Deep Album Cuts Vol. 404: Aerosmith
I started to put this playlist together last year when I ranked Aerosmith's albums for Spin, so I just circled back to finish it recently, so let's honk on Bobo.
2. Lord of the Thighs
3. Spaced
4. Round and Round
5. Uncle Salty
6. Nobody's Fault
7. Combination
8. Sight for Sore Eyes
9. I Wanna Know Why
10. Cheese Cake
11. Bone to Bone (Coney Island White Fish Boy)
12. Jig is Up
13. She's On Fire
14. Simoriah
15. Young Lust
16. Monkey on My Back
17. Line Up
18. Attitude Adjustment
19. Light Inside
20. Shame, Shame, Shame
21. Tell Me
Track 1 from Aerosmith (1973)
Tracks 2 and 3 from Get Your Wings (1974)
Tracks 4 and 5 from Toys in the Attic (1975)
Tracks 6 and 7 from Rocks (1976)
Tracks 8 and 9 from Draw the Line (1977)
Tracks 10 and 11 from Night in the Ruts (1979)
Track 12 from Rock in a Hard Place (1982)
Track 13 from Done with Mirrors (1985)
Track 14 from Permanent Vacation (1987)
Track 15 and 16 from Pump (1989)
Track 17 from Get a Grip (1993)
Track 18 from Nine Lives (1997)
Track 19 from Just Push Play (2001)
Track 20 from Honkin' on Bobo (2004)
Track 21 from Music from Another Dimension! (2012)
A lot of classic rock dinosaurs were still pretty ubiquitous in the late '80s and early '90s when I started paying attention to popular music, but none more than Aerosmith. MTV didn't just play their new hits, they played their '70s chestnuts -- the Run DMC version of "Walk This Way," the video they made for "Sweet Emotion" for the 1991 Pandora's Box compilation, and a live performance of "Dream On" for MTV's 10th anniversary special.
One of the first episodes of "Saturday Night Live" I can remember watching was the one where Aerosmith appeared in a Wayne's World sketch. They performed "Monkey on My Back," a deep cut from Pump, a cassette that got a lot of mileage in my mom's car. I eagerly bought Get a Grip when it came out, but by that point I was a lot more into Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains, and lost in the album quicker than most of the other CDs I spent my money on once I realized that there was nothing else as good as "Livin' on the Edge" on it, certainly not all those songs with Alicia Silverstone in the videos.
My somewhat odd Aerosmith opinion is that I think Joe Perry is a much more interesting guitarist than he gets credit for. I think the working assumption is that he's just a blues rock guitarist in the '60s mold, not as important as Jimmy Page or Eric Clapton and not as flashy as the post-Van Halen heavy metal shredders, which is obviously true. But growing up I also found myself looking forward to his solos in almost any Aerosmith hit, even when the song wasn't great he'd find some cool tone or unusual sequence of notes to keep my attention. Brad Whitford, I realize now, also did some lead guitar, but Perry was the one you'd usually see playing solos in the videos, so I kind of assumed it was all him at the time. Some of my favorite solos on this playlist include "Cheese Cake," "Uncle Salty," and "Nobody's Fault."
"Sight For Sore Eyes" was co-written with David Johansen of the New York Dolls and Jack Douglas, who'd engineered the Dolls' debut before producing most of Aerosmith's best albums. The reference to 'Coney Island white fish' in the title of one of the best songs on Night in the Ruts is a colorful slang term for a used condom. Lenny Kravitz co-wrote "Line Up," and Marti Frederiksen, who sang Jason Lee's Stillwater parts in Almost Famous, co-wrote "Attitude Adjustment" and "Light Inside."
As the band leaned more on power ballads and song doctors in their later years, I made an effort to pick through those records and find the best uptempo stuff. The playlist really ended up being pretty much 75 minutes of back-to-back rockers with one nice mellow song at the end, "Tell Me," a rare solo writing credit from bassist Tom Hamilton. So I'm proud of it, I think you could play the whole thing without bailing out after track 11 or track 16 like you might be bracing yourself to.
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