SCOTTS HIDDEN TREASURE #61 - Keep Reaching For The Stars

Aerosmith and Inspiration are not two words I’ve ever used together, so trying to use Jon and RJ's posts to generate this list was tough! But here’s what I came up with. Hidden Treasures from the American Charts.

The tie in is simple, Aerosmith pandered to the Mtv crowd and sought out Top 40 fortune and fame. Well some bands did it well and some did not so well. Aerosmith being in the latter category. Here’s a hidden treasure trip around the mainstream charts from some of this sites favorites artists, at least they used to be...

PLAYLIST VITALS...
LENGTH: 20 minutes 46 seconds
LINK: http://www.podsnack.com/playlists/152d3c26d39df542f7058db1a1100693

TITLE: All Night Long
BAND: Billy Squier
ALBUM: Signs Of Life
YEAR: 1984
LENGTH: 4:48
DID YOU KNOW: Signs of Life. It was his third consecutive Platinum album. The album's first single release, "Rock Me Tonite" was Squier's biggest Pop hit. It reached #15 on Billboard's Hot 100, as well as #1 on the Album Rock Tracks chart in late 1984. However, the video for the track (directed by Kenny Ortega), which shows Squier dancing around a bedroom in a pink tank top, was named by Video GaGa as one of "The worst videos of all time".

Don’t Say No and Emotions in Motion are honest albums full of great rock and roll, but success must've went to his head because this album is really more of the same and didn’t showcase his ability to grow and write cool unique rock and roll like most of us thought this would be. Oh Well... At least this top 10 hit was solid.

TITLE: Dance
BAND: Ratt
ALBUM: Dancing Undecover
YEAR: 1986
LENGTH: 4:22
DID YOU KNOW: In an effort to be taken more seriously, Ratt broke from the tradition of featuring a girl on the cover. They instead opted for gritty black-and-white photos of each of the five band members. Likewise, the album does not contain a single power ballad amongst its ten tracks and even features experimental forays into thrashier and heavier sounds.

I like Dance, it’s a cool a single ... but let me try to wrap my head around this time period for them ... 1 - Ratt wants to be grittier, so they 2 - eliminate the thought of a power ballad and 3 - release Body Talk as the first single which is also 4 - associated with a bad Eddie Murphy movie, and then they 5 - embark on a US tour with Poison in tow.. What am I missing here?

TITLE: No One Like You
BAND: Scorpions
ALBUM: Blackout
YEAR: 1982
LENGTH: 3:58
DID YOU KNOW: After losing his voice during the writing of the album, lead vocalist Klaus Meine had to undergo surgery on his vocal cords and it was uncertain whether he would be able to record it. Demos of the material were recorded with Don Dokken as vocalist

Thank goodness for Lovedrive! That’s when I grabbed hold of this band and really tuned into them. Animal Magnetism rocked hard and got them on the doorstep of superstardom. So why not record Animal Magnetism Part II and call it Blackout! I even dug this album a lot even though it sounded very much the same as the previous album. I don’t go back to listen to Blackout much anymore, maybe that’s a shame, cause it sounds real good!

TITLE: Crumblin' Down
BAND: John Cougar Mellencamp
ALBUM: Uh-Huh
YEAR: 1983
LENGTH: 3:36
DID YOU KNOW: He has sold over 40 million albums worldwide and has amassed 22 Top 40 hits in the United States. In addition, he holds the record for the most tracks by a solo artist to hit number-one on the Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, with seven, and has been nominated for 13 Grammy Awards, winning one.

Then there’s artists who don’t want to conform to the top 40 standards of their times but that just makes them bigger than ever! Somebody please tell me Mellencamp knew this was blow up as big as it did when he decided to strip his sound back to this? I liked it and I don’t think he ever matched this albums quality again...

TITLE: She's A Beauty
BAND: The Tubes
ALBUM: Inside Outside
YEAR: 1983
LENGTH: 4:00
DID YOU KNOW: Show business excess was a common theme of the band's early work, with Waybill sometimes assuming the onstage persona of "Quay Lewd" (a pun on Quaalude), a drunk, drugged out, barely coherent lead singer, wearing flashing glasses and stilt-like tall platform shoes.

So what do you do when you’re searching for a hit? You hire David Foster as your producer and voila! But in this case the bands too cool to make their hit too corny, no not The Tubes! The inspiration for the video of this song speaks volumes, do a little research!