Wilkes Barre Times-Leader, PA
March 8, 2006
In the midst of a 2002 tour behind the CD “Just Push Play,” Aerosmith decided to play one small venue show – at the 3,000-capacity Joint in the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas – in January of that year.
For that evening, Aerosmith brushed off several older tunes that had rarely made it into the live set, including “Seasons of Wither,” “Same Old Song and Dance” and “No More No More.”
Those songs are now captured on the band’s latest CD/DVD release, “Rockin’ The Joint: Live At The Hard Rock Hotel Las Vegas.” The CD side includes a dozen tracks from that show, while the DVD side of the disc is supplemented with four additional performances, including the hits “Dream On” and “Sweet Emotion.”
The band had filmed and recorded that one-night show for possible release, but according to Joe Perry, the results of that evening exceeded even his greatest expectations.
“(Singer) Steven (Tyler) was really listening to the tapes every day,” Perry said. “I was totally expecting him to come back and say ‘Look we’ve got probably five songs from ‘Rockin’ The Joint,’ but we’ve got to fill it in with stuff from other nights.’ ”
Instead, what Perry heard was a single show where the performances were strong from start to finish – without the major or minor flubs that can frequently occur when a song is played live – and a special energy that surrounded the evening.
“Listening down to the whole thing, it was kind of ‘Well this was amazing,’ ” he said. “It’s all from one night, and not playing songs we play every night. It’s not like we played the regular set. So we went in there with the extra care we were thinking of, probably did a couple of sound checks before and rehearsed some of those songs, and there you have it. So that’s what makes it, to me, a really unique set of music … So what you get is you hear that energy. You hear that energy from the show build in a way that isn’t artificial.”
The ecstatic reception the audience gave to the material Aerosmith played at the Joint that night is having a direct effect on the show the veteran Boston band is taking on the road this winter on the second leg of an arena tour.
“Seeing the response that we’ve gotten from fans to the songs in the set that comprises that record, that’s going to influence pulling some out that we haven’t played in awhile or have never played,” Perry said. “I think, the one thing we did realize is there are so many songs in our catalog that I think are really good songs that may have slipped through the cracks or just never got played live or just over the years have been put aside because we felt some of the other material, because they were hits on MTV or whatever, got the most focus. There are a lot of songs there we should gather up and put in the set and make them a main part of the set instead, of going out and writing a bunch of new stuff. I think that’s kind of the idea for this leg of the tour anyway.”
The return to the road signals the start of a new round of activity for Aerosmith after a year-long break. After the winter tour, the group plans to enter the studio in the spring to begin work on a new studio CD.
“After a hiatus it always seems to make sense for us to play live first and get the machine up and running and get our (vibe) going and then talk about some studio work,” Perry said. “I don’t know, it just seems to work out that way.”
While the other band members essentially had a full year to relax before reconvening for the current tour, Perry was anything but idle. He devoted several months to recording and promoting a self-titled solo CD that was released in spring 2005. His first project outside of Aerosmith since the late 1970s, when he quit the group and fronted his band, the Joe Perry Project, for three albums, “Joe Perry” is made up of a collection of songs he had written over the past several years while also working on Aerosmith albums.
The CD finds the guitarist playing nearly every instrument except drums, which were played by co-producer Paul Caruso – an approach that came about mostly out of necessity.
“It kind of got to that point where it was getting into the fall (of 2004) and I had all the material done, and I had performed everything (on demos),” Perry said. “I’m thinking, ‘Well do I go into the studio with a so-called real producer and just notch this up, so to speak, or do I do a real solo record?’ And I was looking at my watch, and I was really having a lot of fun listening to the (demo) tracks, so I said ‘Paul, let’s finish mixing it and see what we have.’ So that’s what we did. Then we mastered it and it sounded good coming back, and that was it. I figured I’d make a solo record for a change, in the true sense of the word.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Who: Aerosmith, with Cheap Trick
Where: Wachovia Arena at Casey Plaza, Wilkes-Barre Township
When: Wednesday, March 15 at 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $37.50, $45 or $75
Info: 970-7600
