The 1985 Listening Post - Aerosmith - Done with Mirrors

Aerosmith - Done with Mirrors

#444/1079

November 9 1985

Aerosmith

Done With Mirrors

Genre: Rock

3.75 out of 5

Highlights:

Let the Music Do the Talking

Gypsy Boots

The Hop

Joe Perry came back. 

I’m one of those very very latecomers to Aerosmith. I admit it. I found them during their resurgent MTV days. And I had to go back and give them their due. 

They were one of the bands that I featured on the original Listening Post a decade ago. Their 2nd, 3rd and 4th records, culminating in Rocks were astoundingly good. 

So much so that I probably burned out cuz this is much better than the previous 2 and a really good warm up to the next 2. Sure, they sound like they wanna be the American Rolling Stones but, hey, the Stones weren’t doing anything interesting at this point so, why not take that blues based cock rock slot?

I wasn’t fair to this then. Fresh ears and all. Just proves you really shouldn’t listen to EVERYTHING in a band’s catalog in one solid go. 

I was wrong about this one 10 years ago. It’s much better than I remembered.

https://music.apple.com/us/album/done-with-mirrors/1443504474

The 1983 Listening Post - The Joe Perry Project - Once a Rocker, Always a Rocker

The Joe Perry Project - Once a Rocker, Always a Rocker

September 1983
The Joe Perry Project
Once a Rocker, Always a Rocker
2.25 out of 5

Highlights:
Crossfire
Adrianna

If you couldn’t get enough of Paul Stanley’s solo album and wondered how it would sound if he was a bit more obsessed with blues guitar stylings, this is the record for you.
There’s no doubt that Perry can play. There is a question about his singing ability. And about his charisma. And songwriting prowess. None of those are in full regalia here. He’s bad at all of it. I actually didn’t mind his previous two solo records but this one doesn’t even reach the 1st floor apartment balcony heights of the previous or the higher aspirations of his first without his glimmer twin, “Let the Music Do the Talking”, which was actually a very good record.
Only when we get to the end of the first side, “Crossfire” and the beginning of Side Two, “Adrianna” do we get some signs that maybe this project can add up to something more interesting than just a Joe Perry vanity show. But whatever good credit he’s amassed during this stretch is undone by the overtly sleazy cover of “Bang a Gong”. T-Rex didn’t deserve this, Joe. Leave that shit to Crue.
The Aerosmith reunion is now overdue.

Listening Post: Aerosmith - Honkin' on Bobo

Aerosmith – Honkin' On Bobo – 2004

Aerosmith goes back to its roots and becomes...The J. Geils Band?
If you go wayyyy back into the Geils catalog you'll discover that they were one of the best blues bar bands in the country. Also from Boston, their live record Full House is a dynamic explosion of rockin' blues.
Aerosmith's last album isn't live. And, while it is an album of straight ahead blues covers (except for one track, “The Grind”) it has that sleazy Tyler/Perry goo all over it.
And it's their best record in a while.
From the opening track, “Road Runner” by Bo Diddly, straight on to the penultimate song, “Stop Messin' Around”, with Sonny Boy Williamson and Willie Dixon songs among the blues breakers in the middle, it's a blast. Even the last song, “Jesus on the Mainline” sounds like everyone involved is having a grand time.
Except for that god awful title, which sounds more like a euphemism for sex with a drunken, fugly stripper instead of a nickname for Tyler's harmonica, Honkin' On Bobo is a blast.

Grade: B+
A-Side: Road Runner
BlindSide: Really the rest of the record.

Listening Post: Aerosmith - Just Push Play

Aerosmith – Just Push Play – 2001

Just Push Play is, without a doubt, the ugliest record that Aerosmith has ever recorded.
Still following the formula, utilizing outsized orchestrations whether or not they are appropriate, the band just comes across as tired.
And we are not the beneficiaries of anything good here.
The major single, “Jaded”, is as cut out a track as the band has ever done. While it's somewhat catchy, it's time for these guys to put it to rest. The rest of the record is forgettable at best.
Earlier this year Joe Perry went on record disavowing Play, saying that none of the members were in the same room when it was recorded and it taught him “how not to make an Aerosmith record.”
Indeed.

