Review Aerosmith - Done With Mirrors (1985)

[aeroplane]

Re: Aerosmith ~ Done With Mirrors (1985)

Good point. I always thought the formula from the past was 10 tracks to an album. Of course there were time constraints on vinyl that you dont have now with digital CD technology.

To be honest, I like to see at least 13-15 tracks on a CD. In the 70's, I could buy an album for 10 bucks, hot off the press. Which actually was a lot of money, all things considered. Today, a new release goes for 13 bucks on debut....sometimes more. Which I consider pretty economical, especially when you see 13 tracks or more.

I would love to see a full cost analysis comparison from the 70's and 2000's for the costs to produce that first CD.

The trouble is that having more songs on there is fine if they are "good." If you are putting songs on there just to get to a magic number, that portion of the album is going to be downgraded by fans, critics or whoever might be reviewing this album or comparing it to the band's previous works.

If a band is "capable" of doing 6-7 really good songs for a particular album and they ultimately record and release 9 songs on a cd, it is a whole different story than using those same 6-7 songs on an album with 13 songs, isn't it?

Either way, I have always noticed that the majority of albums with middling to fair reviews tend to either be 35 minutes long or 75 minutes long, usually on account of being too long or too short.

Personally though, I agree with the "more songs" thing just to get my money's worth. I hate paying $12-14 for something that is basically ep length. The only issue is I am not a "skipper." I'm a guy who likes to put on a cd and let it run, even if I've owned the album for years and have listened to it dozens of times.

 

[Magic]

Re: Aerosmith ~ Done With Mirrors (1985)

I agree with having the extra tracks being "filler" for the CD. Amazingly, though, fans seem to eat up the marketing strategy for those "previously unreleased tracks". I have even seen short outtakes from a practice session on CD's. And those "hidden" tracks.

I guess they do what they have to do to keep a "new" marketing strategy that sells the product.

 

[tomcat]

Re: Aerosmith ~ Done With Mirrors (1985)

-My Fist Your Face is pretty good. It sounds like old Aerosmith with the more aggressive guitar. I've caught myself digging this one in the past I must admit.
-Let the Music Do the Talking. I've always liked that song. That kicks ass.
-She's On Fire is pretty cool. I've never heard that song actually. I like bluesy stuff.
-Shela, was decent. It reminded me of the older stuff a bit. Pretty rocking solos.

Really this wasn't too bad of an album for something fo far removed from the early stuff. I'll have to go through the albums after Rocks, and up until this one. I think I may be missing out on some cool stuff.

Permanent Vacation is when they really just started to blow, at least all that MTV Aerosmith, like Rag Doll--I hate that song.

 

[TACdtf]

Great writeup, Magic!

yeah, a lot of what you say is dead on. It has way more in common with the 70's albums than what comes after it. To me, this is the last real Aerosmith album. I would say that I was generally pleasantly surprised with Pump as a follow of to permanent Vacation, but that's another story..

After Kings & Queens, Darkness is my favorite Aerosmith song. And My Fist Your Face is a total ass kicker. For some reason, there's a rhythm part in there that reminds me of War Machine. To me, that is classic Aerosmith.

No idea why it didn't do well. Maybe the fogeys at the time were not impressed with the "reunion" and figured they had now lost "their" band to the 80's. Well, that didn't happen until the next album.
And Aerosmith at the time didn't mean a whole lot to the younger folks either. Again, they didn't take interest until the next album.
So to me, the fogeys weren't interested. the younger fans weren't interested. It was just bad timing, but I absolutely love the album.

I read Joe Perry's book, but I don't remember what he said about this time. His book kind of sucked anyway. Maybe he didn't feel like the band was "all the way back". That's probably legit, because as much as I loved the album, I was disappointed with them live. I mean, they had the unfortunate job of following Ted Nugent, and he blew them out of the arena.

That was my first time seeing them. Here's a few pics..

March 18, 1986
Providence Civic Center

 

[TACdtf]

Regarding the interesting number of tracks discussion, we were still a few years away from making albums that were "CD length". There was nothing unusual about the number of tracks on DWM. It had a pretty standard album length.

Master Of Puppets, which was pretty long for that era is just under 55 minutes. Fly On the Wall was 40 minutes, and DWM...ok, you maybe right. Just 35 minutes.