Bon Radio Shenanigans…

billie weston pool hall fans
[Ardent fans pose for a photo by Bec Dagnell in the Billie Weston Pool Hall, Scarborough Beach, WA…]

Word just in… tomorrow morning (Tuesday the 11th of March) I’ll be speaking on the JJJ breakfast show about the life and legacy of Bon, his bronze statue, and my own “relationship” with Bon.

Rumour has it that the Mayor of Fremantle Himself will also be shooting the breeze with Robbie, Marieke & The Doctor.

It should all happen at 8:30am or thereabouts.

Should you perchance listen in and then come over to this humble blog to pay me a visit – you might be able to participate!

I am looking to meet up with Bon Scott fans in the greater Sydney area (which is where I will be blogging from now until the middle of April).

Crazy collectors? Shrine in the shed? Tribute bands playing only 1974-80 Acca Dacca? Long lost love child?…

Get in touch and be featured in the blog!

Cheerio,
Lucas

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UPDATE:

you can listen to the interview online here (7 minutes, 6mb, mp3 file). Thanks Josh for taping it! There’s a brief description of the interview in this comment below. I didn’t get to say as much as I would have liked about Bon and me, but that’s breakfast radio for you I guess. Big on high paced laffs and short on thoughtful pauses!

Reyes Del Sonido Metalico

esto es rock
(Above: a scan from Hana’s 1983 Mexican Heavy Metal zine…)

AC/DC actually can put me in this kind of mood…say if im feeling down or whatever, I can put some of these classic Bon Scott albums on and then I get in that kind of hyperactive mood. Something about it takes me back to being fifteen and then I can tap into that youthful spirit…and I think that’s something Bon Scott carried with him as well. That youthful spirit of living the good life…
Demolition Damo, February 5th, 2007

With this mood-altering theory of Damo’s in mind, I’m a-bloggin’ away with Back in Black blaring through the speakers. I know, I know, it’s not a Bon album (depending on which side of the fence you sit on, vis-a-vis that conspiracy theory) …but I’m yet to aquire any Bon-era albums beyond T.N.T. (I’ll remedy that later on today down at a discount CD shop on Pitt Street Damo told me about). But in the meantime, I’m trying to spit words out on my keyboard with these driving beats and the screeching of Brian Johnson… hammering out words and headbanging (mildly) at my desk …It really slows my word-per-minute rate down, and I have no idea if the resulting paragraphs will be readable, but it sure feels good…

Anyway, I’ve been rummaging through the Bon Scott Blog Mailbag®. Thanks to everyone who’s written or sent in their stories. Here’s a highlight: an email with attached images from Hana, who seems determined to boost my Bon Scott credibility by sending through some extremely rare old Mexican Fanzines. She writes: Continue reading “Reyes Del Sonido Metalico”

hero ick, icon ick

The following email, entitled “hero ick, icon ick” came through from my friend Anne today:

hows this. not a word for months and then a deluge. no, but it’s interesting, this next blog you’ll be doing. half an hour ago i was googling heath ledger who’s apparently just overdosed in his manhattan digs. can’t say i’ve ever paid much attention to the bloke, but i enjoyed ‘brokeback mountain’ and ‘i’m not there’. anyways, seems there are a lot of fanclub sites out there for heath, as well. and no doubt for a lot of other stars, alive and dead (another one that comes to mind, coz i’ve just seen the fillem ‘control’ is ian curtis of joy division).

so i was just having a little lie down after getting your email and thought about how we are surely the only species that does this – elevates certain individuals to such lofty heights. i mean, this is definitely not in the order of something as pragmatic as queen ant-ism. we just love mythical figures. or need them, more like. i wonder if it’s a religious urge. icon-ism. especially since pictures and other forms of representation figure so much in the process of elevation and mythologising. bio’s too of course. and when it’s singers, it’s their music and their lyrics combined with their personal narratives. so i dunno. maybe i’m on the wrong track here. maybe it’s about poetry and poets and philosophers, in a new package for popular culture. what do you think it’s about lucas? hmmm … i guess you’ll find out, maybe, by doing this blog. wish i could drive across the desert with you.

Hearing the news, I too had a moment of sadness for poor Heath. He was 28. Bon was young too, only 33 when he died. (They also both grew up in Western Australia.) I guess as the breaking news came through about Heath’s death, it made me realise, to a very small degree, what it might have been like for an AC/DC fan to hear the news of Bon’s death, back in Feburary 1980. A sense of lost potential. The idea that he was only just beginning to hit his stride. That his best work was still in front of him. And so on.

Like Anne, I have been wondering about the transformation of a single human into a “cultural icon” – and the similarity of this phenomenon to religion. If someone is dead, we can make him into whoever we want. And no matter how unheroic the circumstances of Bon’s death (“death by misadventure due to acute alcohol poisoning” or something like that) there is a sense in which he is a kind of “martyr”.