Antique Rocker: Needs Refinishing

Having failed to pen a decent hit in decades, Steven Tyler of Aerosmith has checked himself into rehab - again - in the hopes that sobriety might find him able to regain his once prolific abilities. The singer has stated that addiction to prescription painkillers is his current problem.

“With the help of my family and team of medical professionals, I am taking responsibility for the management of my pain and am eager to be back on the stage and in the recording studio with my band mates,” the 61-year-old Tyler said in a statement.

Some medical professionals are urging caution, saying that if Tyler ever hopes to be relevant again, he might consider what helped him in his heyday.

"If you take an album like 'Rocks,' or 'Toys in the Attic,' you find Tyler at his most creative," said Dr. Lex Leather, a specialist in the management of addictions at UCLA and a rock history professor at West Covina Community College. "During that time, Tyler was using heroin, cocaine and he was drinking daily. A couple years later, we find his skills have diminished on 'Draw the Line' and 'Night in the Ruts.' So, by this time he was abusing, instead of just using. Clearly what Steven needs to do is get back to heroin, cocaine and alcohol, but under supervision from a professional."

Leather continues, "When he's sober, Tyler writes stuff that is more suited to Whitney Houston or Andy Williams. It's not good, and to see talent like his wasted is a sad thing."

Others say the old rocker just needs to hang it up.

"It's embarrassing as all fuck," said one industry insider with ties to the band, "Skin-tight pants on a grandpa as he thrusts his crotch at a crowd? That would get most old men arrested."

Determined not to be cast to the pages of history, the rest of the band are supporting Tyler in his effort to get clean.

"Look," said guitarist Brad Whitford, "I'm not going to play the state fair circuit with REO Speedwagon and Loverboy. Once you've done a huge arena, a rodeo is a giant buzz kill. And if we have to perform recycled schlock rock from a team of LA songwriters, then so be it."

MOST OF THE PEOPLE QUOTED IN THIS ARTICLE DID NOT SAY THE THINGS ATTRIBUTED TO THEM, IF THOSE PEOPLE EVEN EXIST. I KID BECAUSE I CARE. DRUG AND ALCOHOL ADDICTION ARE NO LAUGHING MATTER, BUT A LITTLE HIT OF WEED AND A BEER CAN SOMETIMES BE THE IMPETUS FOR A GREAT SONG. UNDER MEDICAL SUPERVISION, OF COURSE.

Hey, Joe

Click for the bigness

You're Gonna Wanna Be Paht of This Amazing Journey

Looks like a bunch of highly skilled people in Central Florida will be out of work soon when the Space Shuttle program reaches its end in 2010.

So, with that sad news, let's watch a Wicked Re-TAH-ded* PSA for NASA (obviously produced in-house) featuring Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith, urging duh yutes to stay in school and not try to become rock stars. The production on this proves that sometimes even the brightest minds have no business messing with the creative side.



*See comments on previous post.

Previously in NASA
Good for Something After All
NASA Needs a Slogan
Lisa Nowak - The Reason I'm Late from Lunch
In Space, No One Can Hear You Pee
The Games Astronauts Play
Buy an Astronaut a Drink
Rocket to the Moon and Race Right Back
Astronaughties

Previously in PSAs
SoCal Burning
Weekend Water Safety Warning
Fried For a Frisbee
Your Girlfriend Has an STD
When Snowmen Go Bad

Previously in Aerosmith
NASCAR Set to Rock

Amtrak Keeps Sucking

Thankfully, no one was killed in the recent Amtrak wreck. After a thorough investigation, the authorities will conclude, as they always do, that the engineer smoked some pot within the last 30 days, certainly impairing his ability to operate a moving vehicle.

Amtrak can't catch a break. The brand that has been dying since its inception. (This photo reminds me of the last good Aerosmith album. This one might be captioned "Amtrak humps Hyundai.")

I love a good train. Unfortunately, America will never have a good train.

Previously in Amtrak sucks.

Open Mic Night: 80s White Australian Rap Edition

Steppin' aside again to give you an iPod tune that comes up once in a while and rarely gets skipped over.

Rick Rubin is credited with making rap music accessible (read:"Safe") to the white suburban masses with his Run-D.M.C./Aerosmith collaboration on "Walk this Way" in 1986. Personally, I think Mr. Rubin is a little overrated, and I'm probaby the last white man to wonder why everything he touches is somehow instantly regarded as gold/platinum. I heard one of the members of Run-D.M.C speak of that song in a very unflattering way, regarding the lyrics as nonsensical (he's right), but the money was good and the rest is history. Aerosmith got their careers back and the door to the dollars of white suburbia for rap acts (as well as the door to white rap) opened wider than the one left ajar by the Beastie Boys, who debuted with License to Ill the same year. (It can be argued that Blondie's "Rapture" beat them all by five years.)

Disregard the snap, crackle and pop of the high drum track on this tune and just listen to the voice and the industrial ambiance. Of course rap is about lyrics, so listen to those as well. Some find them sub-adolescent; I find them clever. Draw your own conclusions there, but I'll argue that rhyming every line in one song to "ate" is a nice trick. I personally think this song marked the mainstream crossover of rap to white audiences the world over, eclipsing the "Walk This Way" novelty of Rubin's. The Aussies of INXS pulled it off nicely in 1987. They're gone now, despite a pathetic ingenious attempt to revive their careers using some stupid ingenious "So you wanna be a Rockstar?" show.

Terrence Trent D'Arby also did a stint with INXS as their lead singer after Hutchence masturbated himself to death, but it went nowhere. D'Arby, he of the very impressive debut album, has since disappeared into relative obscurity in Munich, Germany and now goes by the name of some New Age Messiah.

