528. AC/DC / If You Want Blood, You've Got It. 1978. 4/5

There’s a point in every band’s career that they need to record and release a live album. There are any number of reasons why this is the case, but in the main it is something that is required in order to showcase to the fans who have not seen them in concert exactly what they can do in a band’s natural environment. It can also be a handy move in order to give a band a break from releasing albums year after year, as was the case during this time, and offer them a bigger break away from either touring or recording or both.
Also during this time frame, live albums would often be double albums, in order to have all the songs played on the night or nights of recording on the album. Here though AC/DC have gone for the short and sharp version, with just the single vinyl album containing 10 tracks. The setlist on the night this was recorded was only 12 songs, which meant that a part of the encore was not put on, as well as the song “Dog Eat Dog”, which is a shame as it is a terrific song. N the end does it detract from the album as released? No, it doesn’t.
What you are left with here is the band on stage, arguably at their absolute peak when it comes to their performances, at the very least with Bon Scott at the helm. As a result it is a gem of an album to put on and bathe in the gloriousness of AC/DC live on stage.

There are some quite brilliant songs on this album, and they sound superb. They are pulled from most of the band’s albums to this point in time, and just rock the house down. The opening salvo of “Riff Raff” and “Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be” is a tour de force, the blistering assault from Angus Young on lead guitar and the bombastic vocals from Bon Scott out front. Behind them the trio of Malcolm Young, Cliff Williams and Paul Rudd provide the best rhythm section in the business. “Riff Raff” in particular here is dominating, the true high voltage that the band sang about in the song of the same name. Just brilliant. “Bad Boy Boogie” also works well here, a drawn out section that allows the band to showcase its talents further.
I have never really been a fan of the song “The Jack”. For me it is ponderously slow, it is repetitive throughout the chorus, and delves heavily into the blues guitar, something that I can take or leave at the best of times. Obviously here in the live environment, t used as a crowd motivator and to include the crowd in the song, so as a live tool I guess it does its job. Personally, I would preferred to have heard any of two dozen songs played instead of it. “Problem Child” here actually proves that point as far as I am concerned, as the tempo switches back into top gear immediately, Bon’s vocals hit back to their best and the band is re-energized. It’s a great contrast of those two parts of AC/DC and for me shines a light on the positive aspects with force.
The second side of the album comes at you with similar ferocity in the best possible way. The fantastic joy of “Whole Lotta Rosie” lights up the stereo as it jumps out of the speakers, followed by “Rock n Roll Damnation”, the high voltage that is “High Voltage”, and then the power chord extravaganza of “Let There Be Rock”. A brilliant punch by punch collection of the best of AC/DC one after the other. The other song I’m less than fond of here is “Rocker”, which ends the album and was the encore on this tour. It’s a fast paced song that would no doubt have been a crowd favourite at the time. But again there were many other songs that could have been substituted in for it that would have been at least as good if not better. These are picky things here, and no doubt not the thoughts of a majority of AC/DC fans. It just seems like a missed opportunity to me... some 45 years on...

There are two things I’ve mentioned about live albums on past episodes, and they are these: one, any live albums should immediately be a 5/5 album because it should contains the band’s best songs of the era in their best environment. For the most part, this album does that really well. Two, while there are generally reasons why a band would put together a live album that has the songs in a different order than what they were played in, would really prefer they didn’t change the order. I prefer to hear the setlist as it was played. That isn’t the case on this album, with a couple of songs omitted from the release, and the others put together in a different order, probably to have them marry up nicely for the two side of the vinyl. Whatever the reason, they do have the songs join together nicely here so that if you didn’t KNOW it wasn’t in setlist order, you would never notice.
I don’t even recall when I actually got this album. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t until after 2000, as I still only had the basic AC/DC collection up to that point, despite having seen them four times (all from the front or second row which was as big a fluke as you could wish for). It would definitely have occurred during my period of making sure I had copies of every album the band had released, which was around that time. I know I’ve always enjoyed it, mainly because, what’s not to like?
The following year the band released the seminal “Highway to Hell”, climbed to the very top of the hard rock tree, and then found tragedy awaiting. But that story is for another episode.