With many bands of long tenure, opening up the vaults for a boxed set of quote-unquote rarities produces revelations of one sort or another.\u00a0 All manner of one-offs surface on which bands have typically tried out (and then for one reason or another discarded) different approaches and musical guises.\u00a0 If you\u2019re lucky, you get to hear the band experimenting in a variety of ways.<\/p>\n
Not so with AC\/DC.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
AC\/DC has one sound.\u00a0 It is the only sound they have ever had; it is the only sound that \u2013 surely after 35 years we can all agree \u2013 they ever will have.\u00a0 It is their sound, and it has served them well.\u00a0 But in terms of this \u201crarities\u201d box set producing any real surprises, trust me \u2013 it doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
What it does do, is remind you of two things.\u00a0 First, what a powerful musical unit AC\/DC has always been, and second, what they lost when original lead singer Bon Scott died in March 1980.\u00a0 For while there are plenty of high points in this empty-the-vaults rarities collection, the demarcation between eras is sharp.\u00a0 The Bon Scott-fronted group is not just ferocious, but both dangerous and tremendously witty, its sledgehammer riffs topped with lyrics that manage to be aggressively lowbrow and brilliantly funny at the same time.\u00a0 With Scott manning the mike, you always wondered how far they would push it, and the answer was usually \u201creally far,\u201d though his leering, rogue-ish persona always at least implied a wink to let you know it was all in good fun.\u00a0 The post-1980 Brian Johnson-fronted group managed to carry that spirit on for exactly one album, the immortal Back In Black<\/i>, before sinking into formula that would eventually verge on self-parody.\u00a0 Over the past 25 years, AC\/DC has devolved into more of a brand \u2013 with all the safe and predictable routines that implies — than a band.<\/p>\n
Editorializing aside, there\u2019s no denying that Backtracks<\/i> is a cool artifact in its own way \u2013 a disc of studio rarities, followed by a disc of unreleased live recordings, followed by a DVD packed with videos.\u00a0 The band \u2013 sibling guitarists Angus and Malcolm Young, with a rhythm section most often and memorably manned by bassist Cliff Williams and drummer Phil Rudd \u2013 has always been a force of nature, regardless of which singer had the mike. <\/p>\n
The first half of the studio disc is of a piece with the group\u2019s early work, as you\u2019d expect, since for the most part they represent tracks included on the original Australian LP versions of their first few albums, but left off of the repackaged US editions.\u00a0 The songs are simple, loud and pointed, and Scott sings with an audible smirk in his voice.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to imagine that many of these songs are truly rarities for the hardcore fan, which is obviously the main audience for a box set like this \u2013 but they\u2019re fun regardless.<\/p>\n
\u201cR.I.P. (Rock In Peace)\u201d is the highlight of the studio disc, a dirty, dirty boogie that chugs along in classic style.\u00a0 \u201cCarry Me Home\u201d feels perhaps a bit too prescient considering Scott eventually drank himself to death, but it\u2019s in perfect keeping with the dark humor Scott mastered and the band carried on briefly after his death.\u00a0 The later Johnson-era cuts are mostly formulaic; the fire and aggression is still there on stronger cuts like \u201cBorrowed Time,\u201d \u201cOn The Borderline\u201d and \u201cBig Gun,\u201d but the laughter died with Scott, and with it, a significant element of their appeal.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
As for the second disc, AC\/DC is already well-documented in a live setting, and it would therefore be easy to call these cuts unnecessary\u2026 easy, and wrong.\u00a0 The first seven tracks of the live disc \u2013 the Scott-era 1977-79 \u201cDirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap,\u201d \u201cDog Eat Dog,\u201d \u201cLive Wire\u201d and \u201cShot Down In Flames,\u201d followed by the Johnson-voiced 1981 \u201cBack In Black,\u201d \u201cT.N.T.\u201d and \u201cLet There Be Rock\u201d \u2013 are nothing short of phenomenal.\u00a0 The energy coming out of the speakers on these cuts could power a city \u2013 or at least, a frothing horde of 20,000 or so fans.\u00a0 The rest of the disc is less compelling, but who could really argue with arena-sized singalongs to \u201cYou Shook Me All Night Long\u201d and \u201cHighway To Hell\u201d?\u00a0 And the 13-minute \u201cJailbreak,\u201d for all its excesses, offers further proof of Angus Young as one of the most dynamic guitarists in rock history.<\/p>\n
The first section of the DVD is labeled as disc three of the two-disc Family Jewels<\/i> video collection of a couple of years ago, collecting videos from 1993 through last year\u2019s Black Ice<\/i> album.\u00a0 Supposedly they ran out of space on the first two discs, creating these leftovers, but another perspective would be that they ran out of *good* videos.\u00a0 The latter-day videos are mostly as rote and predictable as the songs, though \u201cHail Caesar\u201d generates a few easy laughs by inserting Angus in classic movie footage, and the two cuts from Black Ice<\/i> — \u201cRock\u2019n\u2019Roll Train\u201d and \u201cAnything Goes\u201d — are musically strong. <\/p>\n
The bonus videos that fill out FJ Disc Three<\/i> are more fun.\u00a0 The alternate \u201cIt\u2019s A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock \u2018N\u2019 Roll)\u201d video with the original quintet playing it before a slightly baffled crowd on a downtown city plaza somewhere in Australia is a great bit \u2013 not just to catch the puzzled looks on some of the bystanders\u2019 faces as the then-unknown band plays, but also to see Angus for once looking like an actual schoolboy.\u00a0 He was 20 years old when the video was shot and it\u2019s a chance to see him back before the schoolboy uniform became a joke not just in terms of context, but age as well. \u00a0(And of course, has there ever been a bad music video that included bagpipers?\u00a0 I don\u2019t think so.)<\/p>\n
The \u201cJailbreak\u201d promo clip presents the original band in all their raw, tattooed, street-thug glory; \u201cGuns For Hire\u201d reminds why it\u2019s among the highlights of the band\u2019s largely barren 80s oeuvre; \u201cDirty Deeds\u201d mixes clips from throughout the band\u2019s history into a performance from the tour that produced 1991\u2019s Live<\/i>; and in the middle of the \u201cHighway To Hell\u201d promo clip, the mugging, doomed Scott sums it all up by actually winking right into the camera.<\/p>\n
In the final assessment, the word \u201crarities\u201d feels like a euphemism through much of Backtracks<\/i>; what these are, is leftovers.\u00a0 Like dinner leftovers, some of them taste great reheated, while some of them were really just taking up space in the fridge.\u00a0 Still, the best material here is undeniably tasty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":30139,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5683],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-41778","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-ac-dc","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41778","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\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41778"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}