Fair point, I'm not the biggest Cult fan but I respect Sonic Temple being #1 for the year, and that's definitely a hard rock 80s album made for radio. "Fire Woman" is still a monster. The Pixies album is my favorite from that batch of "underground rock" that also includes Nirvana and Soundgarden. (Sonic Youth's masterpiece Daydream Nation is '88 right?) I wouldn't call any of those mainstream rock tho... although that sound would BECOME mainstream rock in a few years. (Also love the Replacements' Don't Tell A Soul, another '89 classic that's aged well, but that's not really "mainstream" or even "rock." Same with REM's Green, which is a LATE 1988 album.) Faith No More's The Real Thing might beat out Pump, but they're coming from very different angles. FNM wasn't really "mainstream" but, unlike the Pixies or Nirvana in '89, they got there anyway?? I can only vouch for my own personal experience living in a small-town suburb with little access to "underground music," and we wore out FNM just as much as Aerosmith and the Crue that year. Meanwhile, I don't know a single person who even knew the Pixies or Nirvana existed. Our good-enough-for-high-school rock band covered "Epic," "Falling To Pieces," and their version of "War Pigs." (Would it surprise you that Black Sabbath was not on ANYONE'S radar in 1989? I mean, beyond knowing the "Iron Man" riff.) We were also doing "Dr. Feelgood," "Kickstart My Heart," "Show Don't Tell," "One," and "18 & Life" (but the vocals were an octave down!). Pretty sure we never covered anything from Pump because Tyler's vocals were too hard to pull off, along with the arrangements..... I seem to remember we attempted "Janie" a few times and it sounded like hot garbage.
My ranking and this won't change 1. Rocks 2. Toys in the Attic . 3. Get Your Wings . . . 4. Night in the Ruts 5. Pump . 6. Aerosmith . . . . . 7. Draw the Line 8. Permanent Vacation . 9. Done With Mirrors . . . . . . . 10. Rock in a Hard Place
Pointless fact I know, but in 2001 Geffen quietly released remastered CDs of PV and Pump (I think GAG also?), typically compressed brickwalling, the originals are great sounding cds and of course the better pick . Edit: afaik ‘Done With Mirrors’ has only ever been remastered in Japan, and that would be in recent years.
Great post - FNM definitely broke right out of the underground in 1989. If I remember, the rock mags at the year-end were splitting hairs between them, Aerosmith and Motley Crue for band / album of the year, so they were very much in that mainstream mix. Which is quite cool for an album with songs like “Zombie Eaters” {a track which is actually still total genius to me}. FNM kind of leapfrogged the Chili Peppers, whose Mother’s Milk was also in 1989 - and to which I also listened the crap out of, but who had to wait for their next album to break big. Back to Aerosmith - they creditably were in the mix at the top, and just because that’s very much by deliberate design doesn’t mean it’s easy or automatic - the contrast to their 70s peers KISS Hot in the Shade is stark. Someone else will have the numbers, but my recollection was whilst Dr Feelgood got to #1, Pump was actually the bigger seller.
It's close! If you trust Wiki, Pump is certified 7X platinum and Dr. Feelgood is 6X. But the latter is the Crue's biggest seller, whereas Pump is behind Toys in America (9X platinum) and GAG is the sales leader worldwide (20 mil?!? Really?!?).
i can believe that - most everyone who bought Pump will have bought GaG - even if some would have been disappointed. But they also got a new avalanche of sales, not fans of rock music per se and not necessarily all new fans who hung around, but folk for whom the silverstone ballads were the thing - so it was a huge crossover hit … Aerosmith managed to get the dollar of that huge mass market - those folks who’ll buy occasional chart albums but aren’t actually that into music. Anyways - jumping ahead, apologies!!!
Janie’s Got A Gun Guitars tuned up a half step. My chords/notes are as they sound on the record. I learned it in regular tuning. The song opens with effects made with wind gongs and other stuff. The longish intro enters with a vocal melody that rises mostly in F Minor. The line repeats and at :27 the harmony starts to thicken, and Steven sings a modal melody over the major lifted chords. Gives the harmony an eerie quality. The turnaround chord at :45 leads straight into the song’s chorus. Not a shouty or happy chorus at all and it makes sense considering what is about to unfold. Volume swelled guitars add to the tension. At 1:02 the rhythm gets steadier, and the chorus rises to the first verse. Another tension building rise out leads to the chorus. I like those Joe Perry harmonics at 1:42. The verse returns and gets thicker sounding. At 2:10 another rise out leads to the song’s bridge. Listen for that classical based “mordent” on the word “away.” Adds even more tension and suspense. The bridge has chorus aspects with repeated lyrics and a stronger vocal. Another brilliant use of blurring the use of song sections. The bridge also has a rising vocal …..the hook throughout the song. The break is fantastic….Joe plays a brilliant solo on what sounds like an Acoustic/Electric guitar. His struggle to bend strings adds a bluesy quality to the solo. Some rockabilly roots in the solo. The chorus follows the bridge and gets quieter. The rise out leads to the final verse. The vocalizations from Tyler are great and perfectly placed. The bridge follows and those Hitchcock like screams from the strings/synth really turn on the suspense. The chorus is used to outro the song. Brilliant counter melodies from Steven are used to bring this amazing song to its close. I suppose some folks don’t like the production with the synths but underneath them lies a great song that has ties to romantic classical music the way it uses the rising lines with the big emotional bursts. In the Making of Pump, John Kalodner calls the song a masterpiece and I have always agreed with that description. 10/10
Along those lines, we really did not get into the remasters of the first five or so albums. Does anyone else like the 2012 remasters like I do? There is something about the bass on the first remasters that sound wonky almost like it is summed to mono. The bass blurs the guitars at times. The 2012 remasters are compressed but the bass on my system sounds more reasonable. The mids and especially the guitars are a lot more defined sounding. I would like to hear what others think. I was called out on another thread for liking the compressed, goosed, etc etc 2012 remasters.
