“Good evening people, welcome to the show...”
It’s perhaps fitting that I should start this blog with a
review of an album by Aerosmith, the band that first turned me onto music. I
had toyed with music before I discovered Aerosmith, but once I heard this band
it was like an addiction.
I can’t remember what I first heard this album, their debut.
I can get very anal when collecting music, and I’ll tend to collect a band’s
back catalogue in chronological order where possible. I remember buying 1989’s Pump first - on CD - followed by 1975’s Toys In The Attic - on cassette while on
holiday. I had a well-thumbed article on them from a music magazine (published
around 1993) which listed all of their albums, and this probably sent me back
to Aerosmith (1973) next, to hear how
it all began.
It’s an odd album in comparison to the rest of their 1970s
output. The most startling thing is Steven Tyler’s voice - sounding very
different to the raspy vocals he would later be known for, and sounding more
like a black vocalist. Thankfully he had dropped this by the time of their
sophomore effort, 1974’s Get Your Wings.
The songs are a solid bunch of R&B rockers, more in the
style of English rock n’ roll than the post-Woodstock tired psychedelia coming
out of the rest of America in the very early 70s. Like other debuts, the
material sounds very grounded and you can imagine the band having toured the
hell out of these songs before they even stepped near a recording studio.
I have a great bootleg of the band doing a radio performance
of this album just after its release in 1973 (the same radio performance that
lends I Ain’t Got You and Mother Popcorn to 1978’s Live! Bootleg). It’s fantastic, and
really shows that they knew the songs inside out by the time they were
promoting the album.
There must be loads of albums like this from the 1970s -
solid rock n’ roll efforts showing a lot of promise but maybe haven’t endured
long enough to survive into the digital age. Upon release this album only did
local business - enough to keep the band on tour and afloat until they could
get back in the studio - but Dream On
was re-released in 1976, hit the US Top Ten and by then Aerosmith was one of
the biggest rock bands in the country.
Hit: Dream On
Hidden Gem: One Way
Street
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