The music of INXS is up in the top of the sidebar until next week's Open Mic Night music replaces it.

Archived Open Mic Night music is here.

Open Mic Night - Opening the Mic

An Open Mic Night host who doesn’t share the mic is not really hosting an open mic night, but is instead subjecting you to his or her own creations ad nauseum. I have been guilty of this practice in previous open mic night posts and will now step aside for a week and treat you to a true master of the mic, Sylvester Stewart.

If you’ve ever tapped your foot to a Red Hot Chili Peppers* song; if you’ve ever said to yourself, “Wow, Prince has got real presence,”; or if you’ve ever appreciated how Aerosmith is so much funkier than other traditional rock acts, then you owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Stewart.

I first heard this song as a narrow-minded little rocker kid, when a much more musically adventurous friend found it in the back of a bin at a seedy used record store on a dirty side street in Frankfurt, Germany, almost a decade after the song had been popular. In it I heard everything I liked in rock; prominent bass, an unapologetic attitude of self-assurance mixed with laid-back cool, and the ability to bend a single sung syllable into a contorted and drawn-out display of passion.

This is one of those songs that will never leave my iPod: Sly and the Family Stone’s "If You Want me To Stay." I would recommend you crank it up very loud. You can even unplug the headphones or earbuds and let your office mates jam with you. I would never suggest such a thing for my own music.

Find it at top in the sidebar until next week’s song replaces it.

Archived Open Mic Night music is found here

*They covered the song, but not nearly as well as the original.

We're an Airline! And We Have Aeroplanes!

Since I just completed a series of dreadful flights to and from one of the most inaccessible airports in the world, (Austin) I thought I'd dig up some old airline advertising. These two spots are dreadful in their own ways, pitched to two very different regional audiences in America during roughly the same time period. What both these commercials have in common is a horrible jingle stinger to end them, as it was advertising law in those days that everything needed a jingle package.

Wowing the Backwoodsmen with Flying Machines
Now defunct, Ozark Airlines used this unique angle in an old commercial: "You will be flying on a real, honest to goodness aeroplane that we bought from a real aerosmith named Douglas. And did you know, when you travel on an aeroplane, you will save time?"



Swinging America: Drink, Dance and Hook up with Winking Chicks
The sophisticated traveler of yesteryear required another approach, so here we have super-hip and also defunct National Airlines bringing us to Miami with their Go-Go sale, where you can dance in the surf in your blazer. Smell the possibilities.



SEXIST ALERT: I really don't need commenters here representing a feminist viewpoint chiding me for objectification of women, but something's been puzzling me. Whatever happened to pleasant and pretty flight attendants? Now they're all cranky old ladies or way-too-happy guys.

Republic of White Trashistan

We're supposed to be in Jacksonville tomorrow night for a big overnight fiesta, and it finally dawned on us that we have to drive through Daytona Beach twice on the weekend of the Daytona 500. You haven't lived until you're sitting in traffic with 100,000 NASCAR fans.

We're not NASCAR people, but we should've been able to pick up the clues. The airwaves are packed with radio and TV spots for the race. Meaning: it's two days before the race (the radio ads call it "the greatest race of all time" or "the Great American Race" or something like that) and they're STILL trying to move tickets. This can't be good for America.

I'm sure it's a party. I'm sure it's probably great fun. I'm sure you can hear Molly Hatchet and Lynyrd Skynyrd and Keith Urban at the pre-race tailgating festivities. But it looks like our country's love affair with this sport is running out of gas. With Nextel as the main sponsor, (the Redneck walkie-talkie) they sealed up the mullet demographic pretty tight. Then they brought in Aerosmith to revive "Back in the Saddle" as a new theme song, which probably panders to the same demo. While I've never been to a race, I can bet that a fun and challenging game to play at any NASCAR event would be "Find the Black People." NASCAR needs a broader base.

NASCAR needs to reach out to the Kentucky Derby set, the Wimbledon set, not to mention minorities, tree-huggers, emo kids and soccer hooligans. There aren't enough Nextel users to fill those stands, and if this is the Great American Race, then NASCAR is in trouble.

Previously from the Prime Minister of Mulletavia

NASCAR Set To Rock

We live about an hour away from Daytona, but we know when to stay the hell away from that town. If it isn't Bike Week or Biketoberfest, it's some NASCAR race - and the (God love 'em) shirtless, shoeless, toothless masses from across America's NASCAR Belt make the city impossible to drive through and the beaches a teeming throng of lobster-red touri. (Please don't comment on that obviously exaggerated oversimplification of the NASCAR set. I am fully aware that many "normal" people enjoy racing sports.) NASCAR brings in the big bucks, no question, and the fans are beyond die-hard.

According to Steven Tyler's blog, (yes - everyone's favorite Mary Tyler Moore lookalike) Aerosmith's "Back in the Saddle" has been selected as NASCAR's theme song for the 2007 season. Tyler says he spent two hours with a partner rewriting the lyrics to fit the race theme before recording the song during a shoot at a Vegas concert. (Sample lyrics: "I'm ridin'... I'm ridin' in a fast car....I'm drivin'!...I'm drivin' in my NASCAR!!" ...Genius, Steven.)

This marks a departure for NASCAR, who've spent most of their marketing dollars trying to appeal to their country, Red State base. Aerosmith's appeal has always crossed boundaries, and they've been known to shill for the Gap, Dodge, Sony, the NFL and Disney, among others. Will the geriatric bad boys be able to bring a broader audience to ESPN to watch cars go real fast around a track?

Hmmmm....I dunno....Did Zeppelin sell any Cadillacs?