As a result of his celebrity, Lange has fought a very public battle with addiction over the years. He’s been known to miss work at his day job with Stern, or to fall asleep at work if he does make it in. It’s not just his comedy that’s edgy and raw. His life is lived right on that same ragged edge. The thing is, it’s nearly impossible to dislike the guy, and you can’t help but find yourself rooting for him through all of his struggles. He can have you laughing uproariously with his tales of hookers and eight-balls, and in the next moment have you near tears as he talks about his late father.

Jack and Coke is, as you might expect, profane, politically incorrect, vulgar, and yes, very funny. Any comedian who begins his set with the words, “I’m glad Heath Ledger died, and I’ll tell you why,” is prepared to take some chances. Lange follows that with a rather explicit description of his own alleged audition for Brokeback Mountain. For him, there is no idol too sacred to smash, no pretentious balloons that he’s unwilling to put a pin in, and no thought that needs to remain unexpressed. It goes without saying that if you’re easily offended, Jack and Coke is not for you.

Lange, appearing before an overwhelming supportive New York City crowd, riffs on a variety of subjects here. He is known to be a great sports fan, and his targets include sports figures like Tom Brady, Alex Rodriguez, Mike Tyson, and Lawrence Taylor. He can be brutal, and brutally funny, but what makes it all work is that he saves the greatest criticism for himself. If there’s ever been anyone as aware of his shortcomings as Artie Lange, I’ve yet to encounter them. Self-absorbed? Well, yes, but I have I mentioned how funny it is? Besides, what great comedian hasn’t been self-absorbed?

Jack and Coke contains a few references that you won’t pick up if you’re not a Stern show listener, but you’ll laugh like hell if you are. It also contains many references that your children probably shouldn’t hear until they’re about 40. For everyone else, this is some funny shit.

Jack and Coke is available in CD, DVD, and Blu-ray editions.

As it turned out, World Falling Down was Cetera’s final album for Warner Bros., and when he resurfaced three years later with One Clear Voice, his debut for the short-lived indie label River North, I expected to hear the sound of an artist freed from his corporate shackles — not a rock album, certainly, but something that would reflect more sides of his personality. If you’re one of the few people who’s ever listened to Voice, you know this isn’t the case; it’s as mannered an album as Cetera’s ever released, as is its 2001 follow-up, Another Perfect World. As ambivalent as he might have seemed about his image, Cetera’s either unwilling or unable to break it. For the sake of his emotional well-being, I hope it’s the former — and I can’t help but think of Cetera whenever I listen to John Mayer.

If you hate John Mayer’s music, then the Cetera parallels probably seem obvious — what’s “Your Body Is a Wonderland,” if not a 21st-century update of “You’re the Inspiration”? — but Mayer doesn’t remind me of Cetera because they’ve both built fortunes out of slick, romantic songs that pander to our most sentimental instincts. Lots of artists have done that. Few of them, though, have seemed to struggle with it as much as Mayer.

It’s pretty much always been this way for Mayer. His debut EP, Inside Wants Out, was a sensation with acoustic-based singer/songwriter-loving Awarestore customers in the early aughts, but he was quick to caution everyone who loved it that he really wasn’t “that guy” — that Inside’s bare-bones, deeply sensitive sound had more to do with budget restrictions than his real musical outlook. I saw him play a club date during this period — in fact, I flirted with the idea of booking him for a theater show for a little while — and it was clear how far he wanted to be from Inside: He was playing as part of an electric trio, covering Stevie Ray Vaughan, and generally giving in to the sort of blues-based guitar wankery that can be positively deadly when attempted by performers without sufficient chops.

