Disc of the day
The Pop Group - Y
For connoisseurs of pop-as-rupture-in-the-space/time-continuum
Features Disc of the day
Aerosmith
Toys In The Attic
(Columbia, 1975)
Boston bad-boys begin to fly with raunchy rock classic…
The release of Guns N’Roses’ Chinese Democracy has sent me careering back into the realm of the true hard rock heavyweights, a place where fast-living comes with a lachrymose aftermath, and there’s always time for a cheeky innuendo. “[Steven] Tyler has a gift for the dirty line as well as the dirty look,” wrote The Village Voice’s Robert Christgau, no doubt referring to track five on Toys In The Attic – a faithful take on blueser Bull Moose Jackson’s Big Ten Inch Record, wherein the satchel-mouthed singer hollers, “She gets all excited / When she begs for my big ten inch.” Beyond the wink-wink, nudge-nudge of this and the equally saucy Adam’s Apple, lie the anthems that would give the band their first true wallop of mainstream success. Sweet Emotion and Walk This Way, their first crossover singles, remain perfect synchronisations of riff and vocal, with Joe Perry’s clipped Les Paul and Tyler’s ragged rants conjuring images of the backstage distractions that would consume the band over the next few years. But the most telling moments of Aerosmith’s best album arrive in the form of Toys’… final tracks. Round and Round pauses the Stonesy shimmies for a fully-Ledded echo of Physical Graffiti (released two months previously), while melancholic epic You See Me Crying remains one of Tyler’s finest moments as both a songwriter and a singer. Somewhere in the middle of these two songs, between hard rock and a somewhat softer place, lies the heart of a band that would go on to take the tenets of this record (women, chemicals, women) to the absolute limit. They would barely make it out of the ‘70s alive.
Ross Bennett
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 03/12/2008
Further Listening
Aerosmith – Rocks (Columbia, 1976)
The Rolling Stones – Goats Head Soup (Atlantic, 1973)
Guns N’Roses – Appetite For Destruction (Geffen, 1987)
Previous Disc of the day
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The Pop Group - Y
For connoisseurs of pop-as-rupture-in-the-space/time-continuum
6:00 AM GMT 11/03/2010
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6:00 AM GMT 09/03/2010
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Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Relax (Sex Mix)
Frankie 12" brings the full 16 min 24 of filth.
6:00 AM GMT 01/03/2010
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