Stand up and be counted for what you are about to receive

Continuing my trip back through the 1981 album charts.

29/11/81 : For Those About To Rock (We Salute You) - AC/DC

Our third visit with AC/DC - they're not really my thing but we haven't seen them in over four years and I like the title track, so I think I can probably live with it!

Yeah, I didn't mind this at all. It starts off with the title track and continues on in the same vein, but with just enough variety to stop it getting too samey. Yes, I'm sure a load of the lyrics were questionable even back then, but I just let them wash over me and enjoy a good old rock out. Part of me is just amazed as to how Brian Johnson manages to sing even one track in that style - it must be something to behold live and he's still at it at the tender age of 79. And do I have anything else to say on the matter? I don't believe I do - except that it's a peculiarly stark album cover.

We're at #3 with a new entry in the chart this week on the start of an impressive 22 week run - it then took a couple of months off and came back for another seven weeks, but this was as high as it ever got. The rest of the top five were Queen, Chart Hits '81, Adam & The Ants and Elkie Brooks, with the next highest new entry being Soft Cell's Non Stop Erotic Cabaret, which I was surprised to see as low as #15, but there's a strong chance we'll get to see it next year.

Wikipedia tells us this is their eighth album and the follow-up to Back In Black, so it had some serious footsteps to follow in. It was produced by Mutt Lange (that guy has some odd albums on his CV) but the band got annoyed with all his tweaking and this was the last time they worked together. Critically, it was well reviewed although our old mate Robert Christgau somewhat bizarrely said "I'd appreciate some indication that Johnson knows the difference between his dick and the light tower". Commercially, it did very well getting to #1 in the US selling four million copies, although Wikipedia somewhat rudely points out that it wasn't the twenty five million that Back In Black sold.

discogs.com tells us that you can pick up a decent version of this for three quid or you can splash out £99 on a specialty pressing - whatever one of them is! I found this surprisingly enjoyable - it's certainly up there with Back In Black and Ace Of Spades as my favourite examples of "this sort of thing" (and I suspect I'm not alone in such thinking).

22/11/81 - Nicely subtle
06/12/81 - All very middle of the road

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