More descriptions of Pump being glam metal. I just don't get that. No real metal guitar stuff to be seen. Guitar arrangements, solos, ? Maybe Steven's vocals? The first two songs are close I suppose. For me, Pump is not glam metal. It fits squarely into the hard rock category. Don't get me wrong, I like a lot of albums that to me are glam metal. I am in the minority among fans of Pump being glam metal.
They were available on the Japanese Blu Spec remasters and also are available as digital downloads. HDtracks
yeah i never thought of it as glam metal. to me it was the aerosmith sound with an 80's gloss but it had a few elements of big bands at the time they influenced like bon jovi, GNR, l.a. guns, etc
All I know about them are the low DR numbers, I know that doesn’t tell the full story but it seems a shame. Are they based on the ‘93 remasters? The packaging from what I can see on discogs looks the same.
I’m guilty of making those references. But I’d certainly concede it’s not clear cut. I made those references partly to group Pump with the other big glam / hair metal releases of the day, which they were directly competing with, but also because, if we count, say, Bon Jovi as “glam / hair / pop / commercial metal”, then the sound Aerosmith have from Permanent Vacation and Pump onwards is pretty similar (thank you, Bruce). Aerosmith were definitely and successfully modernizing into that part of the market - if we’re honest, and take a big picture view of the music landscape of the time, is there really a massive category difference between PV and Pump and, say, Bon Jovi’s New Jersey or Poison’s Open Up and Say … Aah? If an alien turned up (hey, welcome to Earth btw) and watched a video for one band versus the other, would it say, hmmm, these seem very different? I’m not so sure. Now I’ll accept, all of this has a blurry border with good ole’ hard rock anyway, and I don’t feel strongly either way. SHF has many other extensive threads on what is and is my hair metal, so above is really just explaining why I had used the term here / of course other views and opinions absolutely as valid as mine (yes, I mean that in both directions )….
I've never heard (or thought of) 80's Aerosmith being labeled Glam Metal until the last few days here. I personally don't heat it.
Someone uploaded the DR for the Blu-Spec debut and it matches the '93 remaster. AFAIK, the 2012 remasters are exclusive to download sites, although I can see them being used if the albums ever get deluxe editions or a new batch of reissues. I did hear the 2012 versions for Nine Lives, Just Push Play, and Honkin' on Bobo, but unfortunately, they're just as compressed as the CDs and didn't really offer any improvement.
I may be pointing out something obvious with this (a bad habit of mine, some might say), but I haven’t seen it mentioned in this thread. For as often as they’re compared to the LA bands of that era, the clearest & best point of comparison for the PV - Pump era Aerosmith is the other once-successful 70s band that provided the blueprint for career resuscitation via “contemporary” production and the enlistment of outside song doctors - indeed, some of the exact same song doctors who would find success with Aerosmith in the 80s and 90s (Holly Knight, Jim Vallance, Diane Warren)… That band? Heart. Their 1985 self-titled album is in some ways the blueprint for Permanent Vacation & beyond Aerosmith.
Sure - no doubt you haven’t, and I’m not really vociferously arguing the case either - however, to just indicate that it isn’t beyond the realm of imagination, some quotes from Wikipedia: “Their style, which is rooted in blues-based hard rock,[3][4] has also incorporated elements of pop rock,[5] heavy metal,[3] glam metal,[6][7][8][9] and rhythm and blues,[10] and has inspired many subsequent rock artists.[11]” “Loudersound placed [Permanent Vacation] on their list of the 20 best albums from 1987 and called it a "collection of sublime pop-metal".[11]” Rolling Stone’s 50 best hair metal albums list excluded Aerosmith, but Ultimate Classic Rock’s best 30 glam metal albums has Pump all the way up at #4. Top 30 Glam Metal Albums So again, not saying it’s unambiguously right, just saying it’s a view that exists that isn’t wholly unreasonable. In any case, let us move on from the wormhole of glam / hair metal perimeter definitions …
That’s interesting - Heart aren’t a band I listened to much, but can’t argue with above. You’re not saying the acts necessarily sound similar, but your post may not be that popular here … !
Yeah, I won’t be surprised if someone takes issue with it. The proof is in the writing credits though, along with the general career arcs of the two bands.
Done with Mirrors was a relative commercial failure at the exact same time as Heart are into their second hit single from their ‘85 self-titled album (which was still generating hits into ‘86). That song was “Never,” co-written by Holly Knight, who later contributed to “Rag Doll.” It was released in September of ‘85. The first hit single from Heart, “What About Love,” was co-written by Jim Vallance (credited with three co-writes on PV). It came out in May of ‘85. It ain’t rocket science to see where Permanent Vacation was mapped out, at least in superficial terms. The two bands don’t sound much alike, but this is pretty clear. When Aerosmith recorded PV in early ‘87, Heart was the template for a successful career resuscitation of a 70s band entering their second decade after a commercial downturn.
