By ANDREW McDONALD
I SWORE it would never get me – but during that second major lockdown I caught a bug far more infectious than COVID-19. One that attacked the mind, the wallet and all of your shelf space. It hated convenience and laughed in the face of obsolescence – it was the dreaded vinyl bug.
Perhaps it was a void felt from no longer snapping up concert tickets, playing CDs in the car or being able to – at very least – venture into a shopping complex, but in isolation that insatiable bug nested within my brain, trumpeting the evils of countless global releases, reissues, picture-discs and shaped-discs and offered
no end to the list of hard rock and heavy metal albums that needed to be procured. And the most sought-after, coolest and elusive oeuvre of them all? AC/DC.
It stood to reason that iso-boredom would present another avenue for buying the same classic albums all over again. From cassettes to CDs to the same remastered CDs there was only one main, uncharted format left. And let’s be honest, I wasn’t exactly expressing my individuality with a Spotify subscription. Trepidation came in the form of never buying a take-away coffee, an article of clothing or a round of beer again, as any and all available funds would be redirected toward more and more wax, and the hunt would never cease providing a cleaner copy existed.
Two things eventually welcomed the bug: the first was coherently identifying each eerily majestic layer of Ozzy Osbourne’s title track from Diary Of A Madman at a squillion decibels with fresh, if ringing ears through a hi-fi system so impressive it could have rivalled the studio equipment used to record it. The second was
carefully unboxing, then unearthing and handling those iconic Metallica remasters in all their 12-inched, as-originally-intended, glory. It begged the question, why hadn’t I been collecting these giant-sized works of art sooner?
Just the favourite albums escalated to favourite band’s entire classic-vinyl-era collections to basically every seventies and eighties heavy metal LP known to man. Suddenly I was attending every record store and fair within the allotted restriction radius, I reacquainted myself with eBay, Discogs.com,
PayPal, and I finally understood the power of that Facebook Marketplace tab. Ignorant to the game, I
recalled the dawn of the digital era when LP’s not being used as landfill were on one occasion being sold for six dollars each in a milk crate outside of JB Hi-Fi. Not just any JB standing within throwing distance of your nearest cinema, but the humble original that stood unchained between 1974 and 1999 in the Melbourne suburb of East Keilor where the dirt-cheap-record-gods smiled upon me, for we
lived mere blocks away. At a time when three weeks’ worth of pocket money afforded you one cassette (the cheapest format – unless you saved your lunch money and starved yourself), you did your Hot Metal skull-rating research and made damn sure you got a good one, and if not, you wore the tape
out anyway. Six dollars in any format was a win even if it was the antiquated vinyl, so that day I proudly left with Ozzy Osbourne’s Ultimate Sin and AC/DC’s Back In Black and somehow failed to amass a vast LP collection even though they were practically giving them away!
No great collection would be complete without Acca Dacca, and however naive, I believed that I could still pick up those records with the covers and track listings unhindered by international labels simply because I used to see them everywhere. It would just be a matter of stumbling across them again.
High Voltage with the weeing dog, TNT in red paint, Dirty Deeds with the chicken-leg arm, Let There Be Rock with flying fingers and Highway To Hell with flames. It turned out they could all be mine too, from anywhere between, erm… a couple hundred bucks to, erm… $7000 each?
In a few decades they might be worth millions, but here in the COVID age it feels like extortion at its most cruel. The vinyl bug salivated for more AC/DC at a time when this craze had created an imperfect storm for its collectors. Considering Australia had a population of around 13 million in the seventies and only a few more by the end of the eighties, it only made sense to press a few hundred
thousand copies of each release (if that) and those versions were never exported overseas. In fact, there was a kangaroo insignia on the vinyl’s label designed to identify its origin and the ‘roo’ would hop in and out of the colour-switching disc with subsequent pressings which now translates to a seldom documented but commonly understood code amongst fans for its limited run/exorbitant value.
The band had the final say over artwork, track listings, track orders and over their ever-changing band logo prior to the 1977 Gerard Huerta ‘squealer’ font we’re most familiar with (bar the electrified Powerage logo in 1978), so Albert pressings became recognised as the most conclusive representation
of the band’s vision, and these gems were all ours until the advent of online shopping and a collecting frenzy that saw overseas fans finally being able to obtain the very releases we might have easily taken for granted, thus pushing the value into some vinyl-buying stratosphere.
For those playing at home, the studio album summary and rare-collection pecking order for Australian-only Albert label releases up until 1990 appears to go something like this:
Blue label, yellow border, roo logo – first pressing – HV, TNT, DDDDC, LTBR.
Blue label, yellow border, no roo logo – second pressing – HV, TNT, DDDDC, LTBR.
Blue label, yellow border, no roo logo – first pressing – PA, IYWB, HTH
Black Label, yellow border, no roo logo – all releases – repressing until 1980
Black label, no borders – all Bon Scott releases on the LP Box Set
Red Label, yellow borders – first pressing – BIB, FTATR
Red Label with text variations – all releases – 1983 to 1990.
Then you have the condition to contend with. If on any given day I forked out for the cheapest available copy of the rarest version, would I later regret not holding out for a better one and a better one after that until being served with papers citing irreconcilable differences or becoming plagued by the notion that it’s akin to buying a real Gibson SG or following AC/DC to every continent of their
next world tour? A three-figured bargain inevitably equalled damage: from torn covers, faded covers, doodled-on covers, price stickers, price sticker rips, worn spines, water damage, scratched surfaces, indelible fingerprints, skipping, and I can only imagine the reek of tobacco, alcohol and whatever else they were being rocked out to.
But proof of that Albert label still maintained their status as a rarity. AC/DC being the closed shop as ever are also typical latecomers to say, our streaming service parties, so why should a prompt vinyl re-issue be any different, but also, well, AC/DC don’t owe us a damn thing. Producer, mentor and older brother George Young when speaking of the albums was quoted as saying ‘You did not release records to schedules or deadlines, or because the manager or a radio
station had to have it on their playlists. You released the record when the record was finished. It was the music that called the shots,’ and in a holistic sense, that’s exactly what makes them so essential to this day.
But those masters are sitting in a vault somewhere in Sydney with who knows what other studio goodies or biding their time in the various estates of Vanda, Young and/ or Wright and if the
fifty-year anniversary of the Alberts label in 2014 didn’t prompt a dust-off then it’s sadly unlikely to
happen anytime soon. But in a blissful reverie someone of authority (Angus Young / producer Harry Vanda / former Albert executive Fifi Riccobono /a former EMI or current Sony Music executive?) is tinkering away at a pristine and affordable re-issue right this second or perhaps the ghost of Bon trailed by Malcom, George and even Ted Albert materialises in their sleep to the distant wail of bagpipes and whispers ‘we’re an album band… re-isshhhooo!’
But unless that day comes soon, which I fear it won’t, then I know of one blue bug that will be keeping its sights firmly planted on a yellow kangaroo.
