Print
E-Mail
tool name
closeWednesday, Nov. 04, 2009
AC/DC is still plugging away
AC/DC unleashed its singular sound on adoring crowd of air-guitarists at the AAC Monday.
AC/DC played American Airlines Center Monday night.
DALLAS — Watching a pale, balding, 54-year-old man who looks like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings strip down to his schoolboy pants, white socks and black shoes is not something you pay to see. But when it’s Angus Young doing it as he blazes away on his guitar during an AC/DC show, you’ve witnessed something every rock ’n’ roll fan should experience.
The iconic Australian rock band played the American Airlines Center on Monday night on its Black Ice World Tour; it’s the band’s second time through Dallas on its current swing. The band members are older, grayer and in the midst of a tour that began more than a year ago. Still, they gave an energetic performance that brought to mind the arena concerts of the ’70s. The experience is a fun, air-guitar-playing evening that is as hard on your ears as it is on frontman Brian Johnson’s vocal cords.
Johnson started the 19-song set with Runaway Train from the new Black Ice album, the band’s first since 2000. This is a band that knows its audience, though, playing only five songs from the disc. Fans appeared mostly lukewarm on the new stuff, with the exception of Big Jack when Young doffed some of his clothes.
But the near-capacity crowd, which featured both old and young, jumped and sang when Johnson’s raw and grinding voice belted out Back in Black, Thunderstruck, Shoot to Thrill, You Shook Me All Night Long, and Highway to Hell.
And when Young went into a soaring 10-minute guitar solo during Let There Be Rock, it was the ideal time for extended applause.
In an industry where unique sounds are so difficult to find and success is defined by a good song or two, AC/DC has been doing this since 1973. The Aussies’ riff-o-rama sound is theirs and theirs alone, and when Johnson finished the night with For Those About to Rock, it seemed as if the audience was indeed saluting them.
MAC ENGEL, 817-390-7841
DFW.com is pleased to be able to offer its users the opportunity to make comments and hold conversations online. However, the interactive nature of the internet makes it impractical for our staff to monitor each and every posting.
Since DFW.com does not control user submitted statements, we cannot promise that readers will not occasionally find offensive or inaccurate comments posted on our website. In addition, we remind anyone interested in making an online comment that responsibility for statements posted lies with the person submitting the comment, not DFW.com.
If you find a comment offensive, clicking the exclamation icon will flag the comment for review by the administrators; we are counting on the good judgment of all our readers to help us.
