Welcome
Welcome to an irregular series of posts about albums that matter. As with all my blog posts I am interested to hear from you with comments, questions or feedback. I'm not a professional writer however so there's no need to correct my grammar, style or spelling!
What's this all about?
I've written almost 650 blog posts about music, songs and my life. I started in 2007 and although there have been a few twists and bumps along the road, I've been writing for close to twenty years. The reasons for wanting or needing to write change from week to week. Often I'm writing for myself as much as for you, the reader and listener.
Last week I was blogging and listening to music when a track came on that floored me. I was instantly transported back to a particular time and place. I remembered listening to the album that the song was on over and over. Is it the greatest album of all time? Hardly. What I reflected on though was what the long player meant to me then and now.
As a result, I've decided to write about some albums that matter or mattered to me in one way or another.
Album #1: AC/DC - Blow Up Your Video (1988)
AC/DC fans will no doubt already be up in arms. The 1988 release is hardly well regarded and although it gave us two big singles, the rest is forgettable to most. Not to me.
In January 1988 I was going into my final year of school. My family had been in a state of change and I'd come back to Australia to live with my Dad. It wasn't an easy time for anyone. On the way home from Melbourne airport to Gippsland we dropped into a shopping centre. I knew that Blow Up Your Video had just been released and I was hoping that it would be in stores by now. At that time I was a massive fan of hard rock and heavy metal despite it really not being a popular form of music with other than one or two of my friends. I was ecstatic to get the cassette and Dad gritted his teeth and let me pop it into the car stereo.
What's this all about?
I've written almost 650 blog posts about music, songs and my life. I started in 2007 and although there have been a few twists and bumps along the road, I've been writing for close to twenty years. The reasons for wanting or needing to write change from week to week. Often I'm writing for myself as much as for you, the reader and listener.
Last week I was blogging and listening to music when a track came on that floored me. I was instantly transported back to a particular time and place. I remembered listening to the album that the song was on over and over. Is it the greatest album of all time? Hardly. What I reflected on though was what the long player meant to me then and now.
As a result, I've decided to write about some albums that matter or mattered to me in one way or another.
Album #1: AC/DC - Blow Up Your Video (1988)
AC/DC fans will no doubt already be up in arms. The 1988 release is hardly well regarded and although it gave us two big singles, the rest is forgettable to most. Not to me.
In January 1988 I was going into my final year of school. My family had been in a state of change and I'd come back to Australia to live with my Dad. It wasn't an easy time for anyone. On the way home from Melbourne airport to Gippsland we dropped into a shopping centre. I knew that Blow Up Your Video had just been released and I was hoping that it would be in stores by now. At that time I was a massive fan of hard rock and heavy metal despite it really not being a popular form of music with other than one or two of my friends. I was ecstatic to get the cassette and Dad gritted his teeth and let me pop it into the car stereo.
Let me tell you about the car stereo. Back in the 80s, having a great car sound system wasn't all that common. Certainly only a few years earlier I'd been told that we wouldn't be playing the radio or cassettes in the car because Dad said it was distracting. Times change! This car had a two speaker system as well as receiving AM stereo which was brand new in Australia at the time (and didn't last). I loved to be in that car and listen to AM radio that wasn't the standard muffled mono sound. The cassette player was awesome too. It had separate controls for bass and treble, as opposed to a single tone knob, and that mattered to me.
So, in went AC/DC. I think Dad managed to cope with the first side before he'd had enough. In all fairness to him, this is before we really saw eye to eye on music to listen to, but that's a tale to tell another day about another special album.
In 1988 albums were precious. None of us had many and we shared and copied. My cassette carrier with its twenty cassettes was a prized possession. As a result, I got to be very familiar with those particular recordings as well as my small collection of LPs and 45 rpm singles.
In no time at all I knew the tracks on Blow Up Your Video inside out. I can still sing along to most of them now. In 1988 I'd stay up late for the few hours of MTV we got on a Friday or Saturday night in the usually vain hope of seeing AC/DC or anything close to hard rock. The clips for Heatseeker and That's The Way I Wanna Rock 'n' Roll were aired once in a blue moon. No-one I knew had a video recorder. I'm not sure that my school had more than one or two either.
I don't think there are any stinkers on this album, in fact the opposite. The guitars growled and roared in a way that they wouldn't again on an AC/DC record. The next album had a more commercial, almost processed sound and then after that the guitars, whilst still awesome, became cleaner. More Rolling Stones-esque than what we'd been used to. Brian Johnson (vocals) talks about the record being recorded in an old chateau in France. It sounds glamorous but in reality it was run down and spartan. Apparently the band couldn't wait to get out of there. As a result the album has a level of urgency to it. The AC/DC swagger is there in spades but there's also a menacing feel borne of a level of discomfort. I guess that edge to the sound resonated with me then and it still does.
Only four of the ten tracks on Blow Up Your Video have ever been played in concert by AC/DC. I guess that's an indication both of the strength of their catalogue but also of how much they maybe don't like the album.
Meanstreak is, for me, the one that they should give an airing once in a while. The intro riff reminds me of a police siren and the song has a wonderful groove that conjures up images of old cartoon crooks tiptoeing down a shady alleyway.
I still have Blow Up Your Video on that original cassette from 1988. I shudder to think how many times it was played at home and on my walkman clone. I've now got it on CD as well but it's not one I've managed to add to the collection on vinyl yet. I must remedy that one day soon. The album is a reminder of my final year at school and all that is part of that pivotal time. A very strong memory is listening to it on the bus on the way to school, hoping that the batteries in the walkman would last. My player had two headphone jacks so I would regularly be listening with my mate Paul. I'm pretty sure I didn't subject my Dad to it in the car again though!
Thanks for reading this,
The Woozle