Grade: D
A-Side: Jaded
BlindSide:
DownSide: Trip Hoppin

Listening Post: Aerosmith - Nine Lives

Aerosmith – Nine Lives – 1997

So, it's been more than a year since I was doing the Listening Post for the Toxic Twins from Boston. I actually listened to this record once, but it was playing in the background while I was out in the backyard playing with Zoe and I wasn't really paying attention.
And I also have no real recollection of the band's catalog anymore so I can't really place it in any great context.
I can only rate it on it's own merits.
If Nine Lives was a soundtrack for some Hollywood big screen epic it makes perfect sense. It's a giant sounding record. Power ballads (“Hole in My Soul”, “Full Circle”- a song that sounds like the big hits “Cryin', et al, and which, while I can't quite recommend it, I kind of love), sprawling world music sound (“Taste of India”), rock monsters (“Nine Lives”, “Something's Gotta Give”) and radio friendly huge blues (Ain't that a Bitch).
All of them Rock-by-the-numbers formula songs. By this time, Aerosmith has it down. They are hiring the right producers, co-writers, buying the right tracks, selling to the people who will buy their stuff. I am imaging it's the same group that buy Bon Jovi records. In fact, an Aero-Jovi tour would probably make a gazillion dollars, except that Jon Bongiovi doesn't need Aerosmith the way Tyler and Co. might need him.
The drug fueled, hallucinepic, “The Farm” with it's Wizard of Oz re-enactments is a noble experiment, but it's just not very good or engaging. On the other hand, the speed-punk “Crash” is, for me, a much better song. It's not trying to be anything other than what it is. And it's the most alive the band has sounded in a while.
The single, “Pink”, is a grotesque as far as I'm concerned. Still obsessed with adolescent interests, it just grates and it's probably the first time I would include a hit single as a DownSide.
Nine Lives tries to keep the Pump – Get a Grip formula alive. And it doesn't fail. It's just that, once you've heard those records, you've heard those records and that's sort of enough. It's a comfortable sound, if not completely interchangeable. I prefer those others over this one, though. It's a solid, if lonnnnng record.

Grade: B-
A-Side: Nine Lives, Hole in My Soul,
BlindSide: Taste of India, Crash
DownSide: Ain't That a Bitch

Listening Post: Aerosmith - Get a Grip

How do the boys from beantown follow up their masterwork?



Aerosmith - Get a Grip -1993 (buy it)


Livejudging Get a Grip:

1. Intro: Great. Nod your hat at the very tune that got you here. Nice.
2. Eat the Rich:Oh, back to the big-ass riffage that you were known for in the first place. Why does Perry sound so good? B+
3. Get a Grip: Did I need that belch? I don't think so. Infectious, but ultimately boring big blues rock.B-
4. Fever: Like Elvis on steroids. Or Horton Heat Lite. Put the top down, find a piece of traffic-free, open road and crank it. A
5. Livin on the Edge: This song gets extra points for being co-written by Mark Hudson, one of the Hudson Brothers from that cheeky Saturday Morning variety show. (And he's Kate Hudson's uncle!) It also helps that it's a pretty good anthemic rock tune. B+
6. Flesh: The first real turkey the band has churned out in years. It's just a wannabe sex-driven, almost Reznor influenced, one-eye-on-the-charts one trick pony that wears out its welcome before the second chorus. C-
7. Walk on Down: What's this? This doesn't sound like Steve---oh. It's a Perry track. No doubt he's taking the vocals. He has that laconic semi-ability to sing where he sounds like a lazy power pop rocker or Kiss on a bad day. If this is what The Joe Perry Project sounded like, I'm glad I never heard it.Pass. C
8. Shut Up and Dance: This is a weird and really poor track. Why weird? Because it's co-written by Tommy Shaw and Jack Blades, the guys from Damn Yankees (And Styx and Night Ranger....) Why is that weird? Because it is the furthest thing from a rock song that I've heard in a while. It's just a melange of competing riffs and licks and it's muddled and ugly and it's these ROCKERS calling for us to dance. Um....no. D
9. Cryin': God bless the big, rustic, farm-tinged, anthem rock ballad. Does it work? Sure. Why not. I almost wish it was bigger. Or I was at the prom. Or dating a young Alicia Silverstone. A
10. Gotta Love It: The Hudson Brother's back but this time everyone was too busy asking him what Goldie Hawn was really like to realize that they hadn't really written a song. "She was my SISTER IN LAW, you idiots!" He could be heard shouting but, by the time the day was done, there was nothing but a future jingle for Cold Stone Creamery and a lot of hurt feelings. C-
Man this album is long........
11. Crazy: When in doubt, mine the territory of so many country-western amblers and toss in a little retro-50's talkin' to your "girl". I always thought this was the weakest of that trilogy, but it did have a couple things going for it: Liv and Alicia, acting all lipstick lesbiany. There's just something so wrong with Steve singing a love song over images of his daughter writhing in her underwear on a stripper pole. Not as bad as his singing a love song over images of Ben Affleck mounting his daughter, but pretty damned close. This piece of junk won a Grammy......blech. C
12. Line Up: Lenny Kravitz gets in on the action with a songwriting credit on this one. Line Up kind of sounds like the theme song to a wacky comedy from the 70s starring Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder and is ABSOLUTELY the kind of song you would expect to hear the Brady Family sing in their Variety Show amidst the ice skating distractions. Oh, wait, is this song still on? Blah. C-
13. Can't Stop Messin': My version of this album has this Japanese B-side right there at lucky number 13. Also co-written by the Damn Yankees boys it kind of makes you understand why that band couldn't go any further than "High Enough". This tune sounds like the kind of drivel Brian May would foist on the band toward the end (Anyone remember Headlong?). Completely unmemorable. C
14. Epic Rock Tune 3, otherwise known as Amazing: Actually, of those three, Celine Dion/Dianne Warren-esque anthems, Amazing is the best. Sounding a bit like Wings with a taste of Jon Brion (who I like to believe they copped from retroactively), this is the song that probably sounds the most like the band is pandering. As it could be Dream On, or Sweet Emotion, or any other Tyler screeching ballad. But where those were heartfelt and dynamic, the later ballads just seem to be begging 15 year old girls to buy into the desperate pleas for emotional validation and, thereby, the records. This from the guys who wrote Cheese Cake. A
15. Boogie Man: Pointlessly useless instrumental closing track. A tedious part of the repertoire by now. D