Mayer has chops. Even his biggest detractors are usually forced to concede this. But John Mayer the songwriter is a completely different animal than John Mayer the instrumentalist, and this disconnect has always given him, and his audience, fits. He comes across like a guy who desperately wants us to know that when he’s alone in his room, he’s wailing on his axe — but every time he sits down to write a song, he sounds like a faded Xerox of Paul Simon’s Hearts and Bones. Well, not every time; once in awhile, he stops wrestling with himself long enough to give in to his inner Cetera and write an adult contemporary mainstay like “Wonderland” or “Daughters.” Far more often, however, he tries to have it both ways. Lyrically, he tends to take the position of a cuddly jerk who can’t stop breaking hearts (or having his own heart broken — awww!), sneaking in vaguely topical themes (Continuum’s “Waiting on the World to Change”) and slightly edgy references (the doobie-smoking line in current single “Who Says”); musically, though, his albums trade edges for languid grooves and smooth surfaces. Kind of like a musical bowl of slow-boiled oatmeal, only half as satisfying.

People really like oatmeal, though. Hell, I have a bag in my pantry right now — and that’s why Mayer’s fourth full-length studio album, Battle Studies, doesn’t deviate one whit from his platinum formula. In the context of his studio work, it’s essentially a slightly more overtly commercial first cousin to 2006’s Continuum — it doesn’t scream for radio as loudly as Room for Squares did, but it doesn’t sound as conflicted as Heavier Things, and it tosses in a few pop hits-in-waiting, like the Taylor Swift duet “Half of My Heart.” (Here’s hoping it’s a hit, anyway; it’ll make a great title for Mayer’s eventual best-of.) As always, Mayer goes out of his way to remind us he’s a guitar hero at heart, but he’s careful not to offend; nominal showcases for his instrumental prowess, such as “Assassin,” have a distinctly relaxed, Journeyman-era Clapton vibe, and his muted take on Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads” is polite enough to fit on the soundtrack of any Ryan Reynolds romantic comedy.

This will all sound perfectly dreadful to anyone who already hates Mayer’s music, but so what? He’s proven that there are at least two million people who like him just the way he is, and in the current industry climate, that’s pretty goddamn impressive. It’s tempting to wish he’d switch from oatmeal to something spicier — Thai food, perhaps? — but I suspect Mayer might actually be happier on some level if he just gave in and wrote his own personal “If You Leave Me Now.” Either way, the middle of the road can be seductively smooth, and if you’ve enjoyed any of Mayer’s previous efforts, you’ll won’t find a single hint of the aggression implied in Battle Studies‘ title. Which is probably exactly what you want to hear.

Madison Square Garden opened in 1968, the fourth building in New York City to bear that name. In addition to the world famous arena, home to the New York Knicks, and New York Rangers, and the site of many legendary concerts, the complex includes what was then called the Felt Forum. The theater, which can seat up to 5,600 people for concerts, was named after then-Garden president Irving Felt.

On January 17 and 18, 1970, the Doors showed up to play four shows, two a night, at the Felt Forum. In 1969, they were one of the first rock bands to play Madison Square Garden itself, but opted to play the smaller Forum the next time around in order to recapture the intimacy with the audience that had characterized their early career, and to take advantage of the superior acoustics that the Felt Forum offered. It was just a few weeks before their album Morrison Hotel would be released.

The first thing you notice is how good these recordings sound. All of the shows were mixed and mastered by the Doors long-time engineer, Bruce Botnick, who recorded a number of shows on the 1970 tour. Most of the music spread out over the six sprawling discs that make up the set has never been released, but a few of the tracks did surface on Absolutely Live in 1970, and on the Doors Box Set in 1997.

These days a major band will rarely do two shows in one night, but it was more common in 1970. Most people at the time suspected that the late show would always be better. After all, set length for the second show was not limited by the need to change the house over for another show, plus the band had more time to become inspired, if you get my drift. The Doors: Live In New York proves that those suspicions were valid, if only for this band, at these shows. Take the first two shows of the run on January 17 as an example. The first show is good, but pedestrian. None of the band’s classic lengthy jams are included in the set list. The second show that night was a different story. Morrison and his audience are clearer more into it. The set is longer, and we get extended versions of both “When the Music’s Over,” during which Morrison gets a little belligerent with a somewhat overenthusiastic audience, and “The End,” which opens with ringing bells and the haunting specter of Morrison shouting “bring out your dead” again and again.

