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.

Chowhound: Harvey's Sandwiches - West L.A.

This election cycle has me jazzed, energized and hopeful. For the first time in my (seemingly longer by the day) life I find myself pouring my frustration and vitriol into actually volunteering for my candidate.
I, along with 1500 others, trudged to the opening of the Obama Headquarters in West L.A. on Motor about two weeks ago. Listened to some great speeches by Eric Garcetti and Mark Ridley-Thomas. And we heard from state officers for the campaign.
It was inspiring.
A few days later I found myself cherry picking time to volunteer. My days have been unusually free, what with the unemployment and choice of acting as an actual career and all.
At one point I got hungry and I left to get something to eat.
Near the office.
In West. L.A.

You know the area I'm talking about. It's just below Cheviot Hills, that sort of sister to Beverly Hills section south of Century City that no one ever knows about or talks about or goes to. It just exists, as though if it doesn't make any noise no one will bother it.
Motor is that street that we all cross at some point in your travels in the sprawl. Either you got confused on National, with it's turns and curves or you thought you were on Westwood and you just plain weren't or you decided to cut through town when you came out of that audition for The Unit at Fox and kept going south on...you guessed it...Motor.

The trouble with this area of town, besides the fact that it's either impossible to find or it's just down the street, is that there is, at first glance, no place to eat.
I'm sure there are some fast food joints on Venice had I really searched, but I couldn't. I didn't have the time (Had to get back to calling angry Republicans in Nevada, you know) and I needed to get something fast and easy.

That was when I found Harvey's Sandwiches, with it's big sign on Palms advertising it's sandwich menu. Pastrami being at the forefront.

I loves me a good Pastrami. Johnnie's Pastrami, both of them, though not related, are responsible for some o the best taste experiences I've ever had. As well as the worst food-coma-hangover since college.

So, it was easy to see why I might be enticed.

I was, at first, charmed by this courageous little hole in the wall. It reminded me of Galco, the transformed supermarket-now-soda pop shop in Glassell Park. Like it was supposed to be something else but function followed form and this was what they were stuck with.


Yes, the cooking area is blocked by venetian blinds. That's strange but I've seen worse.
Yes, the storage/cleaning area is clearly visible through an opened doorway right next to the dining area. Hey, I'm not eating IN there, so who cares, really?
Yes, the menu signage look like it was purchased from a company that takes your name and logo and puts it on garishly oversaturated photographs of food that could, from a certain angle, look like your cook whipped it up. Advertising is hard. I know.

But, then there was the food. Ambience be damned (and it is) let's get to that Pastrami Sandwich with fries!
Or, I should say, let's sink our teeth into that--

Waitaminnit, is Pastrami supposed to crunch?
If it is burnt to almost a tasteless jerky, then yes.
This was barely a sandwich. It was more like a tasteless, salted meat product, on a toasted stale bun, slathered with condiments next to a bed of Ore Ida potatoes, fryalated to cholesterol-inducing overdoneness. The kind of fry that, when you bite in, your mouth is greeted with a generous promise of salted potato which is then immedaitely replaced by a splash of oil, fat and grease.
It was terrible.
Thank GOD the menu informed me that there was NO MSG!



Whew! Had me worried there for a second. After all, the first thing I tell EVERY sandwich maker, from Pasadena to Venice is, "No MSG on that Turkey Footlong, fucker!"

This is a shout out to restaurateurs in the LA area: There is no good place to eat on Motor between Palms and Venice and probably further. Open something and put this ptomaine festival out of business.


Background music: Generic top 40 pop and R&B crap with a 13 inch television on, sound off, on top of a beverage vend.
Suggested background music: Fox News.

Barack Obama and the least offensive ad in many a year.

The excellent website Living Room Candidate contains over 300 presidential ads from Eisenhower/Stevenson to today.

It is edifying. It is saddening. It shows just how effective Madison Ave has become in shaping our leaders' messages and, in a very real and organic way, it shows the evolution of the attack ad. From the spark that was the nuclear bomb for Johnson all the way to McCain's grossly disturbing distortion of Obama's sexual predator education reform.

One ad stood out among others to be as moving to me as Johnson's bomb was scary and the "Morning In America" was heartstring-tugging.

It's this one. And watching it, at 12:30 in the morning two things happened to me. I wondered just where the hell this guy has been for the past 2 weeks and will he ever really come back?

And I cried. Real tears. The kind the crew on Rescue Me would torment a Probie for.

I've seen it probably half a dozen times and it always seemed....well...nice.

But, do yourself a favor. Listen to McCain talk about Obama. Listen to the Republican talking heads try to spin things around so McCain and his prom date try to sound more and more like Democrats.

Then, watch this again and see if it doesn't make you wanna run out and volunteer. Or weep for hope. Or believe that maybe, just maybe, one candidate really did try to take the high road. And, if we're lucky and we approach the better versions of ourselves for just one short day, that road can lead to a better tomorrow.

Yes. We can.




Neat sidenote: I went to college with the director and didn't know it was him. Coolio!

Camp Obama. Yeah, I guess we can.

