….a template for how to capitalize on the fluke success of the first hit hybrid of Rap/Rock…
Aerosmith – Pump – 1989 (Buy it)
Here’s the way post-Listening Posts work: After I’ve made my way through the catalog of a band I back up my computer to the EHD. Then I go through the albums from that session’s band and I delete anything that wasn’t an “A Side” or “BlindSide”. Wheat from Chaff.
It is rare, if ever, that I keep more than half of an album. In fact, I don’t think I’ve kept an entire album since the first Listening Post, which was u2.
With Pump I find no reason to delete anything from the list. It’s that good. I think this album is better than Permanent Vacation and, dare I say it, better than Rocks. (heresy!)
There’s a couple things I noticed during listening to Pump:
Steve Tyler is in top notch form. His voice is elastic and he’s having a blast with finding new ways to sound sleazy and bloozy.
The riffage is down to a minimum. Something that echoes the U2 Posts. I am a huge fan of the big electric guitar solo. I love riffs. Gimme more of that AC/DC! But, on Pump, they pull Perry back so far that he’s no longer the STAR. There’s very little spotlighting of his fretwork and, to be honest, less than memorable, licks. In it’s stead we have terrific soundscaping production, a wider sound and a bigger variety of music.
Sure, “Love in an Elevator” sounds way too much like Def Leppard. That’s fine. (In fact, when I used it to set a Genius playlist on my iPod the very next song chosen was “Armageddon It”, so there ya go.) And Monkey on my Back sounds a LOT like Givin the Dog a Bone, but, what the fuck, it’s so tasty you just let it pass.
The album itself, also seems to get better the deeper in you get. And with each listen.
Janie’s Got a Gun is unlike anything Aerosmith ever did and boy does it hold up. Not only is the production top notch and ominous as hell, but the song itself is singable in a way that most Aerosmoth songs aren’t. It helps that the video was so evocative 19 years ago that when the images come back to mind they only enhance the listening experience.
There is nothing bad on this record. It isn’t indulgent, it seems to have put away ego-tripping and drugs as though the band resigned themselves to this machine (and second chance) called Aerosmith and decided to just go with it.
About that second chance. A lot of bands get reprises, second acts. In this case when RUN DMC shot Aerosmith back into the national spotlight, instead of just going with that and making their whole career about being, basically, a novelty act, they hired songwriters, better producers, pulled themselves together and put out the almost perfect Permanent Vacation. The success of that record seems to have imbued the band with a new sense of purpose. There are only two songs credited to an outside producer on Pump, the Uber-Ballad, “What it Takes” written with cash machine, Desmond Childs. But, unlike previous crappy Aerosmith ballads, I actually like this one. Sadly, it will be rewritten over and over by the band in the coming albums, but its great here. And The Other Side, which is credited with Holland Dozier Holland as co writers but that’s because they sued, claiming the riff sounded like “Standing in the Shadows of Love” so that doesn’t really count…..
Pump. Just great.
Grade A+
A Side: Janie Got a Gun, Love in an Elevator, What it Takes, The Other Side
BlindSide: Young Lust, F.I.N.E., Don’t Get Mad, My Girl…..oh, what the hell, everything else.
Down Side: Nothing.
