Singles 45's and Under: Aerosmith - Uncle Salty

Aerosmith began as a single for me.

“Dream On” to be exact, released a few years after it appeared on the debut.

Released when the iron was hot after the release of Toys In The Attic, “Dream On” was all over the radio that year. The flip side was another song off of the debut, “Somebody.”

I liked both songs enough to pick up another single, this time “Walk This Way.”

As awesome as it is, I was also drawn to the flip side, “Uncle Salty.” Sometimes a friend from the neighborhood would come over to my house when the weather was bad and we’d fart around and look for things to do. A favorite for me was “Uncle Salty,” where I’d put a lot of emphasis on the creepy line “Oooh, it’s a sunny day outside my window” of the chorus.

It wasn’t until college that I actually bought the full-length of Toys In The Attic. A guy I knew at college suddenly found God in the form of a girl who was herself a heavy Christian.

Evidently, she pulled out an ultimatum, telling him that his extensive collection of rock and roll cds had to be reduced, particularly the ones she felt were immoral.

Now all of this was explained to me by this guy, who went on to offer me the unbelievable price of $4 a cd if I wanted to help remove some of the offending titles.

I chose Aerosmith’s Get Yer Wings, Toys In The Attic, and Queensryche’s Operation: Mindcrime.

I also bought a couple of Marillion 12” singles.

He asked if he could buy those back a few months later. When I asked him why he had a change of heart, he went on to explain that the Christian girl when back with her boyfriend, leaving my acquaintance in the cold.

In retrospect, I probably should have offered to return the 12” Marillion singles. He liked them more than I ever did and he probably needed them more too.

But I wanted to teach him a lesson to not discount the music that fueled his experiences, and for him to cheapen it because of a girl’s lame brain idea or to demonstrate that the music doesn’t hold power over him was ludicrous.

He also drove a Yugo.

We didn’t speak much after that, but I have a strange suspicion that he’s probably right where I left him a few decades before: still in the basement of his parent’s home.

Check out the rip of The Beatles "I Want To Tell You" in it.

Steven Tyler Distracts Media From Suspected Drug Use By Knocking Out His Teeth

I listened to Aerosmith Rocks today, and a short while afterwards I was farting around the intertubes and ran into article that referenced how Steven Tyler’s recent slip in the shower in South America was not caused by a slippery tub.

The suggestion was that Tyler has fallen once again into the wonderful world of narcotics once again, but the suggestion seems to have sparked Steven to respond swiftly and firmly that this was just a simple case of food poisoning.

Between this and the god-awful Axl “Tiny” Rose performance in front of a million people below the equator, South America has become quite the cash cow for aging hard rockers. Evidently, they’re willing to pay top dollar to see these artists, even when they’re well past their prime to which Aerosmith is a part of.

The band has become so relevant at this point in their career that the feuding reported between Tyler and guitar Joe Perry seems downright silly since the band doesn’t seem to be operating like a modern rock unit at this point.

But when it comes to living in the past, Aerosmith does a great job of milking every single dollar out of their aging clientele for one more walk through of “Sweet Emotion.”

Ten bucks says these guys don’t even travel together anymore; I’ll bet that Tyler’s got his own accommodations, putting him in an isolated spot that, even if the fall was due to using, none of the other band members would have be reliable witnesses to unusual antics.

But pictures speak a thousand words, don’t they.

Take a look at Axl's latest GnR line-up and how they tackle "Welcome To The Jungle."



It's almost unlistenable.

He's out of breath. Out of tune. And out of his mind if he thinks this level of blind support will last for very long with performances like this.

I can't believe that bearded guitarist has a job after this show.

The Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Soundtrack

I’m beginning what I’ll call the Mother-In-Law series, which is merely a handful of long-players that she brought to me because she knows that I like music.
Evidently, this is a common phenomenon; I’ve heard that my cousin’s in-laws also hand over the occasional vinyl album and my father is also a fan of the “Here’s some scratchy old albums that you beat to hell when you were little” gift.
“I remembered that you liked The Beatles,” she said as she handed over the records.
As I noticed the familiar cover of the Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Soundtrack and chuckled a little.
It was this album that ignited a passionate hatred for the Bee Gees, Peter Frampton and Alice Cooper and it caused me to think that Aerosmith may indeed have a problem with drugs.
Understand that I liked all of them up until that album-hell, I even tolerated the shitty I’m In You for Frampton-and now he does this to me?!
The movie is awful, but the soundtrack is just as bad with Aerosmith throwing out a decent cover of “Come Together” and Earth Wind & Fire offering a nice version of “Got To Get You Into My Life.”
These have proven to be the only two good tracks on the album,
Did I mention it’s a double?
Every thing else is just awful and with George Martin’s name on the project, it’s an embarrassment.
What I don’t understand is how even at that young of an age (12) I knew this thing was going to be a bust. So how did a group of smart adults let this thing get started?
Who knows? But Robert Stigwood dropped a fortune on this thing to the tune of “bankrupt” almost immediately after people started to notice that this thing smelled like a turd.
It worked for a moment; the album reference, Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, and that wild and crazy guy Steve Martin got us all excited to see the movie. The trouble was, nobody could remember what the hell the film was about only five minutes after we left the theatre.
I wish I could say the same thing for the soundtrack.

