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Viral Vomit, White Collar Criminals

AC/DC FANS ARE REALLY EXCITED ABOUT IRON MAN 2

 Thursday, April 22nd, 2010 at 10:00am by

It’s good to be in the AC/DC business. This week, the band released AC/DC: Iron Man 2,  a tie-in with next month’s blockbuster popcorn flick that’s really just a greatest hits package. There isn’t a single new song, or even a new recording of an old song, on the thing. It’s just some of the band’s most famous tunes with Iron Man and War Machine on the cover.

And it’s apparently on track to sell somewhere between 80,000 and 100,000 copies in its first week of release. That seems like an insane number for an album with nothing new to offer. Are all of the people who bought this album kids who are just getting into AC/DC and found purchasing the collection to be cheaper than delving into the band’s discography? I might have believed this to be the case ten years ago, but today’s kids are way too savvy for that, aren’t they? They don’t really seem to care about album art, let alone a promo pic that’s readily available all over the internet; they’d just illegally download the tracks (AC/DC have yet to make their catalog available via iTunes) and make their own comp. So I have to think that the band’s older fans are the people buying this album in droves. To repeat: old people are running out and buying a bunch of songs they already own. WHY? Are they too lazy to rip all the songs and just make a mix? Do they not understand how to burn a CD (if people are still buying CDs I’m going to assume that they’re still burning them)? Or are they such loyal completists that they’ll sink money into anything with the AC/DC logo on it ? I’m not knocking AC/DC – I love their music, and good for them for once again being the richest dudes on the planet – but I really do find this to be a mystery.

While you ponder that, watch the below mash-up of AC/DC, Iron Man, and Dirty Dancing. The editing is kinda sloppy and obviously the special effects aren’t theatrical-release grade, but it’s still kinda funny.

The Iron Man 2 video game, which comes out May 4, which feature a lot more metal, with songs by Meshuggah, Soilwork, and a new Lamb of God track, “Hit the Wall.” You can watch a clip about the making of “Hit the Wall” after the jump.

-AR

[video via C.H.U.D.]

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  • http://thenumberoftheblog.com Snagon

    as a young AC/DC fan this is just the epitome of a cash-in on dumb people. well AC/DC have been this way since the Back In Black album aka their last good one

  • ferris

    I’m dating myself, but I bought the Maximum Overdrive album cuz it was a nice AC/DC comp.

  • Frampler

    In Europe, there is an army of older AC/DC fans who take pride in the fact that they will spend any amount of money on anything AC/DC related. Evidently this is also the case in the US.

    This older market’s buying power is so great that this year’s Download festival has been hijacked by AC/DC’s Friday night performance – go to http://www.downloadfestival.co.uk/lineup/index.aspx and look at the Friday. Three bands on the mainstage! And all because AC/DC’s cliched stage show is so big there’s no room for other bands’ equipment. What’s more, all the other stages must finish before AC/DC as a bunch of old men can’t deal with the idea of competition. What was last year a full three day festival is now 2 and a half days, all because of AC sodding DC.

    I don’t mind a bit of AC/DC from time to time, and I suppose I should see them live before they croak, but all this “the world’s greatest rock band” and “the biggest band ever” stuff pisses me off, as does the idea that they’re so important that anyone who doesn’t like them is mad. They haven’t written a semi-decent song since Thunderstruck, all of their output sounds the same and they can’t do an album without a track featuring Rock N Roll in the title! This shameless repackaging of old songs really gets my goat – couldn’t they at least have written another generic song for the movie? Even Kiss would do that, and they’re the most shamelessly commerical (not to mention fucking awful) band in history.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Steven-DeLaurentis/1201080967 Steven DeLaurentis

    I’m one of the old people who bought it, but at Target it is a very good package. One cd of the greatest hits, one dvd with 50 minutes of AC/DC vidoes, I might watch it once but it is nice to have especially since I have 3 future headbangers in my family, and one free pass to the Ironman2 movie. It is pretty hard to pass up.

  • http://www.flamingtusk.com Zosimus

    When this kind of shit happens I’m always suspicious that it’s the same thing which makes it appear that right-wing douchfascists like Sarah Palin sell fucktons of copies of their books: namely, interest groups buy up mass quantities to make it look popular.
    While this may not be happening with records, it’s possssssssssssssible, dudes.

  • Baldish

    And I am one of those fans who buy everything with their name on it. I have the Backtracks Amp set, trading cards, shirts, bunch of cds, and a bunch of other stuff. What I don’t understand though is this whole Iron Man thing. First, I remember reading that they don’t like to do “Best of” and other compilations like that(excluding live albums), but here thy are doing that for the Iron Man 2 album(which I will pick up anyway). Another thing is that they are licensing their music to a movie, and as a fan, I know that they don’t license a lot of stuff either. But hey, I guess that they’re trying to reach out to kids my age(16) and younger.

  • http://ihadanawesometime.blogspot.com/ DickTudor

    Axl isn’t taking into account the Iron Man fanatics. A healthy chunk of these sales could just be people who want to collect anything and everything related to the film and don’t necessarily care about AC/DC. The soundtrack could be by Celine Dion and they’d still buy it.

  • http://twitter.com/thegingerzilla Future History Mage

    Flick their last good album, not amazing but solid, and a damn fine cover! Since then it’s a few good songs (okay maybe one) and erm……for my shame bought the Iron Man 2 as was on sale and don’t have all old stuff on CD (too fucking expensive) and my record player gave up the ghost years back and my tapes were nicked/chewed/died. 

    I broke one of the first ever Sony Walkmans’ playing highway again and again and again (it must have been play number 666). 

    And if you want to be picky, BiB was a sell out with Mutt ‘Def Leppard and Shaniya Fucking Twain’ Lange – Powerage was their last truly great, great studio album.  

    Fucking youngsters ;)