I heard "Thunderstruck" on Sirius BuzzSaw today.

"Back In Black" is the best hard rock album ever made. Do we credit Bon Scott, who supposedly helped write the tunes before he died, or Mutt Lange? It’s unclear, but all we know is AC/DC has never equaled the quality of that album since. But it came close twice. With "Who Made Who" and "Thunderstruck".

Actually, after my physical therapy appointment, when I tuned back into BuzzSaw, they were playing "Who Made Who". As allmusic.com says, the album is "just a cheap soundtrack to a cheap movie", ultimately a career retrospective, but the title cut sneaks up on you, it’s got this dancing groove, which is kind of funny for a band said to have no melody. The groove of "Who Made Who" bobs and weaves, it’s the soundtrack to a fast walk down a Manhattan sidewalk, a run through the gates on a slalom hill, dodging automobiles on the freeway. There’s a freedom and a power in "Who Made Who" that enables the listener, turns him into a fully-realized being, allows him to be self-directed, running on pure instinct.

That’s the power of metal. That’s why rock still sells the most tickets. It’s what the sound does to the audience. It’s why Nickelback is the best-selling band in the land. What’s underneath, the release, it’s absent from other musical forms, and present in straight ahead rock.

But "Back In Black" was more than that. It had an element of the Beach Boys. How else to explain "You Shook Me All Night Long"? It was like a stroll down the beach, in your all black clothing. A fish out of water, but accepted just the same. Grandmothers, afraid for the future of their progeny, worried about society’s negative influences, embraced "You Shook Me All Night Long". Because it sounded so damn good! Come on, sing along! YOU SHOOK ME ALL NIGHT LONG!!

And fans cannot forget that 180, when the SoCal beach number ends and we go straight to the Sunset Strip, where Brian and the boys implore us to have a drink on them! Only Mutt Lange seems able to do this. Make the secondary tracks, the tertiary tracks, the album cuts buried deep in the center of an album, your favorites. If you ever tipped a bottle, you realize the honesty, the truth in "Have A Drink On Me". On Friday night, when you’ve had just enough, which is really one too many, you no longer give a shit about decorum, you let your inner wolf escape, you finally grow the balls to approach that woman you’ve been eyeing all night.

Then, of course, there are the two side-openers, "Hells Bells" and "Back In Black". In the early seventies, "Brown Sugar" was the kickoff to the weekend. By time the decade turned again, it had become "Hells Bells". You dropped the needle and your inhibitions…you were ready to rage!

Not that "Back In Black" was appropriate solely for good times. It was also the soundtrack when you were mad at society, frustrated. You cranked the album up to 11 and let the sound wash over you. You suddenly felt powerful!

Then came the disappointment of "For Those About To Rock". Not quite as bad as "I’m In You" after "Frampton Comes Alive", but a giant descent for those who now counted the band as one of their favorites. We were forced to keep playing "Back In Black" and retreating to the earlier albums, containing gems like "It’s A Long Way To The Top" and "Highway To Hell".

Then there were two left-field returns to form… "Who Made Who" and "Thunderstruck"…

Went down the highway
Broke the limit, we hit the town
Went through to Texas, yeah Texas
And we had some fun
We met some girls
Some dancers who gave a good time
Broke all the rules, played all the fools
Yeah, yeah, they, they, they blew our minds

This is the rock and roll fantasy. We’re gonna turn on the tunes, get tanked up and roll with the best babes around. The fact that it rarely happens is irrelevant. The music is better than any movie, any video game, with it cranked you suspend disbelief, feel like your dream is a reality.

So, do you want to see the band yet?

Listening to AC/DC on Sirius today, I got a burning desire to see them live. Just like the teenagers. Their three biggest desires are not Madonna, the Stones or Jay-Z, they want to see Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and AC/DC, in that order.

Pink Floyd reunited once, with class, at Live 8. Gilmour does not appear close to conceding. This is a reunion that looks like a longer shot than the Eagles’. For a minute there, Led Zeppelin’s reunion looked impossible too. Now, it may be inevitable. Unless Robert Plant sticks to his word and continues to say no. As for AC/DC… Did they issue a retirement memo? Did they say their last tour was the final one? Did they work the press, manipulate us? No, they’ve been SILENT!

