Ooh, we're gettin' ready to rock

Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts.

07/02/88 : Blow Up Your Video - AC/DC


Our fifth visit with AC/DC - it's fair to say expectations are low, but I've already been surprised by an Iron Maiden album this year, so you never know!

Ah - it's all a bit of fun, isn't it? Where Iron Maiden take themselves very seriously, there's no danger of that accusation being levelled at AC/DC - this is just R-A-W-K! I can't say it's really my sort of thing and it does get a bit repetitive, but it's hard to hate and sometimes it hits the spot nicely (in small doses).

We're at #2 in the chart with a new entry this week on the start of a fourteen week run with this being as high as it got. The rest of the top five were Terence Trent D'Arby, The Christians, T'Pau and Joyce Sims with the highest new entry being Climie Fisher (#37) who I seem to recall had a hit once, and that's as much as I can tell you about them...

Wikipedia tells us this is their eleventh album (they're up to seventeen now, across 45 years) - apart from that there's very little else except that around this time all the band except for Malcolm realised he was an alcoholic. It took Malcolm falling into the drum kit on stage for him to catch on - but he took some time out to get sober and stayed with the band until '14, when he developed dementia, sadly passing away aged 64 in '17. The critical reviews were pretty average (and have worsened retrospectively) but commercially it did better than their previous couple of albums, reaching the expected benchmark for heavy albums of #1 in Finland - it got to #12 in the US, selling a million copies over there.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent version for three quid but if you want a Japanese import then it's going to set you back £135.44, which feels somewhat excessive. With the exception of Back In Black, I struggle to tell AC/DC albums apart and there's nothing here to make it stand out from the pack - but it's fine if you're in the mood for such a thing.

31/01/88 - A very decent album
14/02/88 - Fine, despite SAW's efforts

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