I thought for sure Don would write a good post about what's going on with Aerosmith, but he hasn't, so I'll write one instead.

It hasn't been cool to admit you had any interest in Aerosmith for about 16 years now, but from 1988 to 1994 these guys were a big chunk of my mental landscape. In fact the first rock concert I ever saw was Aerosmith on the Permanent Vacation tour. The mighty Zen (my high school/college band) covered "Sweet Emotion" (very badly), "Chip Away the Stone" (decently), and "Mama Kin" (I don't remember if it was good or bad). I remember where I was when I heard the debut of their then-new single, "Livin' on the Edge," though, and I knew that Aerosmith's comeback was over. Successively shittier songs on the radio and Steven Tyler using his long lost daughter Liz as a sex object in his videos further alienated me from the Aerosmith camp (she's hot for sure, but to be the sexy chick in your own dad's video is weird).

However when I came across a post on a audiophile music forum a week ago saying Tyler was out of Aerosmith, according to guitarist Joe Perry, I couldn't help but feel a bit of melancholy. Even with just a peripheral awareness of the band's latest comings and goings I knew that former manager Tim Collins said long ago the members had fallen back off the wagon, and this summer Tyler literally fell of the stage in South Dakota, which led to a lot of news stories saying he was in particularly deep trouble with chemicals again and was estranged from the rest of the band. So when Joe Perry told the Las Vegas Sun that Tyler hadn't returned his phone calls in weeks and as far as he knew he had left the band, I figured that was it.

Then today I read/see that Steven Tyler appeared at a show for the Joe Perry Project in New York and sang "Walk This Way" as an encore with his old buddy. Afterward Steven and Joe both told TMZ that Tyler's leaving the band was only a rumor and untrue (hmm...if Joe Perry himself is the one who made the statement, does it qualify as a rumor?). Many have said they thought this may have been staged to give the Joe Perry Project some publicity, but if that was the goal it was poorly done. I only ever read the news in the Las Vegas Sun online, or in stories quoting the Sun. I never saw it anywhere mainstream like USA Today, TIME, CNN or Entertainment Tonight. If it was a stunt they would've waited for the mainstream press to pick up on it, then played it out for weeks, and then put out a press release about the glorious reconciliation.

Instead this evening, less than 24 hours after Perry said Tyler leaving the band was just a rumor, he says that Steven didn't talk to him at all before or after he sat in with his band, and everything is still "up in the air." Maybe they realized they could've gotten some altitude for their profile out of this and they're trying to ramp it up?

Either way, I really think Aerosmith should do a six-to-12 month farewell tour and then call it a day.