor", "Hail Ceaser" & "Burnin' Alive" and really 'Ballbreaker' which was the reunion with Phil was a solid LP. 'Stiff Upper Lip' sounds really good, it was the last one they did with their brother George Young.

'Blow Up Your Video' is the only AC/DC studio LP I would consider a duffer. I never have liked that one very much as I guess Mal was not writing lyrics and leaving it all up to Brian at that point and it kinda shows.

"Safe in NY City" is on 'Stiff Upper Lip'.

I think this album kicks ass, it's much better than I would have expected. I kind of can't imagine them doing another one after this so it's a fine one to end on.

Certainly a better endpoint than Rock Or Bust, which I can barely remember other than being disappointed by it.