“I remember when rock was young
me and Susie had so much fun.”
~Elton John
For those about to rock, the AC/DC rock-n-roll train rolls on. Unless, that is, you want to buy the Australian heavy metal group’s newest album, “Black Ice,” on iTunes, or anywhere but Wal-Mart when it drops in record stores on October 20th, 2008.
Call them old (they are– but the rock group known as AC/DC, alias the young brothers, Angus and Malcolm, are 53 and 55, while vocalist Brian Johnson is 61) still won’t give up that schoolboy uniform.
Despite distasteful business practices and crass-commercialism at its worst (AC/DC selling its new album “Black Ice” at only one retail chain- Wal-Mart) another reminder of just what is very, very, wrong in America, the blatant crass-commercialism, and Wal-Mart as usual, is stuck right in the very middle of it.
but hey kid, rock and roll, rock on ….. ooh my soul
As a child of the ’60’s, many of today’s bloggers and blog-readers are too young to remember that in the 1960’s and 1970’s- most rock songs were protests songs, in fact; much of the rock-n-roll movement was a protest movement, (anti-government, make love – not war, burn your brassiere’s) people bought rock albums as a political statement not because slick marketing executives at Wal-Mart made a big media event out of it. In the 1960’s, if a crass commercial entity like Wal-Mart tried to sell a Door’s or Jimi Hendrix album- there would have been riots, protests, and marches, outside the front door of Wal-Mart not to mention this thing called Pot and LSD.
Today’s kids, or rather, consumer’s, have been brain-washed.
None of that matter to the folks at Wal-Mart cause the kids in black are back.
Wednesday, “Black Ice” AC/DC’s first album in a dozen-years, debuted at No. #1 on the billboard albums chart, selling more than 780,000 copies in its first week , on Thursday. Wow! Not made for old men such as myself in their fifties. We still now how to rock Generation X-er’s.
Still looking for that blue jean, baby queen during the second night of its U.S. tour and the first of two sold-out shows here in Chicago, the quintet rocked as righteously and as mightily as any rock group ever could.
But hey kid, rock n roll, rock on … ooh my soul
Some things just never get old or seem tired, and high atop this list of the best things in life is that simple, monolithic, four-on-the-floor AC/DC beat (bassist Cliff Williams and drummer Phil Rudd remain one of the most underrated rhythm sections in rock history)
I never knew me a better time and I guess I never will
Oh lawdy mama those Friday nights
When Suzie wore her dresses tight
And the crocodile rocking was out of sight
The AC/DC rock-n-roll train rolls right along despite a 12-year hiatus and having listened to the album or rather CD as they call “albums” these days, all train wrecks-should be this much fun. I suppose Black Ice is as much a testament to AC/DC’s endurance as it is to the crass-commercialism and clever marketing by the folks at Wal-Mart who will soon make us all learn to speak Chinese. To make things happen in China, you have to know people. “Knowing” is what the Chinese mean by “guan xi” or “connections.” When you cultivate “guan xi” with people, you might get them to bend over backwards for you, let alone buy into your demands and style and no one has perfected the art of bullshit, er … “guan xi” like the folks at Wal-Mart. But just as the folks at Wally-World made $7 million-dollars on Black Ice- you think Wal-Mart would let AC/DC perform in one of their stores? I’m guessing not.
but they’ll never kill the thrills we got
burning up to the crocodile rock
we really thought the crocodile rock would last
So hey kids, rock and roll, rock on … but remember not to become too brain-washed by Wal-Mart who will use AC/DC, Brittany Spears, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Lindsay Lohan or any other troubled teen, personality, or commercial entity, they can take advantage of to line the coffin of old Sam Walton who is probably lying there with a huge smile on his face.
KH
