I would have also been nice to get some more of the live cuts played at the Texxas Jam 1978 show which had not appeared on live albums yet like, Rats In The Cellar, Seasons of Wither, Lick And A Promise, Get The Lead Out, Get It Up and/or Milk Cow Blues.
Fortunately. If Neil is to be believed, David Geffen would have bent him over real nice in case he was dead broke and dependent on money.
Pandora’s Box is a nice collection. The one knock is the incorrect dates, such as the Cincinnati 1973 material labeled as 1971. Perry is promising some archived stuff, so let’s hope we can build on this great collection.
It would be fantastic & long-overdue if 1971 - The Road Starts Hear is just the beginning of an archival series. Especially since Pandora’s Box, good as it is, is the only real archival dive they’ve done previously. During the golden age of bonus tracks, expanded and often padded “super deluxe” editions, ca. 1995 - 2010, the Aerosmith catalog was remarkably underexploited, save for the stream of hits repackagings. Here’s hoping!
Krawhitham...cool use of their names Whole tone scale at :13. Not sure if I can think of another song that uses it so prominently. Other than King Crimson of course.
I know im being hard on Cheap Trick. They were in dire straits with their record company and floundering commercially, so it made sense to bring in outside writers. I never knew they had the option to do "Look Away"...thematically it makes more sense for Cheap Trick to do the song about the lovelorn loser rather than the ready-made wedding ballad. Whatever kept this great band going through a tough stretch is fine by me...and their recent releases are good!
Any idea why John Sebastian was not listed as the writer of On The Road Again in the notes? I wondered about that ever since I saw the notes being familiar with the Spoonful song.
Pandora's Box I asked for this for Christmas 1991 so had to wait until then to play it. My stance now on box sets with streaming services easily available is either give us all the hits and album cuts or give us all rarities. Don't try and do both. BUT in this case I think the 50/50 of both works really well especially since I don't believe they have a lot of unreleased studio stuff out there based on what they gave us here. Live stuff is a different story. Some thoughts on the box. When I Needed You- Cool early song from Steven. Joe mentioned he was too embarrassed to put his pre-Aerosmith stuff on the box. On The Road Again- This would've fit on the first album just fine but I wouldn't want it to replace any of the songs there. Walkin' The Dog- This really cooks. Can they please release this whole damn show? Pandora's Box- Aside from it being the title of the box the other reason they stuck it on here was the flute intro on the initial CD issue was cut off! All Your Love- What a great cover but it would not fit on DTL. Downtown Charlie- Love this outtake as well. Would not really fit on Ruts though. Band really gels here however. Riff And Roll- If this song was fleshed out more it would be a highlight of RIAHP. South Station Shuffle- Should have put Let The Music Do The Talking On Here instead. This is a crap song. Sharpshooter- CD version of Whitford / St Holmes did not come out for a few yers later so it was nice to have this great track on here. Helter Skelter- Excellent cover. Remixes- Remixes are OK overall but nothing ground breaking. Instrumentals- These are actually really fun and some of the them are the embryos of an album track. Live stuff- All the live stuff is pretty great. I give it 4 stars. There was a really great video of Sweet Emotion to promote the box. Track was remixed in 1991 by David Thoener but wasn't on the box (which was irritating to me). There was a US cassingle and an import only CD single of the remix along with some box set tracks. I like the remix a lot and it extends the song by about 30 seconds. It is easily found on the Armageddon soundtrack now.
This Sweet Emotion single has a non-box set instrumental track Subway on it along with the box set hidden track Circle Jerk.
Also it needs to be mentioned that in 1991 Aerosmith re-signed with Sony for huge money but at the time they owed Geffen more albums still. Aerosmith to Sign Monster Sony Pact : Pop music: The deal would make the band rock's highest paid group but the band still owes Geffen two albums. Returns on Sony's investment wouldn't be realized until 1995.
