I Wanna Poll Why! The Aerosmith Draw The Line Poll!

for the record, there are 3 Ninas on the cover.

its really all about "draw the line" and "kings and queens". toss a coin!

kings and queens!

The title track. Fucking love '70s Aerosmith.

just the intro alone to kings and queens is better than most bands.

the whole album is solid except for BLF which bugs me in a joe perry vocal performance kinda way.

Wikipedia has good background on this.

Perry says:
A lot of people had input into that record because Steven and I had stopped giving a fuck. "Draw the Line," "I Wanna Know Why," and "Get It Up" were the only things Steven and I wrote together. Tom, Joey and Steven came up with "Kings and Queens," and Brad played rhythm and lead. Brad and Steven wrote "The Hand That Feeds,

Checkmate, title track

great album. kings and queens is the only one i don't care for. "long ago in days untold..." has me tuning out from the start. voted get it up.

With the exception of Rocks and Toys in the Attic, it always seems like these guys were actively looking to save a few bucks on album art.

They just didn’t have connections to Warhol and Robert Frank

i doubt getting a cover drawn by al hirschfeld was so cheap.

listen to this brad

title track btw. possibly their finest hour. so fucked up & blurry but that last verse reaches places Tyler usually backs off from. they were never this band again after this record.

Should’ve named the album Let’s Do More Coke!

I saw them at Reading Festival about this time, mid-day, wasn't fussed.

There was a CBS tent where they gave away freebies of the "Draw the line" single, "BLF" ws the b-side. Liked them both - there was nothing like that on-stage...

listen to this brad

― she carries a torch. two torches, actually (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Wednesday, November 8, 2017 11:38 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lmao

hmmmm maybe this is actually the title track. the riff is amazing in its ability to contain both driving bluesy hard rock and jangle (a la "sick as a dog")

it's been a while since i listened to this whole record but iirc i also love the version of "milk cow blues" that closes this

wow i am a huge fan of the wikipedia entry for this record

manager David Krebs suggested that Aerosmith record their next album at an estate near Armonk, New York called the Cenacle, "away from the temptation of drugs." The plan failed miserably, however, with Tyler recalling, "Drugs can be imported, David...we have our resources. Dealers deliver!

"critical mass" is such a bizarre song

i have enormous affection for it even though it is barely a song. the harmonizing guitars toward the end! the fake-out fade out (i will always love these)! the double-tracked tyler vocal curving into the mix at wildly inconsistent volumes!

god i love the riff in "get it up" and how the band sounds like they're falling apart trying to play it

"sight for sore eyes" is p much the ultimate "we just did not give a shit" song here

this is a record that i always hoped would be a secret masterpiece but the indifference with which they recorded it is sorta audible. still, "kings and queens" sounds so enormous

best rock band in the world for approximately 4.75 albums though

Rocks, Toys, and the Profitable Emotion boot are the ones I rep for

"record their next album at an estate near Armonk, New York called the Cenacle"

brownsville station made a great record at the cenacle. also, my maternal grandparents were living in armonk at the time draw the line was being recorded! small world.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

i doubt getting a cover drawn by al hirschfeld was so cheap.

― new noise, Wednesday, November 8, 2017 11:00 PM (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Had no idea this was a known artist, btw. I had always presumed they got some guy from down by the beach.

Tyler was as good a lyricist as rock had in those years and when he ran out of steam a piece of my heart broke off forever. Even here, he was doing stuff that merits close study by anybody who wants to know how to made a lyric sit right in a groove & tell a story without telling too much & set a scene. yet another of my never-to-be-written broadsheets is "underrated steven tyler verses i have parsed"

Arriving in boats
Black hooded coats
Tormentors climbed into my room
I crawled under my bed
Covered my head
But they're flushing me out with a broom
The leader, she's small
Pinned my ass to the wall
[incomprehensible, variously reported without satisfaction]
Time after time
She'd be readin' my mind
but she never got the feeling to last

Celebrate, celebrate, celebrate it
This is critical mass

Yes.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I mourn the death of "I Wanna Poll Why!", my favorite use-the-word-poll-in-the-title poll thread title ever.

Always forget that "Get It Up" and especially "The Hand That Feeds" were about as close as '70s Aerosmith got to Disco.

Screams of no replyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
They DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIED

Holy shit you nailed it!

i really need to revisit this album. a few years ago I pretty much listened to everything after Rocks.

shit like this is why I get angry when assholes incorrectly call them a second-rate Stones

Holy f that Neanderthal post is cracking me up, people at the bar are having a moment of silence

you best believe I nailed those notes biznatch

No doubt son

I wish Johnny cash had recorded “draw the line” on one of his American recordings. Would have loved to hear him drawl “Indian summer, Carrie was all over the floor”

Do I detect an early Roxy influence on "Bright Light Fright"?

I think 90% of what I enjoy from Aerosmith is either on Rocks or Toys in the Attic, and the title track here and maybe one other song elsewhere is like the remaining 10%.

Stereo mix (which they didn't bother mixing until 14 years later) sucks - stick with the original mono:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpmUsC5-Caw

I can’t discern any stereo separation there. I a/b’ed it with the version on Spotify
Probably my old ears

No, that's not the stereo mix, it's the original mono. Let me reword what I posted:

The stereo mix sucks, and they didn't even bother mixing it until 14 years later.

Stick with the original mono mix, which is what I'm posting here.

Where can one hear the stereo version? Doesn’t sssm to be on YouTube or Spotify

If you can find the box set (Pandora's Box), try there - it was originally mixed for that.

https://open.spotify.com/track/1Ybeyj9GHPy7XaApKHL97U

You’re right, it sounds like sh1t

The official Aerosmith YT channel just added a remaster of the old Live In Houston '77 VHS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbENK3Ai9bY

that S.O.S. raises blisters. damn.

70s Smith was godhead

I’ve taken a day to think about this and prepare my response
Joey’s backlit mullet and bass drum technique steal the show

Imagine what the band would have been with a little more swing

Impressive that Steven can hit the notes on “saddle” - maybe it was early in the tour?

Also, “back in the saddle” is a great euphemism for getting some nookie

Looking at the dates, this apparently was at the end of the Rocks campaign, since the DTL sessions started right after in the summer of '77 (which explains maybe why only the title track of that one airs here).

Or actually, according to Wiki, these shows were <during> the DTL sessions, which had already began in June before these shows at the end of the month (which are mis-tagged as being in July). Man, band workloads were nuts back then!

Here's a rougher version of the second show, with some extra songs not in the restoration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTCre5ZuqhQ