And absence makes the heart grow fonder.

The mainstream media is not cataloging the AC/DC renaissance. The youth have no say. Except in their bedrooms, on their iPods, where the band’s music is king. They know someday, there will be a new album, someday the band will go on the road. There’s no story of suicide, no drug drama, no TMZ/PerezHilton train-wreck. The feeling is that the mad scientist Young brothers are cooking something up, and when it’s finally baked, they’re going to reemerge, and we’ll be back in nirvana.

This is not Van Halen. Eddie’s a great player. Dave’s a talent. We love those albums. But "Back In Black" is akin to "Sgt. Pepper". Van Halen never came close. And "Pyromania" and "Hysteria" are good, but there’s an earthiness to AC/DC’s music absent from Def Leppard’s. A primary element, the kernel of rock and roll.

Have you seen the band? That impossible sound, the AC/DC trademark… Angus duplicates it. This is no Mariah Carey singing to a backing track on GMA, this is no American Idol, who can sing, but cannot play…this is a savant, who seems to have been born to play in this singular style, perfectly. He dons his shorts, drapes that Gibson SG around his neck and lets loose!

Sure, AC/DC got airplay when radio meant so much more. Even got MTV play. But "Back In Black" emerged over a year before the video outlet launched in a limited number of homes. And if you think this is a band built by video, you’ve never seen the clip for "You Shook Me All Night Long". Amateurish, cheap, cheesy…pick your adjective, but classic it is not. AC/DC’s success is all about the music.

Madge can whore herself out to the press. This is not a campaign, this is not marketing, this is music!

The little kids didn’t have to be told, they found out all by themselves.

Keep the ticket prices cheap enough, and the Young brothers and their entourage could sell out stadiums. For them, the world stands still, just like their music. It’s just that powerful.

Some things have to be sold, some things just sell themselves. If Napster had never happened, if the iPod had never been introduced, AC/DC’s career, their fame, their music, might have languished. With the free transfer of tunes, with kids able to hip kids halfway around the world, the flame of the Down Under icons has not only stayed lit, it’s glowing brighter than ever. If you can’t see it, you’re looking too high in the sky, so caught up in today’s paradigm that you don’t understand that bands belong to fans. Fans keep bands alive, not Live Nation. If you’re good enough, you can play forever. As long as you don’t play every day, as long as you don’t tell us to listen to you. We get to make that choice.

If "Back In Black" is not one of your desert island discs, you’re not planning on bringing a stereo to the atoll. If you’re gonna say no to AC/DC live, you’re not even hip enough for Letterman, it’s one of Paul Shaffer’s favorite numbers, he plays it all the time. Hits reside in the mind of the audience, not on sales charts. Sure, AC/DC owns sales records, but that’s not half of it… How many times have you listened to the music? And it never gets old, it always stays fresh. It’s the soundtrack to your life.

Michael Fremer:

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Begin forwarded message:

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Are we going to wait for decades, until bandwidth and desire conspire to deliver higher quality files, or is the music industry going to lead the charge in the distribution of higher quality digital music?

Notice I didn’t say analog music. The vinyl LP is just fine. You can catalog its faults, distortion and physical vulnerability, but you can’t deny its warmth. I’m not saying that we’ve got to bring back the twelve inch disc format, but we can recreate the listening experience, of gathering around the stereo enjoying music, if only some effort is expended, some attention is paid.

It’s not like the public is ignorant to quality sound. They hear it at movie theatres. They hear it at home, via multi-channel home theatre systems. Quality sound is a thrill. Why has this goal been abandoned?

Let’s count the fuckups.

Multi-channel high quality. Fuck more than two. If you’ve GOT to sit in one place to hear high quality sound, it’s a nonstarter. You don’t walk around your house watching a movie, but you do move when you listen to music. Any configuration that REQUIRES you to sit in one place is not desirable to most people. One of the great advantages of music is you can take it with you…we don’t want to cripple this.

