Aerosmith C/D?

Put me on the hating side of post-70s Aerosmith (and banish Steven Tyler from all future awards shows while you're at it).

i bought 'rocks' about a year ago, and like it, but still haven't given it enough spins. to be amended today perhaps

i've owned pump for about 17 years. still holds up as a pretty tight and interesting rock record with plenty of sleazy hook. have always liked 'janie's got a gun' too. guess i've never got over the soft spot i had for it when i was about 8.

Rocks kicks all sorts of ass. I can't believe the same band that did "Combination" did the crap they did after their "comeback".

Ultimately, there are really two Aerosmiths -- the hirsute, drug-gobbling cut-throats of the 70s and the yawnsomely clean n' sober hitmakers and sports bar jukebox fodder of the late 80's through today. Obviously, the former takes a giant, runny, narcotic-laced shit all over the latter.

Best song they ever did: "Back in The Saddle."

hahah 'drug-gobbling cut-throats'

im gonna steal that one.

I'm saying a prayer for the desperate hearts tonight. How high can you fly with broken wings?

The first three are super classic, the rest up through Done with Mirrors are classic and everything after kind of a dud.

you people need to refine your purism, I've heard that Done With Mirrors is OK but everybody knows Night in the Ruts is garbage. First album through Draw the Line all various degrees of great including some of my favorite rock moments ever (that last verse of "Draw the Line," the entirety of "Sick as a Dog," loads more). Out to pasture therafter with the possible exception of Done With Mirrors from which I've never heard a note.

to me the biggest tragedy of Aerosmith is that Tyler was once a pretty good/maybe great lyricist - on Rocks and all throughout that early stuff there are really smart turns of phrase, a real ear for how to deliver a line for maximum impact, and what always sounded to me like a genuine love of words & their sounds, of phrases and how they ring. Later, you get fuckin' "livin' it up while I'm goin' down." Ugh.

haha 'living it up while i'm goin down' was surely yet another triumphant winner in the tyler canon of punning genius!

everybody knows Night in the Ruts is garbage

I don't.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=8FG_L3BZ5dY

Post-Done With Mirrors, well, I think "Jaded" is kind of lovely, sort of. Beyond that, yeah, lyrics and vocals both down the tube, obviously.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=705LEH3j2g0

lyrics and vocals both down the tube

(Not to mention rhythm section.)

you people need to refine your purism, I've heard that Done With Mirrors is OK but everybody knows Night in the Ruts is garbage.

Man, I love Night in the Ruts. It's just so wasted an desperate sounding. As for some critical consensus, I know a lot folks who dig NitR.

Post-Done With Mirrors, well, I think "Jaded" is kind of lovely, sort of.

I agree! when I first heard that one I was like "maybe they'll be good again"

I should probably buy a used $1 copy of Pump again someday, though, to check out what I may have missed at the time. I'm guessing not much. Was always perplexed back then about what critics heard in it -- Isn't it the only Aerosmith album ever to score in Pazz & Jop?? Liked the idea of "Janies Got a Gun," and mostly figured that's why people cut that one song slack, for its good intentions or whatever; but maybe the rest was better than I gave it credit for. Still think there were plenty of hair-metal bands doing Aerosmith better than Aerosmith in the mid/late '80s, though.

pump is pretty cool. all studio polish and glisten of course, but generally speaking a lot of fun. hooks are accentuated by the nice big angular sound they have going and about half the songs are well worth a damn.

for what it's worth, i think the vocal delivery on 'janie's got a gun' is top notch

you people need to refine your purism, I've heard that Done With Mirrors is OK

Heh:

Done With Mirrors [Geffen, 1985]
Their knack for the basic song and small interest in guitar-hero costume drama always made them hard rock that deserved the name, not to mention an American band. Still, with almost a decade of bad records collective and solo behind them, there was no reason to expect a thing from this touching reunion. And against all odds the old farts light one up: if you can stand the crunch, you'll find more get-up-and-go on the first side than on any dozen random neogarage EP's. B+

Yeah, I'm pretty sure Xgau wrote that after I'd already done a lead review of Done With Mirrors in the Voice. Same review where I said "Walk This Way" and "Lord of the Thighs" were rap songs before rap existed, and could be played back to back with the Beastie Boys' "She's On It." Doug Simmons, the editor, said I couldn't possibly believe that and was just messing with people, but he printed the review anyway. The rest is history.

