Aerosmith--Honkin' On Bobo
Aerosmith's "blues" cover album...is it as shitty as their last few albums?
Packaging--
The good:
The version I picked up has a mini harmonica keychain. The harmonica works. That's pretty damn cool. In fact, I saw this for $10 at a listening station...so I put it on and figured if there are three songs that sound good, then three reasonably good songs and a harmonica are worth my money.
The booklet is pretty nice. The first pages are song credits, and then every member gets a two page spread...one with a large color photo, the other with some smaller photos and thanks. Nice setup.
The bad:
The back photo of the booklet is a close up of a young woman's abdoment with a harmonica in waistband. Now, this is an album put out by guys who are at least in their 50s...if not their 60s. Something about that strikes me as sick. There are no lyrics in here, but my understanding is that it's easier to get rights to cover a song than reprint lyrics.
The music:
The good:
I would just like to say that doing this review opens me to a fair amount of mockery. I freely admit, I enjoy Aerosmith's older material...and not just the 70s stuff, I'd say the band had some good songs up to the "Get A Grip" album...sure they were commercial, bubblegum rock, but the songs were catchy, the music was good, and Steven Tyler has a pretty good voice.
Then what happened with the album "Get A Grip" is the band realized that the ballads they write sell. And they sell big. So it seems that's all we heard from them for a long time.
Then we started hearing about this...the blues album. I read the music news sites probably more than I should, and man, I was sick of hearing about this thing. I swear they were talking about this six months before it was recorded. So much was being reported on it, I was at the point that I wouldn't even consider buying it. That is, until I had money burning a hole in my pocket and saw it for $10.
So...how is it? I like the blues (though I can't say I know much about it), and as I said before, I enjoy Aerosmith when they're not singing horribly generic ballads. So, put them together, and you have an enjoyable listening experience. The album starts off wtih two songs that are pretty straight rocking blues. These are some great songs. Then we have "Eyesight to the Blind" which is a very straightforward blues cover. Very blues influenced, appropriately prominant piano, great lyrics, solid music all around. There are only a few songs that are straight "blues" covers...most have a rock feel, definitely made into "Aerosmith" style...but "Eyesight" as well as "Temperature" retain that classic blues style. The only exception being Tyler's voice which doesn't really sound he's singing the "blues." This is probably because he can't sound like a blues singer--he "sounds" like Steven Tyler as his voice is so distinct, you can't really get around that.
The rocking songs on here are solid. One of the great things about an album like this is that if you're an Aerosmith fan and merely a casual blues fan this will be an excellent addition as you probably won't recognize the songs. Some sound familiar, but overall, this is like an album of new songs.
To me, this doesn't sound like a blues album. It sounds like a great Aerosmith "bluesy" rock record. That's what they do best whether it's their own songs or other people's.
The bad--
There are some ballads that at first listen, you listen and think "god, another Aerosmith ballad" but then you listen a bit closer and there's a lot more to it. As I alluded to before, what could be the distracting part is Tyler's voice...it's so distinct that when you hear "Never Loved A Girl" you automatically think "Bah, an Aerosmith ballad" but if anyone else was singing, you may give it more of a shot. While I don't necessarily like that song, when I tried to imagine someone else singing it was certainly more digestable. If you don't like Aerosmith, but do like the blues, I don't think you'd be able to handle this. It's definitely an Aerosmith record.
"The Grind" is a bit more in line when you think of a typical Aerosmith bad ballad. This is obviously a matter of personal taste...I don't like Aerosmith ballads, nor do I like ballads in general (for the most part) so to me, the song doesn't work.
Recap�
A good solid album that I heard isn't selling well, which is a shame as it's their best one in years.
Review by Chris