Living It Up When I'm Going Down

Is it wrong of me to think that Steven Tyler’s fall as an Aerosmith show in South Dakota is the funniest thing I’ve seen all week?
Look, I don’t want the guy to hurt himself, but it a way I do like the idea of him going through a little bit of pain to make up for the pain that he’s helped put me through since Draw The Line.
You see, those first five albums were really good, with albums three and four (Toys In The Attic and Rocks) being totally essential.
Their decent was one of the most fabled in rock history, but Aerosmith’s resurgence in the second half of the 80’s still stand as part of their decent in my eyes. Their music became tidy, contrite, and it sold like crazy.
What Aerosmith didn’t realize was that people can spot bullshit, and Aerosmith’s late 80’s output (and beyond) is bullshit. Radio played “Cryin’, “Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” and all of those other top forty hits-but now, nobody wants to hear them.
They still want to hear Toys and Rocks, however.
Twenty years ago, they filled stadiums. Now, they play nostalgia shows at biker events. They’re not getting any younger either; Tyler looks as though his well-rehearsed spins ‘n struts now make him dizzy. And when he gets dizzy, he falls off the stage.
I’m sorry, but it’s funny to watch.
Going down.

OCD Chronicles: Aerosmith-"Uncle Salty"

For you younger fans of rock ‘n roll this may be hard to believe, but at one time Aerosmith was a very, very, good band. In fact, between ’74 and ’77 the very well may have been the best American hard rock band around. Starting with Get Your Wings and ending with Rocks, the band released three start-to-finish classics and appeared poised to be America’s true answer to the Rolling Stones.
I was too young to appreciate this at the time, having just a few of Aerosmith’s singles to spin. A friend and I would often play various singles and act out the songs trying to make each other laugh. One of my most successful versions was the flip side to Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way.” The “b/w” track was “Uncle Salty,” a laid-back song that, like “Walk This Way,” was found on the Toys In Attic album.
I have no idea what the song is really about, but in my “performance,” I imagined that Uncle Salty was an old dude that walked with a cane, occasionally peaking out of the curtains to see the “sunny day outside my window.” It garnished many a chuckle from my 5th grade friend. An interesting side note was that he was a Mormon. When we first met, he told me that he couldn’t drink pop because his religion prevented him from taking caffeine. By the time he moved away to another town the following year, I had him drinking Mountain Dew, buying sex novelties from the gas station across the street from our elementary school, and stealing weed from his black-sheep older brother who left the church when he figured out that the Mormons were a pretty wacky group. I have no idea if my friend continued down the road of sin or if he succumbed to the church doctrine after the few years of shenanigans that he experienced with me.
Those memories came back after a recent spin of “Uncle Salty.” The other tracks on Toys seem to carry their own stories-all related to a girl that had an affection towards Aerosmith, unfortunately both the classic and late 80’s commercial zenith-but “Uncle Salty” carries with it a weird story of two kids trying to overcome boredom on a rainy day. It also reminds me that, with enough time, Aerosmith and peer pressure, you can totally convert a Mormon kid into a Coke drinking delinquent.
After all, the pushers and the shovers is the life to lead.
BTW: I tried to find some video footage of Aerosmith performing “Uncle Salty,” but apparently, You Tube has turned into a receptacle for nothing more than Guitar Hero fans uploading their goddamn videos of them getting a high score playing “Uncle Salty” on expert mode. Bit of advice, unless you’re a cute four year old that can manage to get a high score playing it, don’t bother uploading your shit because nobody wants to watch you playing a video game. Do everyone a favor: learn how to play a guitar, nail some Joe Perry riffs and upload your performance of that instead.

Aerosmith-Head First Into Downloading

Diving "head first" into the age of the internet isn't something that you'd expect from such a dinosaurian band like Aerosmith, but apparently, they were the first major band that provided an exclusive track for fans to download, way back on this day in 1994. Geffen Records and CompuServe teamed up to provide fans with the opportunity to download the track "Head First" over the lightening fast phone lines of their dial-up connection.
The premise that "Head First" was an internet exclusive was short lived as it later appeared as a B-side of the "Eat The Rich" CD single.
This impressive factoid of Aerosmith history is nowhere nearly as impressive as the fact that Aerosmith haven't released a decent album since 1977's Draw The Line.
Here's a clip from when Aerosmith meant something.