Towards the middle of the day I had mixed emotions.
To say that a grassroots political training camp is a playground for chaos is an understatement.
Sadly, its our fault: We're democrats. We don't really like to take orders. We ask questions. We question authority. So, it takes twice as long to inform us of stuff because we have to ask ask ask......
We started day two (I am by passing Day One because it really was nothing more than a deep and intensive education in personal telemarketing. That said, it was invaluable but I could have learned it in half the time)
We started Day Two by being divided into Congressional Districts. This was immediately a problem.
While I was standing on line to get coffee with my friend, Kara, a pair of hands reached between us, cutting in front of 9 others, and grabbed for the coffee. "Well, no one's pouring from this one!" she said.
But we were about to reach for it.
Ah, fuck it. We let it go. It was contentious and, hell, there are over 400 people here. I'll never see her agai--
She was sitting directly in front of me in my CD table.
She's a force to be reckoned with, I'll say and I mean that in every good way possible. But she wanted to be the team leader. So did I. Because, well, I think I would be good at it. I think when I have produced plays I've been exceptional in the delegating and overseeing and I have learned a lot about being grateful in those situations. So much so that I think that's partially the reason that the foundation (www.lizzielulu.org) has taken off the way it has.
But I didn't want to fight her. Let her have it. Yawwnnn. let's start the day.
4 hours in it was apparent that we're not really learning all that much. Oh, there's a TON of information, but it's so dry and dull and, well, seemingly pointless.
As we were breaking for lunch it occurred to me that my district, which covers Silverlake, Los Feliz, down through a narrow corridor in Hollywood, to just about everything below the 10 from East LA (East of USC by far) all the way to Marina Del Rey, was too big. We needed to be cut up. If we were forming alliances and relationships with people in in our district with whom we were going to work, it should be with someone nearby, right?
I went to the woman in charge of that only to discover that she was furiously working on how to parcel up the city.
After she and I worked on that, the task was mine to tell the 50 or so of us and redeploy to new seating.
Oy. That's a treat. Lemme tell ya. If it were Republicans then, no problem, they would just do it. But it's democrats. They have questions, remember? It was a nightmare.
BUT
We got it done. We had our tables put together! Order from Chaos! I was now in Congressional District 33 South East!
Maybe I could be in charge now---
"We've been running CD33 SOUTH since the primaries" said these two diminutive older women in ObamaGear. "We've got phone banks running on Crenshaw. We're having a meeting on Thursday."
Ooooookay.
On the bright side, we don't have to go looking for a place to hold phone banking, it's already set up. In fact, it's kind of like being hired to work in an office, with limited experience but being put in higher charge than the workers. except that I will be busting my ass too.

By the end of the day, we were back to making calls.

We're calling Nevada, because we're close to it and we think we can turn it with our ground game.
Judging from the hang ups "I'm voting for McCain!" click. "We're Republicans!" click, it's a daunting effort. But, somehow, it all sunk in.
I started using my own personal experiences (family car dealerships hurting because of lost marketshare to hybrids, something that could have been prevented had McCain NOT voted against certain bills and had the Big Three listened to Obama. Or my experience with being labeled and knowing how hard it is to defend one's self from a negative attack smear) and you know what? It started to work! I actually turned a republican in Nevada from a "leaning McCain" to "Leaning Obama".
See, they hate John McCain. Their just scared of new. Scared of black. Scared of voting for the left. Scared.
So, we'll turn them.
I will be hitting the road in October for a weekend to canvass in Las Vegas. I have a friend who will be spending the whole month there. It's exciting.

You can be a a part of this. In fact you should. If you believe in a candidate as I do Barack. If you think this election is important, the most important of my lifetime, I think, then you can spend two hours making calls. It's pretty easy.
This really is the most amazing grassroots and empowering political experience I have had. It really feels like we're making a difference.
If you want to get involved, visit barackobama.com and find out where the office is in your area. Or, and especially if you live in LA, call me, email me or call 310-836-2009 for Obama Headquarters in Los Angeles.

We really can make this happen, you know. It's pretty cool.

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.

What is the most dangerous person on the planet?

A dumb person who thinks they're smart. Smarter than you and above reproach.
Watching Sarah Palin I was struck by how much she reminded me of my ex-wife. A woman who once responded to the request of the fire department to cut 6 foot high dry brush as it was a fire hazard with an indignant "Who the fuck are they to tell me what I have to do?!?"

Incredible.

And watching Palin I realized the cadence in her voice, the constant repetition of Gibson's first name, (almost an act of pedantic behavior), and the attempt to use multi-syllabic words to appear smart, no matter how phonetic the pronunciation (especially sad when butted up against words like "nuculer") was something I was very familiar with:

A moron who believes they are smarter than you.
i.e. The most dangerous person in the world.

Watch for yourself.



Be afraid, America. Be very afraid.

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.)

An Olbermann Special Comment

It's full of invective and vitriol. He spews and spits. I am sort of loathe to post it because it's SO partisan. But, at this time, when we Obamacrats are feeling...a little lost and like our guy maybe can't get to the finish line, I thought, what the hell. After all, I was as offended by the images used by the nazi par--I mean the fear mong----I mean, the GOP at their convention as Keith was.
It's 8 minutes long. The most aggressive part is at the very end.
I might take it down. I don't know. Like I said. I'm of two minds about whether to post it or not. I just am so angry right now.