Back when I was a teenager, I used to go to a little record shop
\na bike ride away from where I lived. One summer day in 1985, I
\nfound AC\/DC’s latest,
\nFly On The Wall<\/i>, as a cutout for about three dollars.
\nSomething was wrong, said the voice of reason in my brain, but I
\ntook my new toy home to slap on my cheezy stereo. What I heard was
\nokay, but disappointing. Where the hell was Brian Johnson signing
\nhis vocals from – outside the studio? The production sounded
\ncrappy; there’s reason some people rated this one as AC\/DC’s
\nworst.<\/p>\n
Let’s turn the clock forward to today, and see what the
\ntechnology of the compact disc has done to this album. It has, in
\nfact, given it a whole new life, and people who despised their
\nvinyl copies at the time should pull up a chair, grab a sandwich
\nand a beer, and read on with interest.<\/p>\n
AC\/DC was definitely in a transition at this time. Long-time
\ndrummer Phil Rudd had left the band prior to the start of the
\nFlick Of The Switch<\/i> tour. New drummer Simon Wright had made
\nit through the tour, but had yet to set foot in a studio with the
\nband. The boys were trying to shake off disappointing sales of
\nFlick Of The Switch<\/i>, and wanted to regain their position in
\nthe hard rock market.<\/p>\n
Sure the songwriting is the cock-rock style that I’ve so often
\nridiculed other bands for – hell, this has been AC\/DC’s whole
\ncareer. But at least with AC\/DC it sounds like they are kidding.
\nPlus, they’re not your typical “pretty-boy” band, so it’s not like
\nthey’re singing about getting laid by a different groupie every
\nnight. So excuse me if I set my standards aside this time.<\/p>\n
I’ll concede the songwriting is a tad weaker on
\nFly On The Wall<\/i> than on some of their other albums – to name
\na song “Sink The Pink” today would be asking for trouble. But the
\ngroove is the thing here, and Angus Young et al. know how to groove
\ntheir asses off, and make you do the same. “Playing With Girls” has
\nan incredible groove that they had not captured for some time;
\nWright’s drumming is perfect for this mood.<\/p>\n
The first single, “Danger,” is a bit of a shift for AC\/DC; it’s
\none of the first times they released a song with a plodding beat
\n(though not the first song they wrote with one), making it sound a
\ntad sinister. Another single, “Shake Your Foundations,” is another
\nexample of groove rock, though the songwriting weaknesses show in
\nthe chorus – c’mon, you couldn’t do better than “Ai, ai, oh – shake
\nyour foundations”?<\/p>\n
The title track takes some getting used to, but isn’t as bad as
\nsome may make it out to be. The rest of the album you will either
\nlove or hate – it depends if AC\/DC has won you over with the groove
\non side one (or, for the CD crowd, the first five songs). My
\nopinion: they’re good, with “Hell Or High Water” and “Send For The
\nMan” being strong points.<\/p>\n
This is a relatively short album – the ten songs clock in at
\nunder 40 minutes – but the power contained therein is incredible.
\n(One warning, though – stay far away from the conceptual home video
\nreleased at the same time. May have been a good idea, but for a
\nband that wasn’t into doing videos at this time, not the way to
\nstart things out… and I know they did videos before this one.
\nAnyone know where I can find the video for “Jailbreak”?)
\n(Editor’s note: Since I wrote this, I did indeed find the
\n“Jailbreak” video, thanks to eBay.)<\/i><\/p>\n
\nFly On The Wall<\/i> is hardly AC\/DC’s worst album – it may not
\nbe their best, but it is a very good effort that is highly
\nentertaining, and worth a listen. Turned out to be the best $3 I
\nspent at that time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24355,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5683],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-35559","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-ac-dc","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35559"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=35559"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=35559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}