Let There Be Rock, part deux

It’s uncertain how much Bibi can write today—she’s still so buzzed from finding out that the Houston concert tickets will go on sale October 10! That date is a very significant one for Bibi, so she thinks there must be a very good reason that the original ticket sale date was postponed and finally set for this date. We will see.

After yesterday's post, with Bad Boy Boogie, Problem Child and Let There Be Rock out of the way, Bibi is left with Go Down, Dog Eat Dog, Overdose, Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be, and Whole Lotta Rosie to proclaim a to-die-for pick. If you’ve heard the cd, you’re pulling for your own fave, no doubt, and you know the difficulty of saying one of these is the best. I’ll put Whole Lotta Rosie in a category of its own. In its way, it’s up there with LTBR—a total Angus show, which means the whole band is just rocking it out to bring down the house. Once you’ve seen it in concert, you cannot separate it from Angus’s over the top and oh so great performance, along with the rabid crowd interaction. Talk about a number the crowd would howl and whine piteously for if they didn’t get it, WLR is one of those that makes an AC/DC concert unforgettable.

Dog Eat Dog has those wonderful lyrics that speak directly to Bibi: Dog eat dog/eat cat too, AND it has the cachet of having been selected to augment set list as part of the European tour. Hell Ain’t a Bad Place To Be is clearly an AC/DC favorite. From my limited research, it seems to always be in the set list. While both of them are very good and certainly deserve to be heard in concert, on this album, they cannot compete with the final two, Go Down and Overdose. Given the emotion of the day, noted above, guess a two-fer is selected for today's TDF.

So contrary to much of Bibi’s upbringing and education, Go Down has become a treasured favorite of hers. First, AC/DC opens the album with it, real in your face attitude, and it’s got all the AC/DC earmarks: ready to rock opening, chugging rhythm that won’t stop, Bon telling us about his way with women and in particular, the effect this one has on him: Ain’t no one I know that’s as good as you…you got the lips to make a strong man weak and a heathen pray and you can put together the significance of the title and the lyrics, right? Once again, the Angus break is sublime and the interplay between him and the rest of the guys confirms for us their monster strength as a cohesive band. Yes, Angus gets the solos, but it’s all about the band. BTW—for the very sensitive, the middle part of the song is Bon giving us a blow-by-blow commentary with Angus and the guys giving us the musical equivalent of the unfolding events, so you have to get over it or hit fast forward, although you would miss an excellent song.

Overdose--few would have attributed this song to AC/DC. The persona Bon uses is usually a love 'em and leave 'em player and here, he's in that tough situation of being enthralled by a woman who's become an obsession. His dilemna is a familiar one to most of us, but mostly unexplored by AC/DC. Bon's voice and the band's accompanying music betray the distress of the arrangement and at the same time, the attraction: But listen honey, I don't mind/You're a habit I don't want to break.

LTBR is one of those cds that, once it's playing, it gets replayed for days. Talk about feeling overdosed! It's a whole lotta album, so consuming, but hell ain't a bad place to be sometimes, and it feels so good when that problem child, Bon, and those bad (AC/DC) boys are boogie-ing! Crazy but it's true/Ain't nothing I can do.