Sadly, Get a Grip is a real step back for the band whose second act is notoriously brilliant. A hodgepodge at best. A letdown in every way.
Yet it sold a bajilion copies.
Oh well.

Grade C
A Side: Cryin', Amazing, Livin on the Edge
Blind Side: Fever, Eat the Rich,
Down Side: Shut up and Dance, Boogie Man, Walk on Down & Gotta Love It.

Listening Post: Aerosmith - Pump

....a template for how to capitalize on the fluke success of the first hit hybrid of Rap/Rock...



Aerosmith - Pump - 1989 (Buy it)

Here's the way post-Listening Posts work: After I've made my way through the catalog of a band I back up my computer to the EHD. Then I go through the albums from that session's band and I delete anything that wasn't an "A Side" or "BlindSide". Wheat from Chaff.
It is rare, if ever, that I keep more than half of an album. In fact, I don't think I've kept an entire album since the first Listening Post, which was u2.

With Pump I find no reason to delete anything from the list. It's that good. I think this album is better than Permanent Vacation and, dare I say it, better than Rocks. (heresy!)

There's a couple things I noticed during listening to Pump:

Steve Tyler is in top notch form. His voice is elastic and he's having a blast with finding new ways to sound sleazy and bloozy.

The riffage is down to a minimum. Something that echoes the U2 Posts. I am a huge fan of the big electric guitar solo. I love riffs. Gimme more of that AC/DC! But, on Pump, they pull Perry back so far that he's no longer the STAR. There's very little spotlighting of his fretwork and, to be honest, less than memorable, licks. In it's stead we have terrific soundscaping production, a wider sound and a bigger variety of music.
Sure, "Love in an Elevator" sounds way too much like Def Leppard. That's fine. (In fact, when I used it to set a Genius playlist on my iPod the very next song chosen was "Armageddon It", so there ya go.) And Monkey on my Back sounds a LOT like Givin the Dog a Bone, but, what the fuck, it's so tasty you just let it pass.

The album itself, also seems to get better the deeper in you get. And with each listen.

Janie's Got a Gun is unlike anything Aerosmith ever did and boy does it hold up. Not only is the production top notch and ominous as hell, but the song itself is singable in a way that most Aerosmoth songs aren't. It helps that the video was so evocative 19 years ago that when the images come back to mind they only enhance the listening experience.

