Rock in a Hard Place Review

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(More customer reviews)This gets my vote for Second Best Album Ever Made By A Big-Name Band Without Some Of Its Key Members (the first being AC/DC's "Back In Black", but then Brian Johnson pretty much established himself as a new "key member" of that group from day one). In that regard, it's much better than most anything Kiss or Van Halen did in their latter-day incarnations. No one can fault Crespo for ruining this album, other than he has the misfortune of not being Joe Perry, and dammit (sniff), he'll never BE Joe Perry (sob)! As for Dufay, news flash, folks - he barely PLAYED on this album. The "Walk This Way" biography claims he only played on "Lightning Strikes" (the liner notes also credit Brad Whitford playing on this song before he bailed from the group comepletely). As for the songs, there's not a bad one on here. "Jailbait" and "Lightning Strikes" are killer tunes that deserve to be Aero-classics but unfortunately suffer from the stigma of having been on this album. "Bolivian Ragamuffin", "Bitches Brew", "Rock In A Hard Place (Cheshire Cat)" (any reason why this song wasn't simply called "Cheshire Cat"?), and "Jig Is Up" are all great blooze-boogie rockers done in the classic Aerosmith mold, very well-produced. "Joanie's Butterfly" is a nice acoustic rocker that serves to change the overall mood nicely, The cover of "Cry Me A River" features an excellent Steven Tyler vocal, and "Push Comes To Shove" features some nice piano work. A great Aerosmith album in its own right, noteworthy for more than just being the infamous "middle album"!

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Draw the Line Review

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(More customer reviews)Coming off their best two albums, "Draw the Line" released in 1977 is not a complete disappointment. As is the case with most recordings, the ones that follow masterpieces tend to be underrated. The lifestyle that Aerosmith had chosen was beginning to show it's effects on the band creatively but by no means were they done yet.
The CD opens with the riff-roaring "Draw the Line" and the rocking "I Wanna Know Why" before slipping into the average "Critical Mass". "Get it Up" may be one of the funkiest tunes they had done up to this point and the punkish Joe Perry sung "Bright Light Fright" is quite interesting.
The second half opens with the classic "Kings and Queens" and along with the title track represents classic Aerosmith in the best sense. A few average rockers follow, "The Hand That Feeds" and "Sight For Sore Eyes" before closing with the Arnold penned blues of "Milk Cow Blues".
Alhough not quite as good as it's two predecessors ("Toys in the Attic", "Rocks") "Draw the Line" finds Aerosmith running out of breath but still in the race. After this it was all downhill. Newcomers may want to avoid this as an introduction but if you're a fan of classic Aerosmith then this CD sounds GREAT turned up!
If only they could rock this hard today.

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Japanese Blu-Spec CD pressing of this classic album. The Blue Spec format takes Blu-ray disc technology to create CD's which are compatible with normal CD players but provides ultra high quality sound. Sony.--This text refers to an alternate Audio CD edition.

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