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.

Chowhound: The Gumbo Pot - The Fairfax Farmers Market

I have been going to the Farmers market for many years now. For lunch. For drinks. For meat. For produce. For karaoke.
And yet, although I have seen it, read the menu, been enticed by the promise of Po' Boy sandwiches and Beignets I have never eaten food from The Gumbo Pot.
Turns out, it's for good reason.
Service? Slow and arrogant and not very helpful. Even though there was no one behind me (It was a slow time) the woman taking my order still looked behind me as though she had other orders to take. I admit, I didn't know what I wanted but that only resulted in me saying, "What's the most popular item you sell?"
It's the Ya-ya Gumbo. A watery, salty distillation of uninteresting flavors. With Rice.

I've often found that New Orleans cuisine seems to have been designed for the toothless, and this is right in line with that philosophy but that doesn't explain the Creole Mustard Potato Salad having almost no flavor save for the slightest hint of spice at the tail end of each bite.
The beignets? Eh. Over fried, I would say. I have had better Zappolis.
There are so many better places to eat at the Farmers Market. Well, one or two. The Gumbo Pot is not one of them.

No music. None recommended.

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...)

Chowhound: Blu Jam Cafe - West Hollywood

Chowhound is a new entry on Septenary. Since we tend to eat out a lot in LA, be it dinners out, food on the go or brunch/breakys/lunches while working, there's a lot to write about.
More than likely I will be co-listing stuff here that I also post on Yelp but many of you aren't Yelpers and you deserve to get the skinny on the delishisness.

Our Yelp Review:

Eat breakfast like a king, share lunch with your friends & give your dinner to your enemies." So said Camile the chef/owner of Blu Jam as we finished up our family breaky this morning. While my 18 month old daughter gobbled down a *HUGE* bowl of fruit (good fruit, too: blueberries, bananas and strawberries!) my wife powered down the Blu Jam French Toast


and I scarfed my Roma via Paris eggs and potatoes.



We love breakfast out. We have eaten and dozens of morning bistros, griddles and cafes. This one kicks the ass out of each of them.
I say go early, before the shops open and Melrose comes to life when Los Angeles has that sleepy feeling of a city recovering from a helluva night out. Then the parking is easy, there are plenty of seats and the atmosphere is perfect.
If BJC ever put out a cookbook I would be first in line to buy it.


Actual backing music: Frank Sinatra
Suggested background music: Okkervil River.

listening Post: Van Halen - 3

When I was about 15 or 16 my best friend in the summer vacation town of Bar Harbor was a guy named Pete. I met him while we were both prep cooks at the town's greasy spoon. Pete was a metal guy all the way. Used to listen to Pantera before anyone knew who they were. He took me to see Ozzy at the Blizzard of Oz tour stop at the Bangor State Fair, (Randy Rhodes was 5 feet from me and a little band named Def Leppard was the opener). Pete also had a pair of pants tailor painted with white stripes to emulate Eddie Van Halen's guitar. While I was immersing myself in Queen, Pete was learning to shred. I never even gave the Pasadena boys a chance.
Let's remedy that now, shall we?



Van Halen - III - 1998 (Don't Buy it)

Everything you've imagined is true.
I can't get through it.
It's crazy bad.
Cherone sounds like he wishes he was in Queen and not even classic Queen. For some reason Gary is trying to make everything sound like Headlong off the Innuendo album.
The music is worse than generic. It's TRYING to be interesting and failing.
I wanted to be able to say that I made it all the way through but I stopped halfway through. "Dirty Water Dog" was the end for me.
You wanna try? I dare you.
It's just awful.
I want to forget it happened.

Grade F

New Tattoo

Zoe inspired it.
Iden designed it.
Emily inked it.
I wear it.
The Zoe Tat.

Getting ink done.

Sitting in the chair @ purple panther getting the Zoe Logo tattoo done. Hard to type while emily is poking my skin with needles but it'll be worth it.

Update: The tat looks fantastic. The colors, the size, everything. Best way I could think to celebrate ZoZo and how much she means to me.

Snapshot: West Hollywood

During my journeys today I happened to park directly in front of the very first apartment I lived in in los angeles. No, not the columned one with the big windows.
Look down the driveway. See the windows low to the ground? That's a basement apartment. The one I shared with a man who would become a famous director. The one where we had a party where we invited so many strangers. The one where we painted in the walls, and my bed frame was made from milk cartons.
My first pad.

ShoZing

There is no reason for this post except that I am trying out the iPhone app ShoZu.
The above picture is The Hall of Justice. I mean, the Hollywood Bowl.