high voltage rock 'n roll

I was surprised a few years ago to learn that AC/DC played CBGB in 1977, right at the highpoint of the punk explosion in New York. This was probably right around the time of Let There Be Rock. They also opened a few shows for Kiss in the same year. I saw Kiss in 1977, on the tour for Alive II, but sadly AC/DC wasn’t the opening act. I have a feeling it’d be really difficult to open for Kiss given the spectacle of their shows, but I’m sure AC/DC would be up to the task just on the basis of the sheer power of the music. Can you imagine a double bill of Kiss and AC/DC? Holy mother of god! …I’m wondering, though, how AC/DC were received by the punk scenesters on the lower East Side of Manhattan. I’ll have to see what I can dig up on the internet. In some ways, AC/DC and punk seem like an uneasy pairing because, even when the punks played at being completely apolitical, the movement represented a critique of the failure of the 60s to achieve a fundamental change in society. So much of punk is about disillusionment with the 60s, whereas AC/DC is about givin’ the dog a bone. But in another way AC/DC fits nicely with bands like the Ramones and the Dictators, the unpretentious side of punk as opposed to Wire, Pere Ubu, the Clash, and Television, among others, each of whom had either artistic or political aspirations, if not both. AC/DC is a throwback to Chuck Berry and the golden age of rock ‘n roll, where the music is nothing more than the soundtrack to having fun and getting laid. The song structures are always very simple and stripped down, but they have unrelenting force and guitars as crunchy as the shattered glass under your boots after a teenage rampage. Problem Child, which features the unforgettable throwaway line, ‘and my mother hates me,’ is archetypal AC/DC. The song’s incredible three-chord riff is quite possibly one of the greatest riffs ever. It’s so great, in fact, that the version of the song on Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap has a little 30-second coda just to emphasize the utter perfection of those three chords. I don’t know why they didn’t include this little nugget on the otherwise identical version of the song that appears on High Voltage. It’s one of those little things that takes a great song and makes it transcendent…