Wednesday
Mar042015
Another Reason To Visit Las Vegas This Summer
Wednesday, March 4, 2015 at 12:01AM
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Reader Comments (14)
Word of warning. Last year, when Aerosmith was on tour, their show @ MGM was far & away the most expensive ticket on the tour. With the virtual sales failure of "Music From Another Dimension", Aerosmith have resigned themselves that they aren't going to make much money from CD sales, so they are jacking up the cost of tickets to their concerts. Sorry boys, but you just aren't worth $250-$350 a ticket.
Here's one of THE Greatest Hard Rock Bands of All Time and they mail in a lackluster affair.
Tyler's getting soft. That's not the Tyler we used to know. The smartest thing they could do is get back in the studio with Kolodner. Or that dude from "Whiplash"! If they don't they're gonna wind up going the way of Cal Ripkin!
I don't want the AOR songs, I want rockin' A-E-R-O-S-M-I-T-H !!
Then again, listen to "Round And Round" off that album. TIME magazine referred to that song as Metal and at the time, Aerosmith clocked in as the loudest decibel performance in history when they played Detroit in 1975 or around then.
For as bad as people's reactions were to _Done With Mirrors_, it certainly hinted at something greater than what came next, and then next, and then next. Is it any coincidence that the closest they got to capturing their glory days sound was their cover of the JPP? Methinks not.
Train barely rollin' . . .
HIM... There are only two songs that are decent after "Let The Music Do The Talking"... "Shut Up And Dance" (written by that dude from Night Ranger, I think) and "Jaded"...
Kolodner seems like someone who could fill the order at this point, "Get another 'Rocks' out of us." but they would have to show utter conviction to it and all involved would have to have self-bullsh*t detectors on to pull it off.
Though the result would not be on the level of "Rocks" by any means, I do believe they could deliver something 2/3rds almost as good with 1/3 ballads, the latter to pay for all the studio time it will take them to get anything decent in the other 2/3rds time spent.
Even in 2007, I was watchin' Aerosmith from the 4th row with Perry rollin' around the stage covered in gold glitter, the glitter sticking to his naked back, while donning snakeskin hip huggers, crankin' out an extended solo on his gold top '59 Les Paul as they cranked out the song "Toys In The Attic"!
In 1979, at Monster's Of Rock in Oakland, I watched 'em practically kill each other without missing a note, verbally insulting one another all the way, playin' pissed off and mean!
In 1982, with Jimmy Krespo replacing Perry, they tore up Capital Centre in D.C.! "Lightning Strikes", baby!
In '76, right off "Rocks", they totally killed it with Tyler throwin' a fan into the audience (No, I mean an ACTUAL fan... A giant GE fan on a 5 ft. stand!) and Perry in head to toe black leather, playin' out of his gourd!
The two shows in '75, they were runnin' around with their heads cut off... You gotta realize, they were in their early 20's! Unbelievable!
p.s. I thought "Pump" s*cked!, BK! I told you, man... Only two good songs since "Done With Mirrors"! "Shut Up And Dance" and "Jaded"!
They have phoned it in since before _Pump_ on records, but still seem capable of bringing it live. Problem is, their fan base is such a swamp bog of middle-of-the-roads, rabidly loyals, classics-only diehards, and "isn't that from some film" passerbys. In a sense that is a testament to their staying power, regardless the quality of the output. Like a wrinkled Dyson, they still suck up a range of fans.
But they are veering dangerously close to pricing a lot of those fans out of the seats that they rely on to pay for the new pools, the forays into coffee roasting and sauces, etc. I doubt they hurt for money. But where is the ethos anymore? A sense that they actually care about their history?
Who will be left if they keep playing to price points and trends? As it is with many of the hard rock curios--The Eagles and The Stones come to mind--that wander the Earth like dinosaurs, a bunch of rich people that now see the music of their youth as a passionate affectation to be housed in amber like some fossil. I don't begrudge the rich being rich. I do question rock music--rock music especially--when it becomes an acquisition balanced upon current trends and marketing assumptions. At that point, fans in the seats aren't there to see you, Aerosmith. They are there to see each other.
Still, they might want to consider taking on someone like Eddie Kramer (though long in the tooth) instead of Douglas, who only seems capable of bending to their whims, not playing to their strengths. And they need that sort of outside ear to guide them. Left to their own devices (or surrounded by "yes" men), they can't do their back catalog justice. Shame of it all, they still could.