The same thing happens the next night. The first show of the evening is once again good, but somewhat tamer. The second show is not only much longer, with more intensity from the band and the audience, there are special guest appearances as well. The Lovin’ Spoonful’s John Sebastian sits in with the Doors for several songs. A little rock trivia note for you; it was Sebastian who played harmonica on the studio version of “Roadhouse Blues.” Also guesting that night was drummer Dallas Taylor, best known for playing with Crosby, Stills & Nash. There’s also a stunning, maddening version of the rarely performed “Celebration of the Lizard.” From that second show, here is an absolutely savage version of “Back Door Man,” which segues beautifully into an equally intense version of my favorite Doors song, “Five to One.” Note the outstanding guitar work from Robbie Krieger on these two tracks. He and organist Ray Manzarek are brilliant throughout these shows.

The Doors dip into the not yet released Morrison Hotel album, opening each of the four shows with “Roadhouse Blues,” and “Ship of Fools,” “Peace Frog,” and “Maggie M’Gill” each make one or more appearances. The band also taps their classic, self-titled debut album for “Break on Through (To the Other Side),” “Soul Kitchen,” and of course their first #1 hit “Light My Fire.” Blues covers abound, including Bo Diddley’s “Who Do You Love,” Howlin’ Wolf’s “Little Red Rooster,” and John Lee Hooker’s “Crawling King Snake.” In the interest of presenting complete shows, we also get a number of breaks that are labeled as “Tuning/Breather.” While I recognize the need for tuning, the inclusion of the breaks on these recordings tends to break the momentum of the shows more than anything else. Apparently Botnick and the surviving Doors agreed on the importance of having complete shows, and the purists will be pleased. I could have done with less tuning, and more playing.

Live In New York being a Rhino release, it goes without saying that the packaging is first rate. The small hardcover book that accompanies the discs features essays by James Henke, Chief Curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum in Cleveland, producer and engineer Bruce Botnick, and Elektra Records Founder and Chairman Jac Holzman. If you are a Doors fan, I’m afraid you’re going to have to dig deep and get this one. Essential is the only word to describe it. If you’re merely curious as to what all the fuss about the Doors was, there are less expensive ways to get into the band, but none of them capture the band’s live magic, and Morrison’s massive appeal, better than this set.

One last note: the cover of the box is a reproduction of a ticket from the Felt Forum shows. The price of an orchestra seat? $5.50. That wouldn’t even begin to cover what you pay in Ticketmaster fees for a ticket these days.

Skitter On Take-Off is Chesnutt’s first album for Vapor Records. It was produced by indie legend Jonathan Richman and his drummer Tommy Larkin, and they had a very definite idea of how they wanted the album to sound. According to Richman, “We were both thinking that the way to get the feeling for Vic as a listener was to hear just Vic — no arrangements, no guest guitar solos, no “ironic” touches or anything else to cloud his voice or his poetry.” The end result is an album that features Chesnutt on guitar and vocals, Richman on guitar and harmonium, and Larkin on drums. It was recorded completely live, and there were no overdubs.

This is one of those albums that sounds like it was recorded late at night, in a dark room. The subject matter matches the darkness of the mood. Chesnutt wears his anger and bitterness like a badge of honor. He writes songs like a man who doesn’t have the time or inclination to humor you. The songs are straightforward, and straight from his heart. There’s been no fussing around with this syllable or that comma. Chesnutt is guarded, demanding, and sometimes just plain funny as hell. Listen to “Worst Friend,” which is by turns horrifying and hysterical.

Skitter On Take-Off is a short album; all nine songs clock in at well under 40 minutes. The songs have a way of insinuating themselves into your core. Richman and Larkin’s instincts were spot on. This is the way Vic Chesnutt should be heard: at his rawest, unfiltered, most provocative best.

