This year, Every Sunday Evening, Album Rock WXYG, The GOAT will be featuring a full album at 8:00 PM from the halcyon musical days of 1976. 1976 was one of the top Years in Album Rock history. Another year of tough choices every week. So many great ones to choose from. After 52 Weeks of featuring so many of the great albums that debuted in 1975, next Sunday we will be moving on to another amazing year of ALBUM ROCK EXCELLENCE, 1976.
Tune in at 8:00 PM, next Sunday Evening, October 11th for “High Voltage”, the first internationally released album by AC/DC. It contains tracks compiled from their first two previous Australia-only issued albums: High Voltage and T.N.T. (both released in 1975). Originally released on May 14,1976 in the UK by Atlantic Records and on September 28,1976 in the US by ATCO Records, High Voltage was a commercial success, selling three million units in the US alone.
One of the perennial complaints about AC/DC is that they've never changed -- and if that's true, High Voltage is the blueprint they've followed all their career. Comprised of highlights from their first two Australian albums -- 1975's TNT and its 1976 follow-up, also entitled High Voltage -- the album has every single one of AC/DC's archetypes. There are songs about rock & roll, slow sleazy blues, high-voltage boogie, double entendres so obvious they qualify as single entendres and, of course, the monster riffs of Angus Young, so big and bold they bruise the listener upon contact. It's those riffs -- so catchy they sound lifted when they're original, so simple they're often wrongly dismissed as easy -- that give the music its backbone, the foundation for Bon Scott to get dirty, and rockers never got quite as dirty as Bon Scott. Scott sounded as if you could catch a disease by listening to him. He sounded like the gateman at hell, somebody who never hid the notion that lurking behind the door are some bad, dangerous things, but they're also fun, too, and he made no apologies for that. But for as primal as High Voltage is, it's also a lot weirder and funnier than it's given credit for, too -- those are bagpipes that solo on "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Want to Rock & Roll)," and "She's Got Balls" is a perversely funny dirty joke. This is music so primal that it's enduring -- it feels like it existed before AC/DC got there, and it will exist long afterward. And if AC/DC did wind up bettering this blueprint in the future, there's no question that this original is still potent, even thrilling, no matter how many times they returned to the well, or how many times this record is played.
This is not only the archetypal AC/DC album, it's the best. Beyond that, it is absolutely essential rock & roll at its ragged, sleazy, foot-stomping best. Brothers Angus and Malcolm Young kick out a constant stream of mean and lean guitar work with which few other rock and roll artists this side of Chuck Berry can compete. Meanwhile, frontman Bon Scott establishes his credentials as one of rock's most notorious bad boys with the sonic middle finger that is his snotty, alcohol-sodden voice. Scott's clearly autobiographical lyrics give the listener a backstage pass to a world of groupies, drugs, fights and broken bones that would make the fellas in Led Zeppelin blush. An essential not just for AC/DC fans, but for any fan of down and dirty rock & roll.
Tune In and Turn On next Sunday evening, October 11th at 8:00 PM for The GOAT'S "The Long Play with Al Neff”.
