reck'n'roll: FOR US WHO LIKE TO ROCK...it's AKKADAKKA

BON

JONNO

Ladies and Gents coming to you from Burwood NSW via sunny, barmy Scotland, may I present, quite possibly, Orstraylia's greatest rock band..the mighty AKKADAKKA....

You have to admit that the 10 pound poms that lobbed on aussie's sunny shores back in the day have a remarkably high proportion of successful muso's among them...Malcolm and Angus Young's older brother George was quite the rock star in The Easybeats...then there was the Barnes/ Swann boys Jimmy and John along with John Paul Young, John Farnham, The Bee Gees and Billy Thorpe ....BUT...we are here to discuss and admire the band whose name came from their sisters vacuum cleaner...the mighty AC/DC.

Malcolm and Angus lobbed into aussie some 12 months after the birth of your faithful blogger...and moved to Burwood in the suburbs of sydney...of AKKADAKKA 2 longest serving members, Malcolm started out first as a muso, playing in a Newcastle band called "the velvet underground"...not to be confused with the yank band...

I reckon that this is where Malcolm first heard of or met Dave Evans who was ACDC first recorded vocalist, you will remember Dave from such wonderful blogs as "ITS RABBIT SEASON" and "THE MANY LIVES OF DAVE EVANS"...

Anyway, after finding Dave, the boys managers booked them into Chequers and Bondi Lifesaver for some gigs...it was around this time that Ang tried various stage personas Spiderman, a gorilla and a parody of Superman called SuperAng...luckliy the boys sister, Margaret after naming them, talked Angus into wearing the schoolboy outfit that was to become the persona that we all love.

So after a few gigs, turns out that Dave Evans suggested going in a more Gary Glitter style and look...The Young brothers told him not to let the door hit him in the arse on the way out ....and after doing a few rehersals with singers, the ex-singer/flutist from Fraternity, one Ronald Belford "Bon" Scott got the gig...and this is where they became part of my life...first time I saw them was Burwood RSL, then I believe the Hordern Pavillion in Sydney...

it was about this time that the boys had travelled on a east coast tour after relocating to Melbourne...they also had a bit of a blue with Deep Purples roadies at one of the last Sunbury festival's within this time period....in '77 the band signed a international deal with Atlantic Record, also around this time Mark Evan's was sacked and Cliff Williams took up the bass spot, which he holds to this day.......

1980....the boys had headed off to and been in Blighty for a while to expand ther experience's, and the poms fell in love with 'em from the off, in a vein similar to Motorhead, both punks and headbangers loved 'em...and Bon and the boys travelled all over Europe to rousing applause...I got a couple of live bootlegs that have the boys roaring through sets in Paris and Amsterdam .....truly rocking gigs.

Then came THAT day...the day that Bon called it quits and passed into Rock'n'Roll history, after a night on the turps with a few mates, Bon had frozen to death and choked on vomit in the back of a mates car...there were some scandalous statements by various band fringe dwellers, that heroin was involved ...but thats has never been proven, plus I don't believe it..Bon done a lot of stuff, but I cant see him doing smack....at this point I should like to announce that my favourite Bon song is, and shall ever be "Big Balls"..a monty python-esque lyrical masterpiece, yeh, so there you go.

SO...the talisman of the band was gone, the boys brought Bon back home to Fremantle for the funeral, and Bons mum told 'em to keep this thing going, Bon would expect no less, so Malcolm and Angus set about recruiting a new singer...various guys tried out, just a few of the names were, Noddy Holder of Slade, Terry Slesser from Back Street Crawler , Buzz Shearman from Moxy and Alan Fryer from Sydney metal band Heaven..

.I personally would of preferred Allan Fryer out of that lot, as much as I like Noddy...he didnt seem to fit...BUT...it was the retired lead singer from rock band GEORDIE that got the gig, the man we come to love called Jonno...to be honest, I was one of the anti jonno brigade for a little while...I mean, Akka D without Bon was un-imaginable...BUT...I soon stopped being a dick about it and Jonno became part of my regular rock n roll listening.

SO...out came Back in Black, Jonno says he could feel Bon in the recording studio, but in a positive way and the album shot straight to the top of the charts...fear of fan revolt avoided.....as a matter of fact, You shook me all night long has become a modern classic....I saw the boys on that tour at the Sydney Ent Cent ...sadly, the anti Jonno brigade was out in force that night and their was many and varied violent entanglements at McDonalds that night...BUT it must be said that Jonno busted his balls and, I think, won over more than he pissed off that night...saw them again at a Donnington also a bonz gig of epic proportions.

The boys kicked on with much success for a couple of years with the For those about to rock album joining Back in Black as a fan favourite...then came the time just before Flick of the Switch, where Phil Rudd and Malcolm via a gallon of booze and some various chemicals had a rampaging blue Mal sacked Rudd on the spot...Dio drummer Simon Wright eventually took up the drum stool for the tour and a couple of years as well...the brothers Young were producing the albums at this time and Fly on the Wall proved to be a tad tedious....

along came Stephen King who had a book about machines taking over the planet, ACDC did a soundtrack for the flick called Maximum Overdrive calling the album WHO MADE WHO....and unlike most of my mates, I enjoyed the flick and the album....then came the boys brother George and Harry Vanda to produce the next album and save the bands lives and the resulting album "BLOW UP YOUR VIDEO" was a deadset cracker

Also around this time, Mal was having serious problems with his love of Vodka and similar tipples, led him to take an extended leave from the group,before he took a permanent Bon like break from the group..the guys nephew Stevie Young ( their oldest brother Alex's boy) of the Starfighters put his hand up to help out family....other band member, Simon Wright , by this stage had gone back to Dio and Chris Slade had taken up the drum stool...now Sladey had played with Tom Jones, and Manfred Mann's Earth Band...not exactly AKKA DAKKA style's of music BUT Sladey is a world class tub thumper and fit in beautifully....

Jonno was in the midst of a rather grumpy divorce so it was all happening in ACDC world ,....While all the hoo-haa was going on, the Young boys got stuck into writing the next album and got Bruce Fairbairn to produce it...the result was RAZORS EDGE...which produced one of my favourite tunes "Thunderstruck" ...truly a akkadakka classic....

1994 saw the return of Phil Rudd to the drum kit, all bad habits and petty bollocks had been put aside and they all found working together most harmonious, the resulting sessions turned into the album BALLBREAKER produced by Rick Rubin..not a paring I thought would go together, but what do I know.

the guys sorta faded off my radar for a while after Ball breaker...but that can be said of a lotta bands I like, I have fits and starts of band likedness...I was watching tele one day and someone mentioened that the NEW AC/DC clip was forthcoming, so I hung around and once they got the other drivel and malarky out of the fkn way...Stiff Upper Lip hit my earholes and most pleased they were indeed...and a very great double entendre of a song title to be sure...

I was at my local supplier of all things dvd just after the Stiff world tour was done and dusted and found a dvd of a gig in Germany...AWESOME..go get a copy, the most recent dvd filmed at the gig in Buenos Aries River Plate Stadium is also a rocking gig...got that one too..., well, what can I tell ya, concert tix are too friggin expensive in the modern era and I got a broken neck that dont let me do much ...

so concert dvds are just the thing for me nowadays....speaking of all things AKKA-D...I was on the Gold Coast a few ago and found a music store at Pacific Fair, this ginormous mall on the Gold Coast Highway and to my imeasurable delight found a BONFIRE set and a BACKTTRACKS set, all for a reasonble price, so, I did what any sane human would do, I bought the f**kers...Bonfire is just awesome...if you see one grab one, you wont be annoyed.