There is nothing bad on this record. It isn't indulgent, it seems to have put away ego-tripping and drugs as though the band resigned themselves to this machine (and second chance) called Aerosmith and decided to just go with it.

About that second chance. A lot of bands get reprises, second acts. In this case when RUN DMC shot Aerosmith back into the national spotlight, instead of just going with that and making their whole career about being, basically, a novelty act, they hired songwriters, better producers, pulled themselves together and put out the almost perfect Permanent Vacation. The success of that record seems to have imbued the band with a new sense of purpose. There are only two songs credited to an outside producer on Pump, the Uber-Ballad, "What it Takes" written with cash machine, Desmond Childs. But, unlike previous crappy Aerosmith ballads, I actually like this one. Sadly, it will be rewritten over and over by the band in the coming albums, but its great here. And The Other Side, which is credited with Holland Dozier Holland as co writers but that's because they sued, claiming the riff sounded like "Standing in the Shadows of Love" so that doesn't really count.....

Pump. Just great.

Grade A+

A Side: Janie Got a Gun, Love in an Elevator, What it Takes, The Other Side
BlindSide: Young Lust, F.I.N.E., Don't Get Mad, My Girl.....oh, what the hell, everything else.
Down Side: Nothing.

listening Post: Aerosmith - Permanent Vacation

Run-DMC re-energized the flagging brand and they return with a mega selling album. But is it any good?

Aerosmith - Permanent Vacation - 1987 (Buy It)


There is something familiar about this....this opening track...lemme check wikipedia...it's so....well, it's obviously a stronger, more assured piece of songwri- Oh, right. Got it.
So, Aerosmith basically realized that their strongest songwriting days were behind them and brought in some ringers. Like Desmond Child. Didn't I JUST get through dealing with this guy's work with Bon Jovi???? I thought for sure I was done with mirrors...I mean, Desmond Child. Okay, crap.

GREAT ROCK CONNECTIONS: Holly Knight co-wrote "Rag Doll". You don't know her? Do a wiki search, I'm not an encyclopedia (which is blogspeak for 'neither do I'). The great connection is that it's because of Mike (I write Hits for a living, mutha) Chapman. He's the person who really gave her her start in songwriting and publishing.

Thank goodness. If the first two tracks off this monster aren't that exciting (they're nothing special), Rag Doll is the deserved hit. Maybe I just like it so much better because I remember the video's constant presence and the girls were really hot in it, but I think the song is actually just the perfect little 'smith confection. Dirty, bloozy, simple, broadly stroked. I could listen to that song ever week for the rest of the decade.

It should be noted that this is the strongest the band has sounded in ages. Since Rocks. And the production carries with it just a hint, a glimmer, of '80s over production so it actually ends up sounding pretty good and not too dated at all.

You know, after listening to "Dude Looks Like a Lady" (Yes, I am live blogging this record) I have to come to a commonly head precept: Hits are Hits for a reason. This is just a tasty tune amidst workman-like songsmithing.
St. John sounds like the song David Lee Roth wish he had written for his "Skyscraper" solo record.
Hangman Jury is the closest Aerosmith has come to sounding like a real worshipper at the blues altar and not just at the feet of Jimmy Page.

And Bruce Fairbairn. He was a genius. The world definitely misses him. He gets special note because his work here and with Bon Jovi has elevated two mediocre bands to heights I didn't think they could reach.

The nice thing about "Permanent Vacation" is that it gets better as it gets roiled. Instead of being front-loaded with a couple hits and falling apart after that like so many of these albums do, this one keeps the listener entertained and engaged.
A solid return and a definite keeper.

Grade A

A Side: Rag Doll, Dude Looks Like A Lady & Girl Keeps Coming Apart
BlindSide: St. John (I'm a sucker for that prowly bass line that sounds like it's lifted from Dead Kennedys "The Prey" or every noir novel ever written & Hangman Jury
Downside: Angel. Yeah, I know it was a monster hit. But that opening just sounds so much like J. Geils' "Love Stinks" and the rest of the Dianne Warren-esqu horribilty reminds me of Cheap Trick's The Flame. Pandering balladeering at it's worst. And The Movie. Really. The world doesn't need instrumental music from Aersomith. Really.

Listening Post: Aerosmith - Done With Mirrors

Joe Perry's back! Does it matter?