This would be a lot to deal with for any artist, but it seemed like even more of an annoyance for Jones; she had bigger ambitions than a lifetime of “Come Away with Me” clones, but she looked and sounded like a girl who belonged behind a piano, crooning tasteful ballads. It didn’t help that her first tour seemed to find her in a perpetual state of stage fright, or that her voice wouldn’t let her get away with sounding anything but beautiful.

She’s certainly been willing to try, however, both on her own albums — 2004’s Feels Like Home and 2007’s Not Too Late represented subtle variations on the theme of her gazillion-selling debut — and in a series of increasingly bizarro side projects and cameo appearances. The past few years have found Jones singing (occasionally profane) hooks for a wide variety of artists, including Q-Tip, the Lonely Island, and Mike Patton’s Peeping Tom, as well as recording with country/folk hooligans the Little Willies and her punk band, El Madmo. When word got out that Jones had mostly abandoned her piano and taken up guitar for her fourth release, The Fall — and worked with a cast of characters including Ryan Adams, Will Sheff, Marc Ribot, and producer Jacquire King — it was pegged as her “rock album,” and maybe even the full-on gonzo record she seemed to be hinting at.

The truth of the matter is, of course, much more mundane. She might do some unexpected things outside her solo career, but as a name brand, Norah Jones is too smart and successful to make any sharp turns. The Fall represents an unequivocal evolution, but it isn’t different enough to turn off anyone who loved Come Away with Me; it’s more of a refinement of her established pattern, with different textures (primarily courtesy of Ribot’s webs of atmospheric guitars and James Poysner’s keyboards) adding new shades of color to Jones’ pillow-soft voice. The Fall does have a slightly quicker pulse than Jones’ previous efforts, and once or twice, she threatens to lead the band into a bona fide workout, but things always cool down before they get too crazy.

Not that that’s a bad thing, necessarily. If you buy The Fall expecting a huge departure, you’re probably going to tune out pretty quickly — but anyone who expects huge departures from Norah Jones is a fool, and most likely has other bad investments to worry about. If, on the other hand, you go in hoping to hear something more interesting than Not Too Late or Feels Like Home, then you’re in luck; these 14 tracks find Jones developing her sound more assuredly than ever, and if they don’t shatter any barriers between her warm little patch of earth and the larger musical world, well…it’s so comfortable in here, why would you even want to do such a thing?

She’s pop/rock royalty now, but in the early ’90s, Sheryl Crow was teetering on the edge of becoming a music business casualty; her greatest claim to fame was her stint as a backup vocalist on Michael Jackson’s Bad tour, and her intended debut album had been rejected by her label. Add all this to pop music’s generally jaded vibe at the time, and it isn’t hard to see how Crow could fall in with a group of ferociously talented burnouts looking for a little low-stakes jamming between dispiriting corporate gigs. Thus was born the Tuesday Night Music Club, a loose confederacy consisting of David Baerwald, Bill Bottrell, Dan Schwartz, Brian MacLeod, and Crow’s then-boyfriend (and future cult legend), Kevin Gilbert. Crow wasn’t the best songwriter in the bunch, but she was the best singer, and by far the most easily marketable, so it also isn’t hard to see how the sessions quickly turned into woodshedding for Crow’s second pass at her solo debut.

It’s an interesting story, and one that felt good in the “alternative” early ’90s, particularly as it came attached to an album of friendly, country-tinged music with just enough disillusionment to capture the world-weariness of college freshmen. Like Hootie & the Blowfish later in the decade, Crow offered listeners musical comfort food during a time when the radio could seem like a pretty hostile environment. It wasn’t particularly exciting music, but that was part of the point; when you go from Steelheart to Nirvana in the space of a couple years, and all of a sudden everyone is wearing Doc Martens, flannel, and silly facial hair, more excitement isn’t necessarily what you’re looking for.