OMG! Steven Tyler in Rehab!

"...singer for the blues-rock band."

I thought they were easy listening pop balladeers at this point. the band that did "Combination" and "Sick as a Dog" does not exist

wow awesome clip

i wrote this about the album draw the line for a zine here in MPLS a few years ago lol i got pretty into draw the line for awhile.

Aerosmith – Draw the Line
Label: Columbia
Released: 1977

Okay, let’s cop to it right off: Aerosmith (especially Tyler) have been so lame for so long that at least two generations probably think of them as the rock equivalent of their embarrassing uncle who does his standup routine at family functions. But give me a stack of Bibles and I’ll swear on the memory of any dead man: These jokers were the best American hard rock band of the 1970s, and it’s not close. They really were our Rolling Stones, taking the template and remaking it with American muscle – harder music for a meaner decade. By comparison, the heaviest Stones’ rockers sound quaint compared to Aerosmith’s machine-tuned precision.

I’d always read that Draw the Line was a relative dud by seventies Aerosmith standards, but it’s awesome to my ears. I suspect history might color the band’s memory of the album; it was a proverbial “dark period” for the band, a few members claim to have little memory of recording it in the first place. The Wikipedia entry on the album makes the sessions sound almost comically bleak: “It was recorded in an abandoned convent near New York City, rented out for that purpose. The band lived there while recording the album, doing drugs, sleeping, eating, shooting guns, and driving their sports cars in between recording sessions.”

I remember Kurt Loder once described Led Zeppelin’s “drug-sick dread.” That phrase always stuck with me, and it’s all over Draw the Line. It’s claustrophobic, messy, brutal; the coke and whisky nearly seeps out of its pores. They’ve already lost their edge, and there’s not a song on here that’s a patch on the best of Rocks or Toys in the Attic. But they make up for it with sheer force, weird changes, hammering square pegs into round holes, battering riffs until they fit together, resulting in a record possessed of a powerful, murky quality. “Critical Mass” sounds like a death threat, the rhythm section hurtles along as Joe Perry smears queasy backwards guitar all over the walls. Tyler sounds like scared animal: “Arriving in boats, black hooded coats/ Tormentors climbed into my room/ I crawled under my bed, covered my head/ But they're flushin' me out with a broom.” Elsewhere, on the Perry vocal number “Bright Light Fright,” the guitarists ponders the horror of being wired, awake as the sun comes up, set to a surging three-chord change played with such intensity it could have past for punk if not for the bar band sax solo. “Sight for Sore Eyes” is an electric goosestep, not nearly as far from Gang of Four’s tight-assed funk as history would have you believe.

Hearing Tyler before he turned into a cartoon is still thrilling, so much coked jive, larynx-shredding howls (the last verse of the title track can barely qualify as language, despite what the lyric sheet reads). He’s still got more great senseless one-liners than anyone in rock history (“No dice, baby, I’m livin’ on the astral plane”), but for most of the record he just sounds desperate, circling the drain. By the time we get to the tense, angular vamp of “Get It Up,” even his own dick has abandoned him, the ultimate betrayal for rock’s horniest frontman.

For the most part, it’s the sound of a great band going down swinging. Even in decline, they are hard as diamonds, powered by drummer Joey Kramer and bassist Tom Hamilton, a rhythm section for the ages (it wasn’t by accident that early hip-hop DJs had an affinity for the funkiest white band of the ‘70s). The band dearly wants to escape from the trap its in, so much so that they even retreat into a world of Zeppish, D&D fantasy on the icily grand epic “Kings and Queens” – something they did once and never again.

In the end, they did survive their own stupidity, got clean and got popular again. They probably managed to be better husbands and fathers after all those years of neglect. Maybe they even became decent human beings. But they never made a record like this again.

^^OTM

Hearing Tyler before he turned into a cartoon is still thrilling, so much coked jive, larynx-shredding howls (the last verse of the title track can barely qualify as language, despite what the lyric sheet reads). He’s still got more great senseless one-liners than anyone in rock history (“No dice, baby, I’m livin’ on the astral plane”),

word.

that was great, He1go, i've always wanted to sit down w/ their decline/pre-comeback albums and see how good or bad they really were, but now i especially wanna check for that one

Their first four or five records are pretty much must own.

yeah but i grew up w/ best-ofs in the house so i haven't gotten around to hearing the actual LPs

i've always been curious about done with mirrors. gonna look for that the next time i'm out.

