Something 4 The Weekend # 76

AC/DC: High Voltage: "Can I Sit Next To You Girl" [mp3]

In the summer of 1976 my family went on a three week road trip to Florida and back, packed restlessly into our '74 Plymouth Fury stationwagon, which pulled a Palomino tent camper behind it...It was a mostly glorious vacation, full of KOA campgrounds, small furry animals, large scary insects, sand in the crack, sharks, snakes, migraines, bicentennial fever and other moist, hot things...Yeah, what is Florida in July if not hotter than fuck, and wetter than that?

I would say the vacation was split 50/50 between sitting around the camper doing the sorts of things one does when camping, and visiting all the typical glossy vacation destinations you'd expect - Disneyworld, Sea World, Cypress Garden, Cape Canaveral, Lion Country Safari, Busch Gardens, glass-bottomed boat rides, alligator farms, and of course, plenty of beaches and swimming and boogie boarding...

To bring this around to music and this week's mp3 4 the weekend, I have to tell you that when we were driving around, to and from those glossy destinations, the stationwagon only had an AM radio in the dash, and in 1976, that meant a mix of Country-Western, talk radio, Top 40, and Christian...There was little rock music of either the soft or hard variety to be heard on the AM dial, and if there were, neither of my parents were interested in hearing it...Which meant it was plenty of top 40 pop and disco for my mom, and country music for my dad...I tended to sit waaaay in the back of the stationwagon, in the third bench seat facing backwards, reading MAD and Ripley's Believe It Or Not paperbacks and seeing the Florida that we were always and forever leaving behind us as my dad sped onward towards the next parking lot of the next glossy thing...Most of the fun for me was never quite knowing where we were going...And as the speeding 18-wheelers would pass us, I'd pump my fist, and they'd blast their horns, and I was ten years old and that was the coolest fucking thing in the world to me...

Years later I'd seriously contemplate truck-driving school in Sun Prairie, but my parents had other plans...

Back at the assorted campgrounds, however, we had a sweet radio/8-track machine - a unit that might be described as a proto-boombox...It was magnificent, and I had full control over that thing...Not only did it have the AM band, but the elusive FM band, not to mention a couple of shortwave bands...I liked the FM dial, and I was tuning into rock radio for the first time, and it was a sweet, sweet sound to my tender ears, grown weary of ABBA and the Starland Vocal Band...

So, that summer, I'd lay there in a hammock outside the camper, with this proto-boombox sitting on my chest, hearing a ton of rock bands I'd never heard before, and chief among them was AC/DC...

Ah, AC/DC...Specifically, the song "TNT" was my proper introduction to the band, and I was absolutely and immediately fucking hooked...As those three weeks progressed, I also heard "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" and "The Jack", and for the next few years, AC/DC was my probably my favorite band...I'd also have to consider Ted Nugent and maybe KISS, but why bother?

For five straight albums, right up to Bon Scott's tragic death by puke and misadventure in 1980, AC/DC fucking ruled, and at school the next day, 8th grade at John Long Middle School, a whole bunch of us participated in Be Kind To Bon Scott Day™ , and there were black armbands, and AC/DC cassettes in everybody's boomboxes, blasting Bon and company...

The joke (or the criticism) became, of course, that AC/DC were a one trick pony, that when you've heard one of their songs, you've heard them all...

I did some rough calculations, and have come to the conclusion that this joke is only 53% true...

Case in point is this week's song, "Can I Sit Next To You Girl"...Sure, it has an element or two that is unmistakably AC/DC, but on the whole, it is a rather unique song for the band, which is why I chose it for this week's Something 4 The Weekend...It's leaner than most of their songs, and cops more easily and obviously from ye olde Chuck Berryish boogie and "trad-rock" in general, and those runs that Angus is rattling off in the verses are unheard anywhere else on their records, if I'm not mistaken...I've come to call AC/DC's sound "Boogie Cock", and this song has some of that, and Bon's usual tease'n'sleaze thing happening...Good stuff...Good stuff for a boy starting to come of age, starting to figure some things out..."Boogie Cock"...*snicker*

Anyways, Bon Scott died in the winter of 1980, and I was more than kind to the man, remaining staunchly loyal to the original line-up, never accepting the band when Brian Johnson joined the fray...Back In Black was released a mere 5 months after Bon's death, and I didn't want anything to fucking do with it...I still don't...I'm not even gonna BOLD the fucker's name...

LOL...

RIP, Bon Scott...

Hotcha! Hank