Friday Night Videos

I first saw Aerosmith in concert at the Summit in Houston back in 1988. That was during their Permanent Vacation tour, and I was a senior in high school. It was a great show, and I remember wondering aloud how the band could possibly gone off drugs completely as they'd claimed, because Steven Tyler and the other members were manic whirlwinds of energy during the entire show. That album contains some of my absolute favorite Aerosmith songs--"Rag Doll" and "Hangman Jury"--but for my money, their best post-addiction album is Pump. Absolute greatness on nearly every track. And the band started taking on more socially daring subject matter, specifically the hard-hitting "Janie's Got a Gun." Wow, what a great song. It still pisses me off that MTV and radio forced the band to produce edited versions to get airplay. Some horrors should never be sugar-coated.

Sadly, Aerosmith gravitated toward more slickly-produced, top 40-friendly music after this, and none of their subsequent albums come close to Pump. I'll see them tonight in Austin, 24 years removed from my first live viewing of the band. Scary to think I'm now older than the band members were when I saw them the first time!

Previously on Friday Night Videos... Urban Dance Squad.

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