Aerosmith - MTV Unplugged, Ed Sullivan Theater, New York City, 8-11-1990

I'm not much of a fan of Aerosmith beyond their hits. But their hits are really good and there are a lot of them. There is one thing from them that I want to share at this blog though, and that is an "acoustic" performance they did for MTV Unplugged in 1990 that never has been officially released. It's really good, and this version I'm sharing is superior to the one that is commonly available as a bootleg.

I put "acoustic" in quotes because they played as a full band, including drums, so it's more like semi-acoustic. But for a hard rocking band like Aerosmith, it was a different sound for them, relatively speaking. I believe it's the only time they ever played in an acoustic format. (Lead singer Steven Tyler has done some acoustic stuff in recent years, but without the rest of the band.) I consider this a "must-have" for any Aerosmith fan.

This show has been frequently bootlegged, and you can find grey market versions on Amazon and other similar places. But that version has a big problem. While it contains all the music in good quality, the recording was butchered between most of the songs, with most of the banter and applause cut off. I found one video clip on YouTube that had much more of the time between songs, but only for a portion of the concert. However, that encouraged me that more of it had to be out there. I looked high and low, and finally managed to find a version that included the full recording. It adds about six minutes to the total length of the concert, so it makes a difference.

The sound quality of this version is excellent. The show was professionally recorded by MTV, so this sounds as good as any live album from the time. It's a mystery to me why this album wasn't officially released, especially since the "Unplugged" trend was big at the time, and bands that did release their "Unplugged" concerts often sold millions of those albums. But at least it's here for you to listen to now.

I've made a few edits to improve things. The version I found with all the time between the songs included sometimes had too much dead air with guitar tuning and the like. So I cut out the boring parts. I also boosted the volume of some of the banter that was a bit quiet. But that was all the tweaking I had to do.

The band played some cover songs that they didn't normally do, for instance "Love Me Two Times" by the Doors, "Smokestack Lightning" by Howlin' Wolf, and "Milk Cow Blues" by Kokomo Arnold (which was done by Elvis Presley and the Kinks as well, by the way). They also did some covers that they put on well-known albums: "Big Ten Inch Record," "Walking the Dog," and "Train Kept A-Rollin'." Add it together, and about half the songs they did were covers.

The main concert is an hour and six minutes long. 

On top of that, I've added some quasi-bonus tracks at the end. Basically, I stuck everything else I had from the band that was acoustic or semi-acoustic. It wasn't much. There are two songs the band played acoustically for the Howard Stern radio show in 1997, "Pink" and "Bacon Biscuit Blues." By the way, I believe "Bacon Biscuit Blues" is an original outtake from the "Nine Lives" album that never got officially released because it didn't fit with the other music they were doing at the time. Then this album ends with acoustic versions of songs that were released as B-sides to the hit A-sides of the same songs in 1993 and 1994. 

Including all four of the extra songs, the album totals a hour and 24 minutes.

01 Hangman Jury (Aerosmith)
02 talk (Aerosmith)
03 Monkey on My Back (Aerosmith)
04 talk (Aerosmith)
05 Love Me Two Times (Aerosmith)
06 talk (Aerosmith)
07 Seasons of Wither (Aerosmith)
08 talk (Aerosmith)
09 Big Ten Inch Record (Aerosmith)
10 One Way Street (Aerosmith)
11 Smokestack Lightning (Aerosmith)
12 Dream On (Aerosmith)
13 talk (Aerosmith)
14 Milk Cow Blues (Aerosmith)
15 Toys in the Attic (Aerosmith)
16 talk (Aerosmith)
17 Walking the Dog (Aerosmith)
18 talk (Aerosmith)
19 Train Kept A-Rollin' (Aerosmith)
20 Train Kept A-Rollin' [Slow Version] (Aerosmith)
21 talk (Aerosmith)
22 Last Child (Aerosmith)
23 Pink (Aerosmith)
24 Bacon Biscuit Blues (Aerosmith)
25 Amazing [Acoustic Version] (Aerosmith)
26 Crazy [Acoustic Version] (Aerosmith)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15288620/Aerosmth_1990_MmTVUnpluggedEdSllivanTheaterNewYrkC__8-11-1990_atse.zip.html

Boy, did I have a hard time finding a good cover image for this album. The video of the band's "Unplugged" performance is available on YouTube and other places, but it's rather low-res and blurry. It's okay for watching a video, but any screenshot of it looks bad. All the photos I found from the concert, such as the ones used for bootleg covers, were taken from the blurry video. But I finally found one good one taken from yet another bootleg cover of the same concert. The only problem is it only depicts lead singer Steven Tyler instead of the entire band. So this is what I'm going with. But if anyone has a better one, please let me know.

The text for the band name and "Unplugged" is exactly as it was from the bootleg cover. The only change I made is the small text under the word "Unplugged."