Crabsody in Blue

Alright, Zoo Freaks, settle in and pass whatever you're passing, because the Zoo Crew just dropped the needle on a genuine Aussie deep cut that never made the American pressing. This is "Crabsody in Blue," sitting right there on the original Australian Let There Be Rock, the one Albert Productions put out on March 21, 1977. Bon Scott, Angus Young, and Malcolm Young wrote it, Harry Vanda and George Young produced it down at Albert Studios in Sydney that January, and Mark Opitz engineered the sessions. The title is a straight wink at George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," only Bon is not talking about the concert hall. He's talking about the little critters that walk sideways and give you the blues.

Same neighborhood as "The Jack," if you know that one. Bon had a habit of turning his own scrapes into songs, and the folks at Louder called this one half "Ride On," half "The Jack," built on his personal history. The line that gives the game away is "Well they move on down and they crawl around." Then he gets to the blues ointment, the doctor who says they've got to make 'em dead, and that sideways walk. At the time it was considered positively anarchic. The American record company put their foot down, and Japan eventually did the same, so those pressings swapped it out for "Problem Child," which is funny when you remember the American label had already turned down the Dirty Deeds album that song came from. Australia, Britain, and Europe kept the crabs. The song stayed a collector's item until the band tucked it onto the Backtracks box in 2009, which is how a lot of Freaks finally heard it. A long-running English fan site even took the title for its name.

The band that cut this thing started in Sydney in November 1973, when the Young brothers decided they were done messing around in other outfits. Malcolm and Angus had come over from Scotland with the family as kids. Their older brother George was already a name from the Easybeats, and he and Harry Vanda ended up producing almost everything AC/DC did in those early years. Angus had been knocking around in local bands called Kantuckee and Tantrum. Malcolm asked him to join a new group, and their sister Margaret looked at Angus and said the school suit would be a great gimmick. That uniform came off her sewing machine idea too. The name itself was suggested by George's wife after she spotted the AC/DC mark on the back of Margaret's sewing machine, and Margaret pointed at the little lightning bolt and said that ought to be the logo. First singer was Dave Evans. Bon Scott, who had already done time with the Valentines and Fraternity, came aboard in September 1974 after an old bandmate, Vince Lovegrove, pointed him toward George during a stop in Adelaide. Bon started out driving the van and ended up the singer. By the time they cut Let There Be Rock, the lineup was Bon, Angus, Malcolm, Mark Evans on bass, and Phil Rudd on drums.

If you want the band straight from the source, the official site is acdc.com. They keep a verified page on Facebook, they're on Instagram, and the official account on X is @acdc. Fans have been keeping the archives warm for years. The English site named after this very song is Crabsody in Blue. French archivist Arnaud Durieux runs ac-dc.net, and the French fan hub Highway to AC/DC lives at highwaytoacdc.com. There's also an AC/DC Official Fan Club group on Facebook where the faithful trade tour stories and old pressings. For those about to rock, we salute you. Stay itchy out there, Freaks.