Aerosmith - Aerosmith (CD 1993)

Aerosmith's journey to the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame began not in Boston, but in the tiny hamlet of Sunapee, New Hampshire, where the parents of Steven Tallarico (aka Steven Tyler) owned a small resort called Trow-Rico.
The band first took shape one summer in Sunapee.

It was in Boston, however, that they started to pay their dues as a band. The members of the band moved in together to a tiny apartment at 1325 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. Several of the songs that appeared on their self-titled debut album on Columbia Records (released, incidentally, on the same day that Columbia released Bruce Springsteen's debut) were written while the band was living in Boston. These include "Movin' Out" (the first song Tyler and Joe Perry ever wrote together) and the now-legendary "Dream On," with its brilliant, moving lyrics penned by Tyler. "Make It" was the band's usual show-opening song during their first few tours.

The "Aerosmith" album and its 1974 followup "Get Your Wings" were not big sellers until the band vaulted into superstardom with their multiplatinum third and fourth albums-- "Toys in the Attic" and "Rocks." However, even before it attained widespread sales, the debut album was an excellent "moment in time" piece.

The album was recorded the old fashioned way-- tracks were not layered, everything was played live and the best studio take was the one that was used. Later, when Aerosmith began to work with longtime producer Jack Douglas, they experimented with a wide array of overdubs and musical accoutrements. But back in the beginning, it was just the five members of the band. The raw, down-n-dirty, quality of the entire first album has actually held up very nicely, whereas a tune such as "Spaced" [Get Your Wings] now seems hopelessly dated. Sometimes, less can be more.

The songs on the first album came from three main sources-- there were "Aerosmith" songs that were written after the band was formed, there were a couple of pre-Aerosmith tunes (such as "Mama Kin" and "Somebody") that Steven Tyler had written while with some of his previous bands, and there was a cover of Rufus Thomas' "Walkin' The Dog."

I like every song on the debut album but my personal favorites are "Dream On," "Movin' Out" and "One Way Street"; the latter are two hard-rocking tunes and the former is, to this day, their signature ballad.