Crow’s complete malleability also worked in her favor. Now that we’ve watched her fashion a career out of slight musical reinventions, we know she has a unique (and very lucrative) ability to stir bits of pop, rock, folk, and country into a perfectly inoffensive gruel; with Tuesday Night Music Club, that gift enabled her to convincingly wear an accidentally trendy persona stitched together with the help of guys who had a legitimate ambivalence (or, in Baerwald’s case, something like total animosity) toward commercial success. Like punk in the ’70s, the grunge/alternative movement gained momentum partially because of anger toward the popular music of the day; Tuesday Night Music Club represented the second wave of that movement — one that responded to everything, including that anger, with a shrug. In musical terms, it’s the smartest and subtlest thing she’s ever done, and whatever your opinion of Crow as an artist, you’d be hard-pressed to deny Club’s status as an important artifact of the ’90s.

Again, however, it isn’t a particularly exciting album. Club’s biggest hooks surface in its dumbest song (”All I Wanna Do”) and the one where Crow sounds most like she’s trying desperately to be cooler than she really is (”Leaving Las Vegas”); the rest of the album — with the exception of “Strong Enough,” a song I refuse to believe took six people to write — is a collection of shambolic, low-key grooves that need a singer with real soul to put them over. Crow is a technically proficient singer with real power and a pleasing, slightly ragged tone, but that ain’t soul. It might have made for a soothing palate cleanser after too many spins of Pearl Jam’s Vs. when it was popular, but when was the last time you listened to Tuesday Night Music Club? When was the last time you wished there was even more of it?

Universal’s hoping it’s been awhile, and they’re also hoping you have enough nostalgia for those days to feel like adding ten more songs to the experience, including four songs from Club’s scrapped follow-up, a passel of B-sides, a “2009 remix” of “I Shall Believe,” and Crow’s covers of “All By Myself” and “D’yer Mak’er.” All told, it plumps Club up into a 95-minute listen, plus the DVD. Your mileage, needless to say, will vary. If you think TNMC is a classic on par with The Joshua Tree or London Calling, spending $30 on all this extra stuff will make sense; otherwise, you’re likely going to see it for the fourth-quarter UMG cash grab it is. If you fall into the former camp, though, you can content yourself with the knowledge that this is the definitive version of the album — and prepare to reacquaint yourself with TNMC with some songs you know, some you may not know, and footage like the clip embedded below.

He’s been around for a few years, putting out mixtapes and making cameo appearances on other artists’ albums, and has been a fixture on the D.C. scene since he scored a local hit with 2006’s “Dig Dug (Shake It).” For the national audience, though — particularly casual mainstream listeners — Attention Deficit is Wale’s coming out party. Like a lot of parties, it has its dead spots, but not many — it’s a lot more like House Party than House Party 4: Down to the Last Minute.

Wale’s part of the go-go subgenre, which blends hip-hop with elements of the workout funk pioneered by Chuck Brown, expanded by artists like E.U., and pulled into the sampling era by DJ Kool, whose “Let Me Clear My Throat” gave the genre its last real breakout hit. Anyone who’s been paying attention to artists like Wale will probably bristle at the word, but go-go has been making a sort of limited comeback over the last few years, popping up in the work of artists as diverse as Gym Class Heroes and the Roots (whose “Rising Up” features a guest spot from Wale). Through singles like “Dig Dug” and “Breakdown,” Wale has identified himself with go-go, but don’t go into Attention Deficit expecting it to sound like Trouble Funk — or even DJ Kool; he’s always had more on his mind than one style of hip-hop, and as alluded to by this album’s title, he does a fair amount of hopscotching through Deficit’s 14 tracks.