Also Subway and Sweet Emotion (remix) is available on the Box of Fire Bonus CD. Jumping back to 1987 for a sec...did we mention this song being on the Less Than Zero soundtrack? Just remembered it as it was on the Box of Fire bonus CD as well.
both trucks where you would have the car maker on the side, upper fender near the hood, it say F.I.N.E. which was the working title of the album for awhile
"All Your Loving", blew my socks off when I first heard it. One of my top 5 favorites of their entire catalog. Love it to death. Killer Diller. Just imagine, if they did the " Honkin' For Bobo" blues rock cover album back then in '78, or, '79, or the early '80's before Joe split. Back when they were living high on the hog. All hopped up & juiced full of piss & vinegar kicking out the jams with that good old raw & ragged cataclysmic raunchy bad ass swagger. Lord have mercy. I've always loved Aerosmith's cover tunes. Everything. They make it their own. Just like Van Halen would do later on. As a fan I like the cover tunes because they are fun. It shows their influences. They picked those cover tunes specifically as fans. Maybe going back to days of performing in clubs or whatever. Not necessarily, attempting to score an easy top 40 hit single like many other acts. They opened up many shows on the 1978 tour with" Helter Skelter". The artwork packaging on this Pandora Box is amazing. Just imagine if they had some sort of Jack In The Box type of surprise when you first open up the box. Maybe a fake rubber snake pops out unexpectedly or something. I thought the little Harmonica keychain thingy in " Honkin' For Bobo' was cool as hell. AC/DC's Bonfire boxset had the AC/DC bottle opener. I used to hang it on my dog's collar, then whenever needed to crack open a beer call my furry buddy over & lean over & use the AC/DC bottle opener. Got a lot of use. It's the neat little packaging gimmicks that make collecting even more fun. ( Edit;...I just had an idea for a thread topic.... What if there was a thread topic to discuss the album's extra packaging inserts & special unique cool stuff they used to put in the album's....??? Like, the Alice Cooper Billion Dollar Babies bill, or Muscle Of Love cardboard box, the Killer calender, ... Grand Funk stickers, Elton John poster's & booklets from Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, ...etc, etc, KISS had Tattoo's & stickers, poster's, etc,etc... I'll do a Google search to see
I haven't seen this video in 30 years.... and within 10 seconds of watching, it all came flooding back. The sex-line operator, the guy, Tyler's crazy moves, the "twist" ending.... All of it. Super weird what gets burned into your brain as a kid. Are you sure it extends the song though? Seems like it fades out in the same place as the original (which is 4:35, vs. 4:41 for this video). Definitely remixed though, especially Joey's drums which are more prominent. The harmony guitar lead on the verse riff seems to be buried, unfortunately.
I bought my first CD player in 1991. Not kidding. And went straight after buying it to the local record shop to get the "Pandora's Box". Still got it (the box, that cd player died years ago). The booklet came apart basically at the first read, anybody got that still intact? "I Live In Connecticut" is one of my favourites from that box. It has the most perfect sloppy and ugly guitar sound. If it isn't Perry's Fender Bass VI with an out-of-phase setting I don't know what it is.
Pandora’s Box - I put off buying this for a long time, for the the simple reason I wanted a box set solely consisting of out-takes/live/non-album tracks. It was the amount of album tracks on it that put me off - I didn’t realise a lot of them were alt. takes or remixes, and it’s cool having ‘Last Child’ end naturally and not literally crash into ‘Rats In The Cellar’ . I have the fat-boy case reissue which unfortunately reduces the text in the booklet to minuscule size. And because so much of the track listing is studio tracks from their back catalogue, I rarely listen to it - which is a shame, maybe I’ll condense it down to just the rarities on my iTunes? As an add-on to this collection, I bought the ‘Box Of Fire’ bonus disc (it came with the Japanese ‘Nine Lives’ cd - I asked the seller to send just the bonus disc ). ‘Rocking Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu’ and ‘Subway’ should have made it on the boxset imo. The 1991 ‘Sweet Emotion’ remix and a brilliant MTV Anniversary performance of ‘Dream On’ are pretty sweet to have as well.