Aerosmith - Done With Mirrors - 1985 (Buy It)

The band is "Done with mirrors", they would have us believe. They like the amateur puns, these guys. In this case, we are to believe that they are done with using mirrors to cut their cocaine and that they are BACK!
Are they?
From the opening track, "Let the Music Do The Talking", one might believe so. Sadly, that track is actually a holdover from The Joe Perry Project and it does succeed in kickstarting this record.
After that everything sounds so forced. Like the band is trying to show their relevance but its just not doing it for me. The licks are lazy. The lyrics are abysmal (My Fist your Face? The reason a Dog??? Hate women much, Stevie?) There's no nuance here, there are really no songs, either, at least nothing you would ever want to hear again.
I am definitely in the minority here. A quick check of Wikipedia shows that Allmusic.com says that this is the better album compared to the next, starmaking one. Others give it a good review. And they all uniformly despise Rock in a Hard Place. Well, to each his own.
This is a terrible record. What I would like to do is get a bindle of coke, pour it out on the cover of the cd and cut lines all the while laughing demonically at the irony.
In one year Aerosmith would be elevated to the stratosphere by way of Run-DMC but right here, in 1985, if I was an Aerosmith fan, after listening to Done With Mirrors I would have been Done With Aerosmith. (See what I did there? Can I name your next record, Steve?)
I can't wait to delete this thing.

Grade D -
A Side: Let the Music Do The Talking
BlindSide: Nothing
DownSide:8 other tracks.

listening Post: Aerosmith - Rock in a Hard Place

Halfway through the Aerosmith catalog we finally reach the '80s......



Aerosmith - Rock in a Hard Place - 1982 (buy it)

Joe Perry takes his big licks and leaves the band for his own form of superstardom. Anyone remember The Joe Perry Project? Yeah, yeah, but do you own the music? Didn't think so.
Then Brad Whitford leaves and takes HIS riffs with him somewhere during the making of this album.
Not a very auspicious beginning to the new decade for Tyler, et al.
Now, to be fair, the '80s were a difficult time for big, loud rock. Sure, AC/DC's Back in Black was a monster but that was the end of the era. By the time this album came out, we had already dealt with Punk, New Wave and the cresting of an R&B avalanche on the horizon. I don't think there really was a place for this record to begin with.
Not that Aerosmith has ever really broken any real ground, anyway.
All that said, Rock in a Hard Place is easily the band's best work since Rocks.
It's pretty generic stuff, but it isn't as crass as some of the last work. It's dirty (Jailbait) and, at times, experimental (Prelude to Joanie & Joanie's Butterfly), and it's got something that the last two records didn't: A need to prove itself. Tyler and the boys don't fully succeed on that level, but they get damned close. "Bolivian Ragamuffin" & "Lightning Strikes" are closer to form than they band has been in about a half decade. In fact, I would put Bolivian in the top 20 of the band's tracks....so far.
There are the tired and rote attempts at big band blooze, like the title track and, more so, the closer, "Push Comes to Shove", which both fail but are nowhere near the abortion that is the band's cover of "Cry Me A River".
All told, Rock in a Hard Place is no Rocks but it's not the worst thing I've heard from the band, or from most bands, actually.

Grade: B
A Side: Lightning Strikes
BlindSide: Jailbait, Bolivian Ragamuffin, Bitches Brew & the Joanie Suite
DownSide: Cry Me A River. Yipes.

Listening Post: Aerosmith - Night in the Ruts

We continue the journey (hey! Journey! Maybe......) of blues/rock with the boys from Boston.



Aerosmith - Night in the Ruts - 1979 (buy it)




