TS: Back in Black vs Ace of Spades

Motorhead weren't so much unscathed by Punk as condoned --- hell, EMBRACED -- by Punk. The oft-cited truism about Motorhead was that if you didn't know what they looked like, you might've well assumed they were punks (and, pedants could cite that Lemmy played with the Damned, albeit fleetingly). By contrast, AC/DC never had very charitable things to say about Punk Rock (which made them sound somewhat boringly stodgy).

http://www.philandersononline.com/photography/music/rancid/lars2.jpg

http://www.uweb.ucsb.edu/~emaples/pictures/nerd.jpg

Is this true? Weird! I never remember them talking about punk rock one way or another, but maybe I missed it. Oddly, when I interviewed them in the early '90s, they were very critical of *metal* and (just like when I interviewed Lemmy) insisted they were a Chuck Berry/Little Richard style rocknroll band, not a metal band. Angus said Metallica sounded like opera music to him. (Lemmy, when I interviewed him, said he liked Metallica's energy sometimes but the songs were way too long.) Anyway, when I first heard AC/DC on the radio around 1979 or so, I thought they *were* a punk rock band!

Er, despite "You Shook Me All Night Long" being the only song on *Back in Black that would have been good enough to be on just about any AC/DC album before *Back in Black. (Well, *maybe* the title track. But that's just a great riff; it was never a great song.)

Assault & Battery would give both of them a run for their money, tho...

Yeah, I'm not making it up, Chuck. I think they say something about it in the liner notes of one of the re-releases. I'll try to find it. But yes....they object to being lumped in with metal too.

I thought they were dub metal. Actually, "Jailbreak" is sorta house metal.

As the deal was London based, the UK had the pleasure of being beaten about with High Voltage first in April 1976. That was just three weeks after the band arrived for their first tour. Their first UK gig was arranged at the tiny Red Cow in Hammersmith on 23 April. According to legend, the crowd of fifty people at the beginning of the first set had increased ten fold by the second thanks to word of mouth and the nearby public phones. AC/DC's English blitzkrieg there can be no lesser term was off and running.

Initially, a patronizing media with the exception of Sounds treated the band as a skull-crackingly loud novelty act and attempted to frame them as Australia's answer to the emerging bristle of UK Punk. All thanks to the band's somewhat colorful sense of expression and general fuck'em all attitude, the sheer volume and the physical intensity of their shows, Angus' habit of dropping his pants on stage and waterlogging his guitar with sweat and Bon being -- well, Bon.

Bon: "What's a punk band? Hey, who's got beer?"

As cited on this page. Who knows the source, but it's a start: http://www.bikercouple.com/acdcqoutes.html#sagt

True, but it IS the crown jewel of the post-Bon era, so how bad can it be? (Not at all.) And I maintain that Flick Of The Switch is a close second and the most underrated LP of the Brian Johnson era, altho 'most everybody (aside from Martin Popoff) disagrees with me.

But, yeah: Ace of Spades all the way! [And interestingly, my second-fave Motorhead is Iron Fist, which is kinda the Flick Of The Switch of the Motorhead catalog: considered the worst by most folks, yet a favourite of mine. What the hell is wrong with me?!]

True, but it IS the crown jewel of the post-Bon era, so how bad can it be? (Not at all.) And I maintain that Flick Of The Switch is a close second and the most underrated LP of the Brian Johnson era, altho 'most everybody (aside from Martin Popoff) disagrees with me.

But, yeah: Ace of Spades all the way! [And interestingly, my second-fave Motorhead is Iron Fist, which is kinda the Flick Of The Switch of the Motorhead catalog: considered the worst by most folks, yet a favourite of mine. And the same goes for Led Zep's Presence. What the hell is wrong with me?!]

Iron Fist used to be the most unduly maligned Motorhead album, but I think the sheer fact that its the celebrated "Philthy Phil/Fast Eddie" incarnation has redeemed it (the 'worst album' title now taken, probably, by Another Perfect Day....which I kinda dig....or any of the virtually indistinguishable last few albums with Mickey Dee (formerly of Dokken..::::shuddder:::: ) on drums.

BRING BACK PHILTHY ANIMAL TAYLOR!

And I agree with everyone! It's totally my favorite post-puke LP. by a long-shot. I just love "Nervous Shakedown".

I am totally serious. All of my fellow AC/DC nutbrain fans -- take out your copies of Flick, and put on "Nervous Shakedown."

Now, THAT's a tune.