This is a first for the Listening Post series in that I have no real relationship with this band at all. I mean, sure I know the “hits” and they’ve been a part of the general tapestry of my musical life since I was a little boy but the “Toxic Twins” or the “American Rolling Stones” or whatever their nicknames have made little or no impact on me at all.
Let’s give the boys from beantown a roll, k?
Aerosmith – Get Your Wings – 1974 (Buy it)
If I was 13 and you handed me a copy of “Aerosmith” I would have listened and tossed it into the pile of crap collecting on the side of my bed. If you made me listen to “Get Your Wings” I would have immediately understood that this band could actually help me get laid. Maybe playing them wouldn’t make any feathered haired denim wearing courtyard smoker remove her pants for me but I would have BELIEVED that one day that could actually happen.
Get Your Wings is what I was hoping Aerosmith would be. It’s dirty, panting, heated, smoldering and tasty.
Thank you, Jack Douglass for taking the band out of the bar, keeping the booze and bringing the rock.
Sure, there is the weirdness of the proto-prog blues rock of “Spaced” but, hey, you need something to play in the background while you are rolling that next joint and figuring out whether you are going to the roller rink or hang out in the woods with a pint of Boone’s Farm.
Grade A
A Side: Same Old Song and Dance, Train Kept A-Rollin
BlindSide: Lord of the Thighs, S.O.S (Too bad),
DownSide: Spaced & Pandora’s Box (just not a very good song. Dull, really. And a strangely poor way to end a very good album).
The Hellacopters owe a lot to Aerosmith.
