The iWay To Hell

Fallout from Angus Young's recent comments about the band's stance against iTunes is still hot and heavy around the world wide web. In the last few days, I must have read posts from a hundred different forums discussing the issue with most of the posters siding with Apple against AC/DC's revolt. That's okay, though, most people said the United States would never win the Revolutionary War against the English, either.

What with AC/DC's exclusive deal with Wal-Mart and now their very vocal iTunes snub, the band is, in many ways, more controversial than ever. By the way, before I continue, I must give credit for the title of this post to a recent article from the Scotsman.

Speaking of Wal-Mart, it has come to light that the same management team who helped set up AC/DC's deal with that corporate devil is also responsible for Guns N Roses upcoming exclusive "Chinese Democracy" deal with Best Buy. Their name is Azoff Management and you can read more about what they've been up to with Axl Rose and AccaDacca here.

If this trend of major acts releasing their albums exclusively continues in the USA, I guess you can expect to be doing a lot of driving around to different stores to buy all the CD's you want in the near future. Unless, of course, you just download the music you want from the net for free like a lot of folks do these days.


In more exciting news for AC/DC, Billboard has just revealed that Rock N Roll Train is "AC/DC's highest-charting song since "Stiff Upper Lip" spent four weeks at No. 1 in March-April 2000."

The Back In Black album is doing pretty great, as well. It's at "No. 1 on the Top Pop Catalog chart for the second consecutive week and the third week overall." For the entire story continue reading here.


Of course, Black Ice Tour tickets have probably been on the minds of most AC/DC fans in the last couple of weeks so AC/DC News ought to have a story about that too, right? Well, we do and you'll find it at the Vancouver Sun. I must warn you, though, if you really hate ticket scalpers you might not want to read it right now.

In other AC/DC tidbits, you might want to take a gander at Confession of a Fanboy's recent discovery of the Highway to Hell album. Kind of reminds me of my bud, Lucas, and the education in great music he received as he wrote the Bon Scott Blog.

Lastly, if you're interested in learning a bit more about Australian rock music history and it's connections to AC/DC, you might want to check out Some Magic From Oz by the Star Online. There's also this story from The Australian about the history of The Easybeats which is well worth your time. Incidentally, Stevie Wright, their lead singer, was once rumored to be the man who would replace Bon Scott in AC/DC after Bon's tragic passing.

Before I go, keep an eye on this space as I will soon be posting a never before publicly seen photo of Bon Scott carrying a frenzied Angus Young through a crowd at a Canadian concert back in the 70's.

Keep rockin', Jon

Ain't No Fun Waiting 'Round For AC/DC Tickets

Fans hoping to see AC/DC on the Fall leg of the Black Ice tour have grown increasingly frustrated over the problem of securing tickets to the shows they want to see.

Officially, each show is sold out. However, if you want to pay the extortionists who operate ticket reselling sites such as Ticketmaster's own Tickets Now, there are actually plenty of seats still available for each date on the upcoming tour.

In fact, even before Ticketmaster officially opened the sales windows on Friday morning of this past week there were already several scalpers/brokers offering AC/DC tickets online. As reported here earlier, seats to any Black Ice show could easily be had if you didn't mind paying a minimum of double their face value.

The Vancouver Sun had the most in-depth story concerning these issues in their article about angry AC/DC fans. Ticketmaster, as usual, claims they're not to blame for the problems of obtaining tickets at face value, yet they happily point you to their own scalping service so I'd bet something doesn't seem quite right if you were to ask the thousands of ticket-less AC/DC fanatics, some of whom are complaining across forums and blogs all over the web.

Well, if you can't afford AC/DC tickets, perhaps you can win them. In fact, AC/DC is offering at least two different ways to win tickets to their upcoming secret show in NYC on October 26th.


If you pre-order Black Ice through the band's website, you'll automatically be entered in a drawing for tickets to the band's special rehearsal show. The AC/DC store has 500 tickets that they will give away in pairs to winners chosen at random.

Or, you could enter the "Rock Out Your Car" contest as explained here on Sony Record's AC/DC site. The winner of that competition will score 4 tickets to the "secret" AC/DC show that isn't so secret anymore. I'd suggest you ask Mom or Dad first before you repaint their car, though.

Well, if all else fails ticket-wise, maybe someday soon you'll be lucky enough to see the guy who does the one-man-band version of AC/DC in concert. Here he is performing Back In Black as seen here on Live Leak:



His voice reminds me a lot of Jack White's actually. I wonder if he plays the guitar, too?

Keep rockin, Jon