Night in the Ruts (Right in the Nuts, get it? Huh? Actually I didn't until just now.....damn, I hate being stupid.) starts off with a big, lick heavy blues breaker that sounds dangerously similar at times to Draw The Line. "No Surprize" gets things rolling and gave me hope. Hope that maybe the energy, the sweaty, take no prisoners attitude of Rocks and Toys in the Attic would be back.
And it does.
For three songs.
Chiquita and the cover Remember (Walkin in the Sand) drive this thing and then...and then......
"Cheese Cake".
Oh, dear me.
Let's talk about the music before we get to the content.
A blatantly faux-sleaze/blues piece at best. Not impossible to listen to, just difficult. But then you get to that chorus. "Got my fingers in the pie" No. No, no, no. Porn rock. If Warrant can be castigated for "Cherry Pie" then Aerosmith needs to be taken to task for this one. I'm no prude. I loves me some porn. Classic, gonzo, 120 second blasts (he he he, he said "blasts") on XTube. Great. But this isn't porn. It's giggling 15 year olds behind the auditorium, sneaking cigarettes, shoving their fingers in your face and telling you to "Smell." because he just made out with the school slut.
It's bad. Bad bad bad.
The album doesn't really recover after that. It settles into a pretty slo-blooze vibe and I guess that I should appreciate that on say, "Reefer Headed Woman", (Another cover) but I'm so exhausted by that point that I don't know how I'm supposed to react.
Night in the Ruts just isn't fun. The closing rock ballad, obligatory by now, "Mia" can't save this thing. It just goes down in a blaze of "has-been".

Grade C-
A Side: No Surprize
BlindSide: Chiquita & Remember
Downside: Cheese Cake.

listening Post: Aerosmith - Draw the Line

A break from politics....which really busted up my music appreciation summer...and back to the catalog of Aerosmith.



Aerosmith - Draw the Line - 1977 (Buy it)

I've listened to this record twice now. Once at a coffee shop and again on a ride home. Both times I had a dramatic response.
The first track, "Draw the Line" had a familiarity about it, an aggression and jaunty and sexy sludge ride of classic rock. The production was flat and boring and ugly as the rest of what I heard of the album. And that's the problem. I 'phased out' each time. I can't tell you what song was what after the title track. The whole endeavor sounds like it was recorded by people whose audio sensitivity might been compromised, perhaps drugs, perhaps alcohol. But I DON'T REMEMBER any of the rest of this album.
When I phased back in on occasion I wouldn't hate what I was hearing but, damnit, I can't remember any of it.
Maybe "Sight for Sore Eyes" has some familiarity factor, be it that the song has been played on classic rock or it just sounds like 20 other Aerosmith tracks.
This is a sad record. No one seems to be all that interested in being here.
Least of all me.

Grade D
A Side: Draw the Line
BlindSide: The Hand that Feeds (which sounds like it was written and recorded right after Draw the Line and nobody remember that they had mined this territory already.
Downside: Get it Up. (Really? Very mature, guys.)

listening Post: Aerosmith - Rocks

Continuing the quarter century journey with the Toxic Twins, et al.



Aerosmith - Rocks -1976 (Buy it)

Tasty.
Big.
Sonic.
Rocks is better than Toys in the Attic and that's really saying something. In many ways this album is the progenitor of 80s glam metal. It's all there. The big, epic soaring ballads that Journey would cheeseball the hell out of (Home Tonight). The sleaze that Motley Crue would lay (false) claim to (Get the Lead Out). The template for Ratt, Winger, GnR (Rats in the Cellar). I even hear some Hagar-era Van Halen on Combination.
Rocks also carries the biggest blasts in the Aerosmith arsenal. Well, a couple more of them, at least. Back in the Saddle is catchy as hell and Last Child is the stuff FM AOR was created for.
Rocks deserves its place in the Best Records of the '70s pantheon. It's a really great record that leaves the "American Rolling Stones" label in the dust. In fact, I bet the Glimmer Twins were looking at the Toxic Twins for inspiration after this record.

Grade A+
A Side: Back in the Saddle, Last Child, Rats in the Cellar
BlindSide: Sick as a Dog, Get the Lead Out
Downside: Nothing. They are at their peak here.

listening Post: Aerosmith - Toys in the Attic

This is a first for the Listening Post series in that I have no real relationship with this band at all. I mean, sure I know the "hits" and they've been a part of the general tapestry of my musical life since I was a little boy but the "Toxic Twins" or the "American Rolling Stones" or whatever their nicknames have made little or no impact on me at all.
Let's give the boys from beantown a roll, k?




Aerosmith - Toys in the Attic - 1975 (Buy it)

I don't know what was going on in 1975 but it was a pretty damned good year for Rock. Born to Run, A Night at the Opera, Blood on the Tracks....and Toys in the Attic.
Aersomith comes of age with this album. It's a barnburner, it is. I could go track by track and tell you how good it is, but I don't want to. The first time I heard it I loved it. That was today. The second time I heard it loved it even more.
Now I just appreciate the shit out it.
I think the album sort of peters out by the end but the journey to get there is a treat.

