"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.
I was a boy in the 1970s; of course I liked AC/DC.
But I was more of a punk/new wave kid as a teen - more or less, and a few years late, since I lived way the hell out in dull suburbia - so it's specifically the Bon Scott era of AC/DC I connected to. A short window of time in the late '70s, sure, but loud and raucous and quintessentially Australian in a way that was very appealing to an American not sure of any of that stuff.
I only bothered to buy one AC/DC record in the CD era. (The enthusiasms of our youth might not always embarrass us, but it's the way to bet.) This is the one. I still like some of the other songs - Big Balls is a hoot, even in my fifties - but the title song is the one AC/DC song I'd save from the wreckage of civilization if given the choice.
It's always Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap.
No fancy interpretations here: this is a song from the point of view of a "fixer" whose main business seems to be killing people. There's also, in best AC/DC fashion, a lot of double entendres that have confused several generations of listeners into thinking the service provided must be fucking, not killing. [1] If you want to take it all that way, I don't think the band would care. Just bang your head along to the beat, and it'll all be fine.
It is obvious; it is cartoony; it is a lot of fun, especially if you first heard it at an impressionable age. I did.
[1] To be pedantic about it: verse two is clearly fucking; verse three is clearly killing; verse one is vaguer but pretty solidly killing. And the outro is all murder methods. I think the evidence is clear.
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