Monday Metal...Aerosmith?

...Aerosmith?

Interesting article about Aerosmith:

It’s schlock, but like Mommie Dearest and Andy Warhol paintings, it’s some beautiful schlock that’s not without artistic merit.

I get that it’s fashionable to shit all over ’70s rock bands who persisted in the ’80s. As I said above, I’ve been guilty of this myself. Not without good reason, either. But the more I look at what Aerosmith did from Permanent Vacationto Get a Grip, the more I’m impressed with the songcraft of their comeback years.

I never stopped to think of of Aerosmith as schlock, but I see the point. They were kind of schlocky in their 'comeback years'.

Of course, being in Generation X, this was my intro to Aerosmith:

Still one of the ten greatest videos ever. I was 13.

Aerosmith was an important part of the soundtrack to my teenage years. My first girlfriend and I slow danced to Angel. I listened to What it Takes after said girlfriend broke my heart; and it drove me nuts when radio stations would lop off the long outro. Later Aerosmith had a trio of power-ballads that were required listening at my frat mixers. When I was getting things together in 2001-2002 I listened to Aerosmith's greatest hits and really experienced their 70's stuff for the first time.

Given the quality and breadth of their career I'd rank Aerosmith as one of ten greatest bands of all time. But that is the subject of another post.

Of course there is the question of whether or not they're a metal band. Their comeback coincided with the domination of heavy metal in '87. They were in the epic The Decline and Fall of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years:

Of course they're talking about jazz and R&B. The funny thing is they're just drying out here, they're still groggy. They're just realizing what they did.

Are they metal? Not really. As Steve and Joe say at the end of the video, they have a unique, utterly Aerosmith sound. No one ever quite sounded like them.

But there's a reason why That Metal Show was our source for all things 'hard rock and heavy metal'.