Grade A
A Side: Toys in the Attic, Walk this Way, Sweet Emotion
BlindSide: Big Ten Inch Record, Adam's Apple
Downside: You See Me Crying.

listening Post: Aerosmith - Get Your Wings

This is a first for the Listening Post series in that I have no real relationship with this band at all. I mean, sure I know the "hits" and they've been a part of the general tapestry of my musical life since I was a little boy but the "Toxic Twins" or the "American Rolling Stones" or whatever their nicknames have made little or no impact on me at all.
Let's give the boys from beantown a roll, k?



Aerosmith - Get Your Wings - 1974 (Buy it)



If I was 13 and you handed me a copy of "Aerosmith" I would have listened and tossed it into the pile of crap collecting on the side of my bed. If you made me listen to "Get Your Wings" I would have immediately understood that this band could actually help me get laid. Maybe playing them wouldn't make any feathered haired denim wearing courtyard smoker remove her pants for me but I would have BELIEVED that one day that could actually happen.
Get Your Wings is what I was hoping Aerosmith would be. It's dirty, panting, heated, smoldering and tasty.
Thank you, Jack Douglass for taking the band out of the bar, keeping the booze and bringing the rock.
Sure, there is the weirdness of the proto-prog blues rock of "Spaced" but, hey, you need something to play in the background while you are rolling that next joint and figuring out whether you are going to the roller rink or hang out in the woods with a pint of Boone's Farm.

Grade A
A Side: Same Old Song and Dance, Train Kept A-Rollin
BlindSide: Lord of the Thighs, S.O.S (Too bad),
DownSide: Spaced & Pandora's Box (just not a very good song. Dull, really. And a strangely poor way to end a very good album).

The Hellacopters owe a lot to Aerosmith.

Listening Post: Aerosmith - Aerosmith

This is a first for the Listening Post series in that I have no real relationship with this band at all. I mean, sure I know the "hits" and they've been a part of the general tapestry of my musical life since I was a little boy but the "Toxic Twins" or the "American Rolling Stones" or whatever their nicknames have made little or no impact on me at all.
Let's give the boys from beantown a roll, k?

Aerosmith - Aerosmith - 1973 (Buy it)

If you have come to Aerosmith anywhere between, say, Armageddon and Pump then this should come as a weird little surprise.
Nothing here sounds like Aerosmith, with the exception of "Dream On" and that's just because it's been played over and over for years. I'm not even sure that without that single Aerosmith would have made as much of an impact as "Bandit". Sandwiched between all that mediocre blues-rock (much of which sounds to me like there were a lot of fans of The Beatles, Why Don't We Do It In The Road in the studio), Dream On sounds...trite. It sounds "Of its time". A quasi-metal, inoffensive, soaring Wings-esque ballad. Nothing else on the record sounds like it, though and to it's credit, that's not a great thing. In a way Dream On raises the level of all the songs that surround it and they, simultaneously, bring that one song down to earth. It's a weird alchemy I have never heard before.
The album is not bad, it's not awful, it's okay. Truth be told, in the wake of Zeppelin there were (and still continue to be) tons of Blues based wannabes. Others did it better, though, much better.
Aerosmith's blues quotient falls far short of their beantown brethren, J. Geils Band.
Their pop rockness, highly evident on the first two tracks, sound too much like Cheap Trick posturing to have any real teeth. Tyler doesn't have the sense of humor that Nielsen did nor the range of Zander.
It's interesting to note that every time Tyler strains for those high notes, which is not that often here, he sounds like he's struggling. Interesting particularly since that would become his trademark. I'm not sure who he sounds like here, is it the lead singer of Loverboy? Maybe. But it's not Tyler. It's bland as hell, though.
And when the band does try to turn up the edge they just come off sounding like Kiss-lite.
There's some good and ineffectual music here. Like I said, it's not offensive. It's just not all that memorable. Nothing earth shattering. Nothing and I mean NOTHING that points to a career longevity spanning a quarter century.

Grade C

A Side: Dream On & Mama Kin
Blindside: One Way Street (I love it when bands put 7 minute opuses on their debut records. This one is good in a "it's almost as good as Brian May" kind of bubblegumblues way.
DownSide: Movin' Out (The Jimmy Page Worship really begins right there. On your knees, Perry, start sucking...)