This won’t come as any surprise to longtime followers — Wale’s disrespect for cultural boundaries and lyrical thoughtfulness earned national coverage last year through The Mixtape About Nothing, which rests on Seinfeld samples — and if there’s a knock on Attention Deficit, it’s that it finds Wale toning down his restless spirit and making an obvious bid for crossover status. This is going to be a source of disappointment for some listeners, but it’s hard to imagine the album coming together any other way; this is a debut, after all, and even if Wale isn’t as unimaginative as your average MC, he didn’t get where he is by being stupid enough to ignore the masses.

To that end, Attention Deficit has its share of “what the?” moments, including a pair of better-than-you’d-think production appearances from TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek, but for the most part, Wale’s more esoteric inclinations take a back seat to bright, radio-ready arrangements, shrewdly chosen cameos (that’s Lady Gaga singing the hook on the leadoff single, “Chillin’”), and the sheer pleasure of listening to his fluid flow, which can be dizzyingly percussive (”TV in the Radio,” a stylistic love letter to Wale’s biggest stated influence, Black Thought) or pensive (the appropriately named “Contemplate”). And although the album isn’t above tired rap cliches — Wale closes things out by listing his bona fides and declaring “I am hip-hop” — it also makes plenty of room for left-field pop culture references (NES classics get a pair of nods in “Mama Told Me”) and clever turns of phrase (like the “Beautiful Bliss” laugher “‘Pac said fuck the world, and I ain’t come yet”). It’s slick, in other words, but it’s also smart, and it should find an immediate home in the playlists of Kanye-weaned listeners with a fondness for brassy, glitter-dusted hip-hop.

During the great hair metal die-off of the early ’90s, Bon Jovi didn’t exactly seem like the first band that should have seen its career fade into an unpleasant, acid-washed memory — they were huger than huge at their peak, and unlike a lot of their peers, they were always more of a straight-ahead commercial rock band than a metal band toning down its act for the Top 40 — but neither did they seem like they had any real long-term commercial viability. When was the last time you watched the video for “Bad Medicine”? It featured dialogue, enough quick cuts to make you throw up before the one-minute mark, trendy saturated colors, and Sam Kinison. The ’80s should have clamped down on Bon Jovi like a bear trap:

But Bon Jovi didn’t tank in the ’90s. No, you know what they did? They released an album in 1992, just as grunge was building momentum and their name recognition was enough to sell two million copies of Keep the Faith. Then they smartly hid out for the rest of the decade, releasing a greatest-hits compilation (1994’s quadruple-platinum Cross Road) and one studio album (1995’s platinum These Days) before re-emerging in the broken musical landscape of the 21st century with 2000’s double-platinum Crush.

Jon Bon Jovi’s always been a nakedly craven opportunist, and I refuse to believe he’s approached the band’s career as anything other than a business plan. I think he realized that after five years away, Bon Jovi nostalgia would be high, and with rock radio mostly dead, he could afford to make what would have been a credibility-killing move in the ’80s — namely, hooking up with Max Martin for a lollipop of a leadoff single — and finally turn the band into what he’d always thought it should be: a tribe of musical mercenaries who didn’t have to feign allegiance to any particular genre, but could cop to whatever trend happened to be popular at the moment in an effort to stay on the charts, and do it without hurting sales enough to matter. Other bands had tried this before, but they’d all failed, possibly because they all still had credibility to squander; Bon Jovi made it work, because credibility had always been a meaningless abstract concept for them. Their music was never as important as how people responded to it — or to put it in more appropriately crass terms, how well it sold.

Watching Bon Jovi’s career unfold is like watching a physics professor play Jenga: What he’s doing shouldn’t work, and you keep waiting for the whole thing to collapse in a horrible mess, but he plots his moves so carefully that nothing — not gravity, not label mergers, not even the end of rock music as we know it — can stop him. Country music is popular right now? Fine, fuck it, Bon Jovi will release what they bill as a country record, which sounds pretty much like most other Bon Jovi records, only it’ll spin off a Number One country hit. People aren’t buying records anymore? Who cares? Bon Jovi will go on Extreme Makeover Home Edition. Bon Jovi will release a four-CD box of B-sides, and it’ll go gold. Bon Jovi will score Top 40 hits even after Top 40 ceases to exist in any meaningful way. If curing AIDS sold records, I’m pretty sure Bon Jovi would have done it by now.

