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	AEROSMITH False Endings

Subtlety has never been a priority for Aerosmith. So though they did forgo the usual visit to the song doctor’s office in favor of a quick trip to a medicine cabinet full of old 1-4-5 blues numbers for the new Honkin’ on Bobo (Columbia), they didn’t bother toning down the Armageddon-sized production that’s served them so well since Hollywood soundtracking became the open secret to their ongoing success. Yeah, Joe Perry puts a slide to the strings of one of his dobro-like resonator guitars as he conjures the spirit if not quite the substance of Mississippi’s famed Fred McDowell on "Jesus Is on the Mainline." And like much of 2001’s Just Push Play (Columbia), Honkin’ on Bobo was tracked on the South Shore in a studio at Perry’s house. But unless you’ve got seating for 20,000-plus in your back yard (and Perry might), this is nobody’s idea of homegrown hootenanny. No, Bobo’s 100 percent arena-ready blooze rawk has its roots planted at least as firmly in the studied electrified swagger of the "Train Kept A-Rollin’ " Yardbirds as in the mud of the Delta or the grit of old Chicago Chess-nuts. In other words, it’s right up the very same alleys Aerosmith explored back in the ’70s, most memorably on side four of 1978’s Live Bootleg.

Last Thursday at the Tweeter Center, the band had an uphill battle to fight if they had any hope of recapturing the raw ferocity of Bootleg, since they were hamstrung by a huge camera crew who’d come along to film a scene for one of those big-budget Hollywood movies. That meant going from a false ending into the 2001 power ballad "Cryin’ " not once or twice but three times, with Steven Tyler begging the audience to scream loud enough "for them to hear you in New York!" Making matters worse, drummer Joey Kramer seemed to have a tough time keeping up on the hi-hat during the building intro of the tune the first two times through.

The band countered in several ways. Instead of waiting until the middle of the show to set up shop in the middle of the audience, they opened with all five members crammed onto a club-sized stage cranking out "Toys in the Attic." They kept the crowd off balance with a mix-and-match batch of hits from all of their high points, from a nasty version of "Draw the Line" to a hard-hitting, harmony-laced "The Other Side" to a stomping "Same Old Song and Dance." And when the filming was done, they drew their own line back from Bobo’s take on the Big Joe Williams classic "Baby Please Don’t Go" to James Brown’s "Mother Popcorn," a Bootleg-era cover. By the time they’d worked their way up to a pair of positively Aerosmith closers, "Sweet Emotion" and "Walk This Way," those silly little staged false endings were all but forgotten.