So Steven Tyler quits, huh.

Walkin' on Gucci, wearing Yves Saint Laurent
Better stay on 'cause I'm so goddamn gaunt

?!?!?!

I finally discovered "Kings and Queens". Holy shit that is a great song.

You ok, dude? http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/25/us-tyler-idUSTRE79O7S420111025

being old is gonna suck

https://s-hphotos-sjc1.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc7/299859_10150438169071874_638356873_10200617_2054484562_n.jpg

"Hello, I'm Jerri Blank."

Aerosmith
Spectrum
Philadelphia, PA
November 25, 1978

1. Psycho theme Intro
2. Toys in the Attic
3. S.O.S (Too Bad)
4. Mama Kin
5. I Wanna Know Why
6. Big Ten Inch Record
7. Sight for Sore Eyes
8. Tyler hit with bottle; Kramer yells at crowd, stage announcements
9. Philadelphia 102FM concert report about incident

sorry to hear that tyler did the bottle hurt

totally. luckily the drummer from aerosmith had my back.

this post from sund4r was OTM:

The 70s stuff, from what I know of it (Greatest Hits and Toys In the Attic + any remaining singles), is great. His voice was fantastic then. It's really tragic what happened to it. It's almost hard to believe he's the same man who sang "Dream On". The song "Toys In the Attic" is great - has this urgent but almost kind of spooky feel. "Walk This Way" actually did something new with the Stooges sound. Agree about "Back In the Saddle" too, also like "Draw the Line". I also like "Rag Doll" and if I'm in a mood to deal with it, "Angel". After that, they truly became one of the worst bands of all time. Nothing can justify "Janie's Got a Gun" or the "Crying"/"Crazy"/"Amazing" trilogy.

"Revolution X" is a real hoot, I highly recommend getting MAME and emulating the arcade version. At one point Steven Tyler appears on TV and throws you the keys to his car THROUGH THE SCREEN. Not to mention Joe Perry flying over the moon on a rocket-powered guitar.

weird stuff going on at aerosmith.com -- they've been hacked! by some band?

Look. This was not easy for us to do. Okay, technically, it wasn't too tough. That's not what we mean. It was a tough decision to make as a BAND because we know we're causing you some headaches right now, and we love you guys. But what is an unknown band supposed to do today? How is a band supposed to get noticed?

Do you guys remember what it is like? We hope so. Its hard, and it sucks sometimes, the things you have to do. We fought about doing this. But we're a band, so that just how it goes. You fight it out, every little decision. What you know you're gonna play. When you're gonna play. What you're gonna eat, even when there is no money. Do you remember all the shit that goes on in a band? So we took a vote. We're like a little fucking democracy. We have to be. We're all we've got.

Look we just needed some attention here, that's all. All we wanna do is play & Get our foot in the door. We don't know the business. Yeah, this might suck doing this to you but we kept telling ourselves, if we didn't think Aerosmith would love us, we wouldn't do this. That's the thing. You'll freaking love us. You have to. We're kind of like you. But we're a little scared and a little freaked out and nobody really gets us and our parents are pissed and worried and we cant find a place to play... and we're hungry most of the time but none of that shit really matters cause when we get together and play everything gets better. The world is different. There's light. We all of a sudden get why we are here. It's only when we unplug that things suck. (so we stay plugged in as much as possible.)

So would ya give us a shot? Do you remember being like this? Waiting for your wings? Cramped in a little apartment, living like animals? You did that too. We are doing what we can to survive. We don't wanna beg borrow or steal. But it's getting to that point. We're not just some band. We are GOOD. We fucking rock.

Look, you're gonna love us – we mean that. We don't know what else what to do - we love the blues, we love the Stones we love the Beatles - we're old school. We know you've got a new record coming out. We want that feeling. We want to have a record coming out. "A New Record" how fucking cool is that? And we will. Maybe because of how you might react to us. But we don't know. This is just our shot to get your attention, do we have your attention?

Listen. promise to meet us, hear us, see us, we will expose ourselves to you and the world, have us arrested if you want to, we don't care about that – just hear us. Just give us when and wgere with 2 days notice and we'll be there.

