Monday, July 14, 2008

Monday Night Music Club Week 3

As far as I'm concerned, this is the best recording they ever did. Their fourth release in 1976, more polished, more ballsy and more chops than ever before. As much as these cats were f'ed up, they really have some tight, hook filled kick ass music on here. "Back In The Saddle" starts it and just blows the riff sky high. They were just coming off of "Toys In The Attic", and the confidence they have here is very apparent. "Last Child" is a slow, Aerosmith boogie and one of my most misunderstood lyrics of all time. I kept thinking that Steven Tyler was singing about "a bucket of sleet", he's singing about "a punk in the street". Er, uh... "Rats In The Cellar" probably describes the song, a fine workout. "Combination" is probably my favorite Aerosmith song. I know we tried like hell in the band I was in to play this, but with three people, well, it just didn't fly. Great arrangement. "Sick As A Dog" is a song loaded with the famous Aerosmith double entendre. "Nobody's Fault" is a great heavy tune, more like Zep than Aerosmith. "Get The Lead Out" and "Lick and A Promise" both would qualify as top shelf Aerosmith songs and a nice way to close out the record. Oh wait, there's one more song called "Home Tonight", a lame and utterly useless piece of crap (see "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing") that was foisted upon the Aerosmith nation by the record company in a hopeless attempt to cash in on "Dream On", which had just become a hit, three years after it was originally released. We (the Aerosmith nation) were not amused. This one gets an A- (the minus is for Home Again Tonight or whatever it's called) in my book, the best Aerosmith record ever.

2 comments:

dr sardonicus said...

I'd argue for Toys In The Attic myself, but that's just me. Rocks has improved chops, but Toys has better songs.

No point in talking about anything from Night In The Ruts onward.

Chicago Socialista said...

I'm still partial to Get Your Wings but Rocks is easily my #2 ^A^ album.

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