Boston's Bad Boys' last stand...

Considering the damage the various drugs, alcohol, falls from stages and other shenanigans have caused the toxic twins and their bandmates, it's frankly amazing that everyone is still alive and doing reasonably well, though drummer Joy Kramer has seemingly been permanently ousted by the band since 2021. The sheer longevity of the band is amazing, second only maybe to the Rolling Stones. Any band with such a long career will inevitably have different entry points into their music for different people. My entry point was the tail end of their tenure at Geffen Records, more specifically "Living On The Edge", the lead-off single of their last Geffen album, Get A Grip. 

Common wisdom would dictate that the band was past their prime musically, while being a commercial juggernaut, but for those who (like me) are o.k. with the band's embracing an 80s AOR sound, the second wind - both artistically and commercially - that they had during their tenure at Geffen makes this my favorite era of the band. Get A Grip is spotty as hell, but Pump is excellent throughout and both Permanent Vacation and Done With Mirrors have their moments. 

A couple of months ago I worked on the compilation Country Dreamers, gathering country music tracks from artists not usually working in the genre, investigating the band's "Once Is Enough" (which was featured on that comp), but also a slightly countrified remix of Pump's "The Other Side". Rummaging around for these b-sides and remixes, I thought it would be fun to tell the tale of their Geffen years, but not through the usual suspects - at least not in their usual form. 

G.T.F.O. (Geffen Tracks For Obsessives) isn't only for obsessives, but it does dig pretty deep into less obvious material. The idea was to anthologize their Geffen years by way of b-sides, outtakes, remixes, one-off singles, live tracks and deep cuts. So yeah, some of the big songs from the era are here - the aforementioned "Living On The Edge", "Dude (Looks Like A Lady)", "Rag Doll", "Crazy", "Angel" and "The Other Side" - but all in different versions than the ones that hit the charts. Pump outtake "Burnin' Up" is pretty hot, as is Get A Grip b-side "Head First". Two of their best songs from the era didn't feature on their studio albums - "Blind Man" was collector bait and lead-off single for their greatest hits album Big Ones and "Deuces Are Wild" featured on the soundtrack to, ahem, how era-appropriate - The Beavis & Butthead Experience. 

You were big if you made it all the way to Moe's Tavern...

Considering how relatively samey the music of the 'Smith is, my first version of G.T.F.O. ran way too long, running out of steam towards the end. So I cut some tracks towards the end (moody Get A Grip instrumental "Boogie Man" was always tabbed as the album closer), they will show up on the sequel, if there is interest from the One Buck Records readership (the Ones? the Bucks? - gotta workshop that a little bit more...).

The Geffen era, as it turned out, really was the last stand for Aerosmith as a rock band of any worth. Their troubled and long-gestating return album for Columbia, Nine Lives, was even patchier than Get A Grip and the point, where the band's quality control really started to slip. Then came their biggest hit "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing", bringing in millions while being atrocious and the awful Just Push Play album. Since then they have only added the ok-ish blues cover record Honkin' On Bobo and the terrible Music From Another Dimension to their discography, which is probably just as well. But hey, for a couple of years in the 80s and early 90s, the band did get their groove back. So check out G.T.F.O. to groove along with them...