Sadly, curing AIDS doesn’t sell records. But pinching out tubes of boneless, easy-to-digest rock & roll does, and that’s why the band’s 11th studio album, The Circle, is coming out today. Richie Sambora has described it by saying “It sounds like Bon Jovi, but it sounds fresh,” which is only half true; Bon Jovi has never sounded the least bit fresh, and this album — whose third track, “Work for the Working Man,” recycles “Livin’ on a Prayer” so obviously you’d notice it even if you were listening from the next room — is no different. But it probably won’t make a difference to the band’s bottom line, because The Circle is loaded for bear with the same stuff people have always responded to in their records: Huge, push-button choruses; plaintive, knucklheaded ballads; and clichés masquerading as lyrics that are supposed to signify something, but whose complete meaninglessness form a great Möbius strip of hoary platitudes and insultingly calculated populism.

The Circle is, at least nominally, a sort of song cycle about The State of America Right Now, or at least the way it feels for the band as they leaf through the Wall Street Journal on their gated estates. So you get songs like “Brokenpromiseland” and the aforementioned, terrible “Work for the Working Man” alongside your usual big ballads (”Live Before You Die,” “Love’s the Only Rule”), lab-formulated singles (”When We Were Beautiful”), and lab-formulated big ballad singles (”Superman Tonight”), all of them as immediately familiar as they are instantly forgettable. It sounds like Bon Jovi, all right.

With just about any other band, it would be necessary, or at least helpful, to place a new album somewhere in the context of its earlier work. That, however — like most rules — doesn’t apply to Bon Jovi, a band whose music is defined in commercial epochs, and whose cultural significance exists as a sort of condemnation of culture in general. Bon Jovi is Bon Jovi, what has been shall be, and attendance records shall be broken on the next tour, glory to Jon in the highest. It’s, like, The Circle or something.

AC/DC songs live and die by the riff—that distinctive, distorted, wicked cool Angus Young guitar figure, roughly the aural equivalent of a he-wolf stalking his mate while thinking about all the other mates he’s going to do later on that night, after he and the other he-wolves have a few beers. Young got better at coming up with these riffs over the years, which leaves lacking some of the previously unreleased Bon Scott-era material collected here on Disc 1.

“Poster I Use for Masturbation” (i.e., “Stick Around”), for example, is built around a snoozer; only Scott’s leering vocal keeps the thing interesting. “Leave Me Alone So I Can Masturbate” (”R.I.P. [Rock in Peace]“) bears no riff whatsoever, unless you count the basic I-IV-V blues chords that chug behind the singer.

Scott could always shine on a slow blues, though, and “My Pubic Lice is Really Bothering Me Today” (”Crabsody in Blue”) gives him plenty of space to testify. The most striking/disturbing track in the box (and possibly in the whole of AC/DC’s career) is “Jean, I’d Like to Have Sex with You” (”Love Song”), an honest-to-God power ballad, the only such song I’m aware of in the band’s long oeuvre. It’s the type of track that, had it ever made it out of Australia, could have ended the group before it ever really started.

Better served here are the tracks sung by Brian Johnson, who took the mic from Scott’s cold, dead fingers in 1980. Whereas Scott could use his voice to belt a banshee wail or purr a come-hither line, Johnson is all caterwaul, quite often to comical effect. Imagine being on a date with someone—perhaps in a nice restaurant, enjoying a little brie appetizer and some white wine—and your date spends the entire meal screaming to the ceiling about how sexually potent he/she is, how much fun it is to sexually gratify oneself, and how the greatest activities in the world are getting intoxicated on alcohol and having rough intercourse. Brian Johnson is that kind of date.

