Author: Urban Bolta
Artist: AC/DC
Label: Sony Music
Release: 2011
Length: 111:48
Rating: 4.5/5
The DVD neatly captures that moment, when the whole earthly rabble below the stage was euphorically gasping for every drop of sweat that dripped from Brian Johnson’s brow. Forty years in the game and fifteen albums of plain rock n roll rhetoric say it all: AC/DC are in the autumn of their existence, so catching the Black Ice tour was one of the last chances to feel the goosebumps on your own skin while listening to the anthems of the old-school rock crowd that everybody knows by heart, and plenty of Argentine fans knew that very well.
The location for the DVD shoot wasn’t picked at random. Any musician who has ever played in South America will tell you that the crowds there are the most fiery of all and the shows the most intense, especially when you’re egged on by a seventy-thousand-headed mass, which is how many the home stadium of football giants River Plate can take. In early December 2009, AC/DC played three sold-out, meticulously planned shows there within a week, and for the video release they filmed all three nights and stitched the material together into one whole. That way, if anything went wrong on the first night, they still had two fix-it nights in reserve. Resourcefulness or cheating..? You be the judge.
The grand-scale Black Ice tour dazzled with nothing but superlatives in the mass-commercial sense, and in the end it even landed at number 2 on the list of highest-grossing tours of all time. The investment in the video release was megalomaniacal too: an incredible 32 cameras filmed the show from every angle, making sure that watching the DVD from your living-room armchair, you don’t miss a single moment.
AC/DC are a live attraction! The band lives and breathes for mass performances, where their tickling anthems ravage like a storm in all their power. After the adrenaline-charged arrival of the locomotive on stage, the “kangaroos” opened the show with the single Rock n Roll Train, before Hell aint a Bed Place to Be kicked off an express ride down the track of evergreen AC/DC classics. The kinetic energy in the crowd is indescribable. The hellish atmosphere, complete with their trademark grimaces, is stoked the whole time by Brian Johnson and the indestructible little man Angus Young, who are visibly having a blast and, as usual, unintentionally overshadow the other three musicians. The central duo cleverly makes use of the “cat walk” stretching dozens of meters into the crowd, which serves its primary purpose well: even better interaction between band and audience.
AC/DC are minimalists of a special kind and clear proof that a hard-hitting riff is all you need to express the primal rush of rock n roll. On stage, the Aussies back up their musical minimalism with a plethora of comic show pieces that keep the audience constantly on its toes. They spice up the naughty blues anthem The Jack Angus with a striptease all the way down to the underpants, Hells Bells is opened by a huge bell on stage, and the song about a dirty girl, Whole Lotta Rosie, gets a boost from a gigantic inflatable doll who rides the locomotive in the background. At times the show turns into a real feast for the eyes, and this added value is exactly the essential ingredient in building the atmosphere that draws endless masses to mega-events like this.
The ever-same rhythm machine of Phil Rudd / Cliff Williams and the older of the Young brothers, Malcolm, bow to the demands of the show and hand the spotlight over to the pint-sized Angus, a granddad who still prefers the legendary school uniform to neatly ironed trousers and effortlessly coaxes out salvos of delight with his trademark wobbly walk. Then there’s frontman Johnson, whose voice has audibly worn down after three decades in AC/DC, but who gets through the show to the end satisfactorily with some crafty tactics around the breaks between songs and by leaning on the backing vocals.
The loudest dose of excitement was naturally delivered by the band’s greatest gems. During Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, the lads with Native American roots lit flares in the crowd in good old football fashion, and then there are Thunderstruck, You Shook Me All Night Long and Highway To Hell, with one of the most recognizable rock riffs ever. After they returned to the stage, the closing For Those About To Rock (We Salute You) thundered out with a barrage of cannon blasts, and the fireworks over Buenos Aires played the part of the cherry on top of the cream. I have no doubt that in this magnificent moment, plenty of people in the crowd had their eyes well up with tears of happiness: they had just heard, seen and experienced legends!
Brian Johnson aptly opened the show with the words: “We don t speak very good Spanish, but we speak rock and roll pretty good!”. And how right he is! As long as the spirit of rock n roll lives, so will the spirit of AC/DC, its immortal promoters. The latest proof is none other than “Live at River Plate”. A must-buy for everyone for whom music is the road to a great time! Sure, “Live at Donington” only happened once, but this video document from Argentina will in time earn a respectable place in the AC/DC discography too.
Lineup
Angus Young – lead guitar
Malcolm Young – rhythm guitar, backing vocals
Brian Johnson – lead vocals
Cliff Williams – bass guitar, backing vocals
Phil Rudd – drums
Production
Rocky Oldham
Tracklist
1. Rock N Roll Train
2. Hell Ain’t A Bad Place To Be
3. Back In Black
4. Big Jack
5. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
6. Shot Down In Flames
7. Thunderstruck
8. Black Ice
9. The Jack
10. Hells Bells
11. Shoot To Thrill
12. War Machine
13. Dog Eat Dog
14. You Shook Me All Night Long
15. T.N.T.
16. Whole Lotta Rosie
17. Let There Be Rock
18. Highway To Hell
19. For Those About To Rock (We Salute You)