Price. If you think a premium is the way to go, you’re not following the Blu-Ray disaster. Forget that the rival format was finally killed, people still don’t want Blu-Ray. Sales have tanked again…

Blu-ray: The Future Has Been Delayed

They’re hoping the format will take off by October 2009. With Warner announcing simultaneous delivery of DVDs and iTunes rentals yesterday, any delay in physical disc format adoption is a potential fatal drag.

Bottom line, it’s got to be like the conversion from mono to stereo in the sixties. Both have got to be the same price… The high quality and the low. Then people WILL buy the higher one, believing that in the future they want its benefits… Then they’ll ultimately purchase the equipment to experience/hear the higher quality. If they’re broadcasting in HD, you want a plasma/LCD set in order to VIEW in higher quality. Especially after seeing the great images at a friend’s house. Hear high quality digital files at your buddy’s and YOU’RE going to want higher quality speakers to unlock the greatness in the tracks YOU own.

And the new higher quality must be digital. Analog is dead. And the files must be unlocked. Fully transferable. Let’s not fight the battles of the past.

And the sampling rate must be higher than that of the CD. You must be able to hear all the music. Exactly the way it was made. That’s the ATTRACTION!

Do we have enough bandwidth? Questionable in a country without a broadband policy. But maybe Verizon can be brought in as a partner, with its high speed FIOS system. Maybe that’s where flat rate/Jim Griffin music distribution should start. Get FIOS (which is not cheap), and you have access to everything!

Why should the industry care? People are dumb. They don’t know quality. Wrong! Then how do you explain most people listening to AM in their cars but purchasing expensive stereos in the sixties and seventies? People want to unlock the sound. Sound quality decreased with the 8-track and cassette and the MP3… But this is not because people didn’t care what music sounded like, they just wanted portability and convenience. Portability and convenience must be built into any new scheme!

The key is to get people excited about music. Hip-hop sounds good in present digital formats. Folk music does not. Quiet music needs to touch your heart, and it does this best in a higher quality format.

Someone needs to lead the charge. Someone needs to bring everybody together. ISPs, equipment manufacturers and producers/distributors. There must be a coherent plan, which will deliver dividends in the foreseeable future. The HDTV ramp-up should be used as a model. The availability and quality will drive adoption.

I listened to the Mudcrutch album via low quality excerpts on the band’s site. I didn’t like it, I thought it was crap. Then I listened to the files on my iPod, one song came alive. Then I played the album via my AUX OUT speakers and shit, now I’m HOOKED! There’s music underneath. I just had to scrub away all the shit obscuring it. It’s like falling in love. It’s hard to do from a distance, in the dark. But up close and personal, in the light, you’re hooked!

If you could hear my speakers, you’d buy them too. But, if the public at large were given truly high quality music to listen to, MANY people would buy them. They’d buy better headphones/earbuds for their iPods. We don’t want to kill the computer or iPod listening experience, we can’t deny the future. But if the music is truly that good, many will want a separate amplifier to hear even MORE of what’s underneath.

This benefits EVERYONE! Manufacturers, producers/distributors… Even concert promoters.

We’ve got to get everybody excited about music. That’s the future. Exclusivity/scarcity is death.

At some point in the future, high quality sound will reign. But why should we wait? Why can’t NARAS pick up the charge? Truly do something good for music. Or the RIAA… Do something positive instead of suing your customer base.

If you’re reading this, chances are you remember going to the stereo shop and being blown away by half-speed mastered vinyl discs. You lusted after both them and the equipment they were played on. Hell, "Crime Of The Century" is a religious experience on Mobile Fidelity, on MP3 it’s just another album. Music cannot be a second class citizen any longer, it must ascend to its rightful position as the most powerful, most fulfilling art form. Can’t someone LEAD THE CHARGE?

The second side of "We’re Only In It For The Money" opens with "Flower Punk":

Hey punk, where you going with that flower in your hand?
I’m goin’ up to Frisco to join a psychedelic band

Notice Zappa didn’t write SAN FRANCISCO! His audience knew what he meant by "Frisco", he assumed a level of intelligence, of hipness, a concept major music and movie companies abandoned long ago.

The vocal was cartoony. And as the song wore on, there were simultaneous monologues in each channel. You had to adjust the balance knob to avoid complete cacophony. And in each case, what was being said was inane, you had contempt for these speakers, this type of people… But this was SATIRE!