This is our life..... the music, the pain, the love and the death and blood and the sweat - this is rock and roll - this is our fucking life - do you remember? Do you get us? Can you help us? Just a little bit? Sorry for this hassle - we do love you - always know that

RT @joeykramer: Not sure. @LegendaryChild_: @IamStevenT @THaerosmith @joeykramer @JoePerry wtf is goin' on with the Aerosmith website?

this should be interesting!

i enjoy that the members of aerosmith are working this out via twitter.

Not that I'd really be interested in seeing them (once back in the 90s was enuff, thanks), but done touring for good:

It was 1970 when a spark of inspiration became Aerosmith. Thanks to you, our Blue Army, that spark caught flame and has been burning for over five decades. Some of you have been with us since the beginning and all of you are the reason we made rock ‘n’ roll history.

It has been the honor of our lives to have our music become part of yours. In every club, on every massive tour and at moments grand and private you have given us a place in the soundtrack of your lives.

We’ve always wanted to blow your mind when performing. As you know, Steven’s voice is an instrument like no other. He has spent months tirelessly working on getting his voice to where it was before his injury. We’ve seen him struggling despite having the best medical team by his side. Sadly, it is clear, that a full recovery from his vocal injury is not possible. We have made a heartbreaking and difficult, but necessary, decision - as a band of brothers - to retire from the touring stage.

We are grateful beyond words for everyone who was pumped to get on the road with us one last time. Grateful to our expert crew, our incredible team and the thousands of talented people who’ve made our historic runs possible. A final thank you to you - the best fans on planet Earth. Play our music loud, now and always. Dream On. You’ve made our dreams come true.

“Throw me in the slam / catch me if you can…”

part of me is bummed that i never saw them but the window of time when i personally would have WANTED to see them probably closed 20 years ago :/

I saw them on the Pump tour fwiw

And maybe the permanent vacation tour too? I can’t remember. I do recall the people in the row in front us smoking the biggest doobie I’d ever seen

Tourin' On Bobo

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.boston.com/culture/music/2018/08/07/original-aerosmith-tour-van-found-western-massachusetts/%3famp=1

They found the van but did they find Tom’s cache? Not likely

i almost saw them on that tour they did w Kiss in the early 00’s but couldnt go for some reason

(also that was when my ever-seeing-Kiss window closed)

I saw that episode of American Pickers, which is still a good watch, esp for ancient metal objects.
Good discussion of Aerosmith in pop-rock historical context (also vs. Kiss) over on Good books about music, starting circa April 17 2021.

Oh but speaking of books, the best thing by far about Tyler's "Rock 'N' Roll Memoir, Does the Noise in My Head Bother You? is the title: considering the clever smell of his best lyrics (in the 70s,yes), and some good interview quotes, I thought this might be obnoxiously engaging (and maybe drop a little interesting info, like he once told Rolling Stone, "Aerosmith would be nothing without Blodwyn Pig"), and maybe I missed the good stuff, but the skims hit the skids, rants got uglier and stupider and more repetitive, couldn't go on (I couldn't, he could).

I saw them in 1985 on a weird bill, it was an all-afternoon concert with the Hooters, Joe Walsh, Aerosmith and Foreigner. Foreigner was the headliner, because unlike Aerosmith they were still having hits. Aerosmith definitely felt like the oldies act at the show to me, because I was 15 and everything of theirs I knew via radio was at least 10 years old. They were good, I remember "Train Kept a-Rollin'" rocking in particular. But if I'd ranked that bill by likelihood of being major MTV presences over the next decade, they would have been at the bottom.

‘85…I wonder if Walsh and the A boys were doing lines backstage…probs

Doing lines off some hooters, no doubt.

I saw them in Knoxville with Joan Jett opening, maybe ‘91, incredible show. Joan Jett rocked harder tbrr

Just looked it up, I guess that was the Pump tour, 1990, but obv those were not the songs we were there to hear

“Chiquita!”
Dun dun dun / dun dun dun

https://i.postimg.cc/cJCYLmKc/IMG-0138.jpg
Workingman’s Smith

https://i.postimg.cc/nz8PBtzJ/IMG-2757.jpg

Hail and farewell to Jack Douglas, producer/engineer on the Get Your Wings to Draw The Line run. (As well as that which honks the bobo and other things.)

Honkin' in Heaven

I never connected all the dots with this guy, had no idea he did Double Fantasy or Radio Ethiopia