 The Beatles boxes included ashes of John and George, Neil Young Archives Vol. 1 had R2-D2-type holograms, and 13th Floor Elevators bomb shelter Sign of the 3 Eyed Men came with real eyeballs. None feed back when you lay an electric guitar atop them as does the Marshall amp edition of AC/DC's Backtracks. A 9-volt battery inside the lid of the foot-high cardboard box set powers a sole transistor speaker topside. Haggis pluck (yum) includes an LP-size hardbound picture book, 3-CD/2-DVD motherboard, 12-inch vinyl B-sides mix, Let There Be Rock poster, etc. Now plug in while Angus Young does the same on YouTube with his Gibson SG horn thrower. Power chord at will. (The Chronicle's technician loped "Sweet Jane" for a Thanksgiving mob.) Backtracks' standard version, less one CD, one DVD, and at one-fifth the down payment blues, compares like a blue ribbon in the face of a trophy. Brimming Bon Scott-cackled Aussie LP tracks edited off U.S. discs, amp deluxe contextualizes its first CD with additional Down Under mixes, including "High Voltage," "Rocker," and "Ain't No Fun (Waiting Around to Be a Millionaire)." Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap drain-off such as "R.I.P. (Rock in Peace)" proves the rule rather than a Tutankhamen-type discovery, but then the 1960s pop romanticism of "Love Song" astounds as the only AC/DC Bon Scott ballad other than "Ride On." Let There Be Rock castaway "Crabsody in Blue" crawls with conviction, but the flipside of "Rock 'n' Roll Damnation," growler "Cold Hearted Man," furthers Scott's posthumous box score. Leftovers from his replacement, Brian Johnson, jab-'n'-stab surprisingly lean past a "Who Made Who" remix, notably "Heatseeker" stinger "Snake Eye." One of the Scotsman's better lyrics before Malcolm and Angus Young assumed all songwriting duties, "Borrowed Time" cedes little to "Big Gun," which remains the only pure AC/DC-Rick Rubin collaboration given the castrated results of the two camps' Ballbreaker in 1995. Where the smaller Backtracks offers a single live rarities compilation, the amplified heat fleshes it to two. Bon Scott opens CD two on a purgatory-broiled "Dirty Deeds" alongside two saves off his final tour, while Johnson takes the remaining 25 tracks, live sulfur from the Back in Black trek burning out of control. A 12-minute "Jailbreak" from Dallas, 1985, never looks back. The balance of material avalanches from the band's well-documented 1991 Donington Park festival appearance and Madrid's Plaza de Toros triumph in 1996, the former ringing "Hells Bells" on Angus' viral fire and the latter goring on "Dog Eat Dog." A Family Jewels 3 DVD offers songs worse than their videos ("Hail Caesar"), but the Backtracks deluxe-only full-length flashback on a second DVD, "Live at the Circus Krone," Germany 2003, pledges "What's Next to the Moon," Angus striptease standby "Bad Boy Boogie," and a three-alarm "If You Want Blood (You've Got It)." Oxygen suck: "Rock 'n' Roll Ain't Noise Pollution." www.acdcbacktracks.com....full text |
How easy is it to admire AC/DC? First, “tenderness” is not in their vocab: they just might be the only working rock band ideologically opposed to ballads. Shit, even Def Leppard had “Love Bites,” and Ozzy locked slow-dance horns with Lita Ford. Second, in their post–Bon Scott years with Brian Johnson, they’ve rendered entire decades irrelevant.
It doesn’t matter whether an AC/DC track was cut in ’87 or ’08 — they all sound as if they hailed from the same Herculean recording session of some undefined year. To boot, the band’s rarities on display in this two-CD/one-DVD set sound exactly like their beloved album renditions. The Young Bros. and company are nothing if not militaristically consistent. Backtracks collects a handful of Australian bonus tracks, B-sides, and promos, like “Cyberspace.” (You know you want to hear Johnson sing about cyberspace.)...full text |
T
he most popular version of the new AC/DC boxed set, "Backtracks," will be the one that includes a CD of B-sides and other rarities, a CD of live performances and a DVD of videos. But the real prize is the deluxe configuration, available from the band's Web site, which includes an extra CD of performances, a DVD of a 2003 concert, a vinyl record, a high-quality photo book and replicas of various memorabilia-schoolboy outfit not included -in a case that doubles as a working amplifier. As for the music, AC/DC has spent three decades giving old-fashioned rock the frenzied energy of metal, and the band hasn't heard a riff that's too raucous (check out the song "Stick Around") or a double-entendre that's too crude (one rarity is called "Snake Eye"). The concert -a 2003 performance from Munich-shows the band in its true element, as guitarist Angus Young seems to sweat out his own weight onstage. It's good, dirty fun.-Robert Levine...full text |
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