Is there any satire in Mariah Carey? "American Idol"? Not even Madonna.

Or how about Radiohead… The band takes itself so fucking seriously. Chris Martin has got a sense of humor about Coldplay, but it doesn’t come across in the act’s music, that’s deadly serious for yuppies who make you want to throw up or kill them.

Yes, kill! Call out the PC police. They’re prosecuting mind crimes now. Little Johnny can’t decide on his own who to play with and if parents don’t watch out for him at all times, he’s going to be stolen and pressed into slavery. The fact that the facts contradict this is irrelevant. Boomers would have put bumpers on the whole damn world if they could have. And Generation X is dealing with their kids the same way.

Meanwhile, these kids are sitting in their bedrooms playing "Grand Theft Auto".

Have you played "Grand Theft Auto"? The breakthrough 2001 version? Where you beat people up and have sex with prostitutes? Yup, that’s what happens. Be horrified. Just like your parents were when you wouldn’t stop playing those damn Beatle records. Better yet, those dark Zeppelin records, purveyed by people who went across this great country of ours abusing women, pouring hot wax on their bodies and doing unseemly things with mudsharks. You’ve sanitized music and movies, video games are the last frontier.

But it’s not solely about violence and seediness, there’s also humor. The same damn humor encased in a Mothers Of Invention album.

I mean I’m reading the review of Grand Theft Auto IV in the L.A. "Times" and I’m cracking up. Turns out there are TV channels in the game, and one of the shows is called "I’m Rich", which the writer says is "a spoof of celebrity-obsessed ‘news’ shows". Another program features "right-leaning commentary (from the terrorism-obsessed ‘Weasel’ network)". Kids know there’s no news on network TV, if you want hard news you go to the Net. As for cable, they can admit to themselves that Fox is biased and Bill O’Reilly is a blowhard, why can’t YOU?

Yes, while the adults are trying to sanitize society, the little boys and girls understand what’s really going on. And if they want a taste of it, they go to video games.

GTA IV is a success because of the CONCEPTION! You might think you can replicate a Picasso or the work of some minimalist artist, but you didn’t have the IDEA! It’s all about the idea. We’re drawn to those who test limits, who state the obvious in a new way, who titillate us while respecting us. All the edges have been sapped from mainstream music, you wonder why people have no compunction stealing it? You wonder why no new act hits superstar status? It’s the baby boomers paying a fortune to see oldsters, not kids. Kids think it’s a rip-off. And ridiculous. To see tiny men in tights acting like they’re still in their twenties so middle-aged people can remember the way it once was. Shit, that once for kids is NOW!

I can’t wait to play GTA IV. Not because I want to run over pedestrians or dent cars but because I want to see what the creators have in store, what they’ve come up with that will make me think, that will make me see the world in a new way. That’s what great art does, challenge your preconceptions, make you see the world in a different way.

We used to have this in the music business. Once upon a time, the Stones were dangerous and sang about getting SATISFACTION! John Lennon admitted doing drugs and said the Beatles were bigger than Jesus. All true. The only ones who were bugged were those who weren’t buying the albums anyway.

The only ones bugged about GTA IV are those who don’t own a console, who don’t play video games. They’ve truly got no idea what their kids are doing behind locked doors, not only with their controllers, but online.

The kids will survive. They always do. Art is just a reflection of society.

And we live in a phony society where the truth is known but not spoken and bullies focus on the irrelevant, like wearing flag pins, while exhibiting a holier than thou attitude. You might have had the spark beaten out of you, but kids have still got it. The music used to be a guiding light, not only leading you, but assuring you you were on the right path. Now even the festival is a rip-off. I mean how damn expensive does it have to be? How much money do the boomers have to make?

Used to be there were a plethora of stadium acts. Now, not even U2 can play a ballpark in the U.S. And that’s because music just ain’t where it’s happening. It’s about bucks more than art. It’s about safe more than dangerous. Fans will give you ALL their money if they think you deserve it. But they’d rather give it to Take-Two than you. They’re interested in getting their money’s worth.