AC/DC/Blow Up Your Video/1988

Every red-blooded American boy’s journey into Heavy Metal uber-fandom has to start somewhere. For this young lad, that starting place was none other than a hard rockin’ band of Aussie’s named AC/DC.

I cut my teeth on that shit.

If memory serves right, the first AC/DC cassette I ever bought was Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap. I bought it at an ACME grocery/department store in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. My mom would take my brother and I with her to go grocery shopping. I would beg her to let me break away and visit the music department. Once there, I would stare at the album covers, the illustrations, the wild, pointy logos — I could only imagine what the music inside must sound like.

Wasting time in the music store was one of the few things in my childhood that I truly loved. I would keep lists of cassettes that I wanted to buy. AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Pink Floyd, Def Leppard, all made the cut. However, once I purchased Dirty Deeds, all those other bands had to take a backseat. I had found my favorite band. The best part was, by that time AC/DC were already over ten years into their career and had amassed an impressive back catalog for me to discover. Let There Be Rock, Powerage, Highway to Hell, Back in Black, all awaiting my anxious discovery. It didn’t take long for me to get caught up. That was what was so special about the release of Blow Up Your Video. It was going to be the first new AC/DC album that I ever bought. I couldn’t wait.

Blow Up Your Video really gets slagged by AC/DC and hard rock fans on the internet. That always shocks me. How could these trolls not be hearing what I hear? The most common complaint is that the album has too much filler. I disagree. I think every track is a winner and certainly as a whole, the album is more consistent than much of the Brian Johnson era output, with the obvious exception of Back in Black. Even today, I would argue that Blow Up Your Video is that last truly great AC/DC album.

The album kicks off with the lead single and modest hit, Heatseeker. I can remember the t-shirts for this song in the record stores back then, they depicted Angus Young straddling a giant missile with all the phallic subtlety of a hog dog going into a doughnut. The second track and single is an old school AC/DC foot stomper called, That's the Way I Wanna Rock 'n' Roll. It’s in this song that AC/DC proclaims their desire to “blow-up” MTV and the music video culture that had transformed the record industry in the eighties. AC/DC wanted their rock-n-roll simple and to the point — free from the image obsessed trends that MTV and record labels had cultivated. Meanstreak follows, and is a nifty, bluesy, number that suits Brian Johnson’s nicotine ravaged pipes nicely. In fact, it should be noted, that this is probably Brian Johnson’s last truly great vocal performance to be entered into AC/DC’s catalog before his voice finally succumbed to years of abuse. Kissin’ Dynamite is one of my favorite tracks. It has a dark, nihilistic feel, which is unique for a band whose music is typically upbeat. Some Sin for Nuthin’ shares a similarly dark vibe, but is more bluesy in nature. Two’s Up has an epic feel and fits nicely on the later half of the album. The albums closer, This Means War is as close to speed metal that AC/DC will ever get. It is a relentlessly upbeat track that features a sick riff that sounds like a combination of Highway to Hell’s Beatin’ Around the Bush and The Razors Edge’s Thunderstruck.

Top to bottom Blow Up Your Video is classic AC/DC. The choruses are well written and avoid the hard rock cliché of simply repeating the title of the song four times. Angus’s leads are standard issue Angus, but seem to feature more pinch harmonics than usual — think Billy Gibbons of ZZTop. As the first “new” AC/DC album I ever bought back in 1988, it exceeded my expectations and got me through many trips to and from school on my Walkman. For me, this record really cemented AC/DC into “favorite band” status.

As a pre-teen, I can remember actually asking my mom if she cared that I listened to, and had purchased a copy of Highway to Hell. She didn’t. I knew that AC/DC’s music was questionable listening for a young person like myself at the time. I suppose I was looking for some affirmation or perhaps even permission to pursue my love-affair with AC/DC. With a mother’s permission granted, I dove head-first into the sweaty, beer-soaked waters of AC/DC. Maybe I’m not qualified to write an objective AC/DC review. If it helps my credibility any, I felt that 2001’s Stiff Upper Lip and 1995’s Ballbreaker each had a handful of sub-par tracks. But Hell, I’d rather listen to a shitty AC/DC track than the best song Nickleback ever wrote. Blow Up Your Video rocks. Fuck you, internet h8trs. 9/10