Sometimes I wonder what it must have been like to have been a British hippie in the waning months of 1969 or the dawn of 1970, perhaps already fond of the heavy distorted psychedelic blues rock of the last couple of years, wandering into some dingy British club tripping my balls off and hearing the first chords of "Black Sabbath" crash into my ears. Follow them with Tony Iommi's quiet, ominous single notes based on those chords, and the dark rumble of Geezer Butler's bass and Bill Ward's drums beneath the melody, and my fear might start to rise. Hear Ozzy Osbourne sneer "what is this that stands before me?" and the bad trip would be in full swing.

While the band's vision would be more fully realized on that fall's "Paranoid" album, Black Sabbath's debut was a key part of the creation of metal in 1970. Songs like "Black Sabbath," "The Wizard," and "NIB" became cornerstones of what would soon be recognized as a new style of music, albeit one loathed by the mainstream rock press. Elsewhere, "Behind the Wall of Sleep" and "Wicked World" rock in the loose, jammy way prevalent at the time. "Warning," however, drags out a little too long, clocking in at over 10 minutes and meandering through various aimless blues jams that cause me to usually skip it when I listen to this album.

Due in part to a freak accident that cost Iommi the tips of a couple of fingers, leading him to downtune a half step, right from the beginning Sabbath's sound was darker than their peers. Heavy, blues-based psychedelic rock was all the rage in the late '60s and the Stones had brought the devil into the devil's music with "Sympathy for the Devil," but Black Sabbath took things to a new level that unwittingly became a new kind of music. A strange, unintentionally brilliant album, especially in the context of its time.

"Powerage" seems to have the fewest well-known songs of the Bon Scott era, and today might be seen as the lost album of '70s AC/DC. This can be a good thing, though, as not a single song on this album suffers from being overplayed on the classic rock stations that have beaten some of the band's biggest hits to death over the years. Songs like "Riff Raff," "Sin City," and "Rock N Roll Damnation" stand up to anything in the band's long list of more famous songs.

Just as the great early punk records of the late '70s represented a reaction against the excesses of arena rock and prog, disco and Eagles-style wuss rock, giving the world a much needed louder version of the essence of rock n roll's earliest days, AC/DC's "Powerage" is deeply rooted in the traditions of '50s rock n roll. "Powerage" took the revolutionary sounds of the mid to late '50s, cranked them up for the metal era, and made the music world a better place by doing so.

Sometime around 1989-1990, the mainstream metal world faced an epidemic of hair bands deciding they could play the blues. In most cases this went horribly wrong, and before entering the recording studio the culprits should have spent more time listening to their late '70s AC/DC records and less time strutting about the spandex stores of West Hollywood.

In contrast, "Let There Be Rock" is an example of blues-based hard rock that has stood the test of time, with songs like the title track showing a deep appreciation for the cultural cross-pollination at the core of much of modern music. AC/DC took basic blues structures, cranked the volume up, and (especially beginning with this album) sped the tempo up to a speed where songs like "Dog Eat Dog" and "Overdose" infectiously swagger into your brain, never losing their groove even for a moment. The album wraps up with one of the greatest odes to fat girls ever written, "Whole Lotta Rosie," matched only by Queen's "Fat Bottomed Girls" in its love for the large and in charge.

What is it about AC/DC that has worked album after album, decade after decade? It's that non-pretentious swagger and sense of humor that makes you think that this is a band you could knock back umpteen beers with and forget that they are rock stars. Early on, it was already there with Bon Scott's grin as he told his mischievous tales of rock n roll, sex, and booze, and in Angus Young's ridiculous yet iconic schoolboy outfit. While songs like "Big Balls" are obviously at their funniest when you're in high school, no matter how old you are they can easily get stuck in your head for days and leave a big grin on your face. Great, profound art? Nah. But who needs that when a band can inspire so much laughter and yet another round of shots when they come on the jukebox at your favorite bar?

Right from the beginning, AC/DC's formula of solid drinking-man's hard rock was in place and working well. Released in the U.S. and compiling songs from the original Australian version of High Voltage and their Australian debut TNT, several songs from this album remain classic rock staples to this day.

Who can hear "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock N Roll)" and not jump up, grab that invisible air guitar and feel like a rock star for five glorious minutes? No one with an ounce of traditional metal in their soul, that's for sure! A couple of songs, however, blunder along in a formulaic bluesy manner and usually get skipped when I play this album, but they certainly don't detract from party classics like "TNT." A solid beginning for one of the most well known and beloved bands in hard rock.