Aerosmith’s latest DVD/Blu-ray offering, Rock for the Rising Sun, shows the band live in Tokyo following the 2011 Tsunami that rocked Japan. Aerosmith returned to Japan for the first time in seven years to do the same, rock Japan. For those of us that still cling the the Texxas Jam video it is nice to have a full length DVD finally.
The band hit the ground running with the classic ‘Draw The Line’. Joe treats us to an extended slide solo and it is off and running. Unless there were a ton of costume changes, the film was easily shot over at least two nights. Steven’s outfits for the first and third song were the same but during the second track, ‘Love In An Elevator’, both Steven and Joe were dressed in different outfits. Just a pet peeve. ‘Elevator’ also featured crisp harmonies with apparently no one else singing with Steven. On the upside we were treated to an extended outtro which included a little ‘Lady Madonna’.
‘Living On The Edge’ proved to be a better rendition than even the album. ‘Hangman Jury’ was a tasty addition to the set and apparently added do to the song’s popularity in Japan.
‘No More, No More’ really shined. Joe busted out a beautiful Fender Telecaster. Tom was obviously enjoying it as well. Interestingly Joe then used a hollow body guitar with this wife’s likeness on it for the extended solo.
From their debut album the bands explodes with ‘Mamma Kin’. Following it was ‘Monkey On My Back’ which is another track that comes off better live. Then the one/two punch of ‘Toys in the Attic’ and ‘Sweet Emotion’ come off like a bomb. They do it with as much swagger as they did in the mid-70’s. They pulled ‘Boogie Man’ from their 90’s success. From their they keep the classic (not to be confused with Classics Live II) rolling with ‘Rats In The Cellar’, ‘Movin’ Out’, ‘Last Child’ ‘S.O.S.’, ‘Walk This Way’ and finally end it with ‘Train’.
For a band that could have easily done the standard ‘hits’ with all the ballads, ‘smith took the classy road and brought the swing and sleaze of the songs that made them important to a generation.