Fortunately, one is often sufficiently distracted by Angus Young’s monster riffage to notice the lyrics until the chorus. For example, you barely notice that “My Penis’ Meatus” (“Snake Eye”) sounds like a date rape anthem, or that “I’m Going to Ejaculate Any Second Now” (”Borrowed Time”) makes little sense. Young’s guitar work on both is amazing—Chuck Berry on anabolic steroids, turned into pure electricity and sent through a half-dozen Marshall stacks. And how “I Would Like to Place My Hand Inside Your Underwear While You Are Wearing It” (“Down on the Borderline”) never made it to an album (it was the “Moneytalks” b-side) is beyond me.

The live stuff on Disc 2 does not disappoint, either. A bit of advice, though—with the exception of “Highway to Hell” (”Highway to Hell”), it’s best to avoid the Bon Scott tracks that Brian Johnson sings. The comparisons are not flattering to Johnson, particularly when juxtaposed with several incendiary Scott performances. “Life Isn’t Fair, but It’s a Lot like Cunnilingus” (”Dog Eat Dog”), recorded in Glasgow in 1978, is the early band at the height of its power. “I Am Available for a Tryst at Your Convenience” (”Live Wire”), though hampered a bit by muddy sound, is pure sweaty ecstasy—that Hammersmith Odeon crowd in ‘79 must’ve gotten a hell of a show.

When set loose in a live setting, though, Johnson’s roar can stop an oncoming armed incursion, were one to break out in whatever stadium the band happens to be playing at. The period from perhaps 1982 to 1985, however, was a fallow one for AC/DC—two of their more underrated records (Flick of the Switch and Fly on the Wall) were released and all but ignored. This document proves, however, that they could still bring the thunder live, when the thunder was called for.

The Detroit audience in 1983 that witnessed the included versions of “I Am a Male Escort and Would Like to Have You as a Client for my Services” (“Guns for Hire”) and “If I am Not Mistaken, I Believe You Have a Venereal Disease” (“This House is on Fire”) never stood a chance. The band’s rock-ribbed rhythm section pounds out the pulse of the songs, while Angus Young flings riffs and solos around like a Shriner throwing candy at a parade. Of course, what would any compilation be without the classic “Our Evening of Lovemaking was Quite Satisfying” (“You Shook Me All Night Long”)? So entrenched is the song on rock radio, nearly 30 years removed from its initial release, that to exclude it would be something akin to sacrilege.

Later-period live cuts are fine and fun, if more or less inessential, but if you survive the devastating effects of those Detroit tracks and Bon Scott’s ghost howling from the great beyond, you’ll have something to return to time and again to have your mind melted and eardrums abused. It’s rock and roll, boyz ‘n’ girlz—if you ain’t crankin’ it up, you ain’t doin’ it right. Take that meat and grasp it.

As a songwriter, Bennett often mines the same territory that Bruce Springsteen did on Tunnel of Love, albeit from a pop perspective. His lovers are committed, but at the same time frightened, and unsure of what the future might bring. In Taylor Mills he has found the perfect foil for this material. Mills has a big voice, full of yearning, but she never feels the need to resort to the sort of “vocalizing” that many of the popular divas of the day traffic in. She sings the songs as if the message is more important than any glare that the spotlight might cast on her. It’s a very endearing quality for a singer to possess.

There is nothing overwrought about Under the Surface. In keeping with the effectively direct vocals, everyone involved keeps it simple and to the point. Though nice production touches abound, nothing sounds fussed over. Listen to “Just a Second” to get what I’m talking about.

One of the great musical joys in my life in recent years has been the opportunity to see a number of Brian Wilson shows. For my money, he has the best touring band on the road these days. Taylor Mills is an integral part of that ensemble, her voice a key component in the brilliant vocal mix. The band members clearly love Brian, and love playing his music. How could you not? I hope they stay together forever. I also hope that when the tour takes a break, Mills will hit the road to bring her own music to the attention of more people.

Under the Surface is available at iTunes, Napster, and through the Taylor Mills Website.