Box sets tend to be a dicey proposition for a record company. If you put on too many rarities and alternate versions of released songs, you tend to appeal to the faithful. Too much overlap with albums, and you run the risk of becoming redundant – the faithful won’t buy it and the casual fan won’t spend the money for a lot of songs they don’t know.
Which is why Pandora’s Box is a bargain for all fans of old Aerosmith, the prime boogie-rock period of 1973-1982. All of the hits are here, along with a good amount of rare and unreleased songs and live versions of album cuts. A niggling point: I would have substituted live versions of the hits, since everyone already has them, but I suppose the studio versions are here to entice casual fans and act as a replacement for the old albums and the red Greatest Hits disc.
This is designed to be a one-stop shop for Aerosmith fans, and honestly, it’s hard to argue with what’s here and what’s left off. Hardcore fans may miss a few album tracks, I guess, but large chunks of the band’s first four classic albums are all present, along with selected tracks from 1979’s Night In The Ruts and 1977’s Draw The Line. The entirety of both Greatest Hits and Gems are here with the thankful exception of “(Remember) Walking In The Sand.”
Where this collection also succeeds is in redeeming the last half of this era. It is generally acknowledged that Draw The Line and Ruts are the nadir of the original band’s output, but this collection pulls the best songs from both and argues that they can stand alongside Rocks. Moreover, the third disc here also adds some solo songs from the Joe Perry Project and Whitford/St. Holmes, along with some cuts that Steven Tyler wrote with replacement guitarist Jimmy Crespo, and the aforementioned unreleased songs from the era (along with rarities like “Jailbait,” “Chip Away The Stone” and “Major Barbra” that have only ever appeared on random compilations.
The whole of Toys In The Attic is rightly present except for “Uncle Salty,” while most of Rocks and Get Your Wings are here; what missing are solid album tracks that fans will probably enjoy but aren’t necessary to the overall picture. All of Aerosmith is here too except for “Somebody,” along with a very early song called “When I Needed You” and a cool live version of “Rattlesnake Shake,” a longstanding live staple that the band never recorded in the studio.
Other rarities include a cover of Otis Rush’s “All Your Love,” a mundane instrumental from the Toys period called “Krawitham” and a better instrumental called “Let It Slide,” which sounds like an early version of what would eventually become “Cheesecake” (which is here too). A Whitford/St. Holmes track from 1981, “Sharpshooter,” appears toward the end of the third disc as not only a major highlight but a call to perhaps check out that forgotten footnote in Aerosmith history. The cover of “Helter Skelter” makes three unnecessary, loud covers of Beatles songs in the Aero catalog, but as that was a hard rocker to begin with, it’s not totally out of place.
The hits, of course, are legendary and really never get old, no matter how much rock radio (107.7 The Boulder! Steve and The Nutz in the morning! News on the Twos!) beats them to death. “Same Old Song And Dance” is the highlight of the band’s early days, and everyone has memorized “Dream On,” “Walk This Way,” “Sweet Emotion,” “Back In The Saddle” and “Mama Kin” by now. But the surrounding tracks are equally as good, from the early “One Way Street,” “Make It,” “Movin’ Out” and “Train Kept A’ Rollin” to the Toys cuts “Round And Round” and “No More No More” (Tyler’s favorite Aerosmith track, he recently said).
As said earlier, the later album cuts fare just as well here. “Milk Cow Blues” is a killer forgotten song from Draw The Line, along with “Critical Mass” and a live version of “I Wanna Know Why.” Ruts tracks “No Surprize,” “Cheesecake,” “Coney Island (White Fish Boy)” and even “Three Mile Smile” will reignite interest in a maligned album (although, to be fair, those are the best songs on the album). The only real bad track on the album is “Riff And Roll,” a garage track with no direction sounding like it was made a bunch of potheads. Such was life in the late ‘70s for these guys, though.
Pandora’s Box has something for any Aerosmith fan, hitting the highlights of the band’s early career. Although the individual albums are still recommended for the faithful, this does such a good job that it serves as a complete package all its own.