Published on Mar 29, 2004
Greatest-hits compilations can sometimes be a wonderful thing
for an artist. They are the way for fans who aren’t as familiar
with someone’s work to collect the songs they know and love while
maybe becoming intrigued enough to try some other material.
But there is a downside to these collections. By focusing on the
songs which are featured on the radio, there is a tendency to
overlook (albeit unintentionally) tracks from the original albums
which are just as good as — and, in some cases, even better than
— the radio hits. Plus, the “hits” have been overplayed so much
that the original master tapes are almost translucent.
In the case of
Big Ones, Aerosmith’s third best-of collection (and first
for Geffen), the latter tends to be the case. Yes, these are the
hits which gave Steven Tyler and crew a second lease on life, and
there is a certain amount of pleasure in these tracks. But these
songs have been overplayed to the point where hearing them again is
almost unbearable, weakening their overall power.
The inclusion of three non-album tracks — “Deuces Are Wild”
from The Beavis And Butt-Head Experience and two new songs, “Walk
On Water” and “Blind Man” — are a mixed bag that both sum up the
success that Aerosmith had in this stage of their career and the
problem with their sound at the time. “Blind Man” is another
cookie-cutter ballad a la “Crazy” and “Cryin'” (both of which are
also featured on
Big Ones), with very little power and very little coming
across to allow older listeners to recognize this as the same band
who did “Sweet Emotion.” Granted, people ate up the ballads like
dieters gobbling taste spoons at Baskin-Robbins. That isn’t the
excuse for this to become a collection of Aerosmith-lite.
As for the hits, they’re all there on
Big Ones — well, almost. The failure to include even one
song off of
Done With Mirrors is inexcusable. It might not have set the
world on fire, but there is still a lot of worthwhile material on
this disc. Christ, if they could include “Eat The Rich” — a song I
liked — that was never released as a single, they could have at
least put on “Reason A Dog” or “Let The Music Do The Talking.”
Therein lies the third — and, ultimately, the biggest —
problem with this disc. The best songs from this period in
Aerosmith’s career were often tracks left to be discovered on the
original albums. So
Big Ones might feature “Livin’ On The Edge” from
Get A Grip, but unless you own the original album, you won’t
know how good tracks like “Walk On Down” are. It’s not the tracks
that are included, it’s the tracks that are missing which speak the
loudest.
Make no mistake, if all you want is a one-stop collection of all
the songs that brought Aerosmith a second shot at fame, then
Big Ones is a good selection. But it ultimately doesn’t
present the whole picture of Aerosmith at this stage in their
career — and it was a very enjoyable period, ballads
notwithstanding.