Weighin' in at nineteen stone

Continuing my trip back through the 1977 album charts.

13/11/77 : Let There Be Rock - AC/DC

This isn't really my sort of thing, but AC/DC do it better than most, so I'm at least partially looking forward to listening to it.

It's all well done, but there's certainly an argument that it's a bit samey.  I surprised myself by recognising several tracks - "Go Down", "Dog Eat Dog" and "Whole Lotta Rosie", with the latter being a fine track indeed.  I didn't mind any of it and it certainly can't be accused of taking itself too seriously, but I didn't need a whole album of it (although it was only 40 minutes, so things could have been far worse).

We're all the way down at #17 this week, on their first week of a second run of four weeks (it initially entered the charts two weeks previously, but for just that week which suggests distribution issues) with this being as high as it got.  The top five this week were The Sex Pistols, the Bread best-of, Rod Stewart (a new entry), Queen and Electric Light Orchestra and the next highest new entry was an Elvis live album (#13 - he'd died earlier this year).

Wikipedia tells me this is their fourth album - they were in a bit of a weird place because things were going well in Europe but they were in danger of being dropped from their US label.  The album cover is interesting for a couple of reasons - it's the first appearance of their iconic logo and the photo was (quite obviously) taken in Southend.  The critics liked and continue to like the album ("it kicks unholy ass!") but it didn't do as well commercially as you might have expected - #154 in the US, with The Netherlands being where it got the highest, peaking at #10.

"Customers also listened to" Black Sabbath, Aereosmith, Van Halen and Mötorhead - birds of a feather sticking together there.  But my feeling is that this AC/DC album is towards the top of that particular pile for me - it's not something I'm ever going to need, but I can grudgingly admit it's well done.

06/11/77 - A puzzling experience
20/11/77 - An interesting listen

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