Aerosmith – Angel:
We all know how cheesy this song is right? Good because that’s probably the reason why I love this oft hated Aerosmith song. I mean Steven Tyler prancing around singing about how he misses his girl and she’s his angel, maybe she would’ve stayed if he didn’t have a sex addiction problem. So why am I writing about this song? Well, it reminds of one of the few school dances I went to. In all twelve years of elementary, middle and high school I went to a total of three dances, one in sixth grade, one in middle school (I don’t even remember) and one in high school. I’ve gone to a few dances in college; who knew you could still have awkward dances in college?
So I remember my first dance, I was in sixth grade, New Durham Elementary, in the gym I think? I think the DJ even ended the night with Stairway to Heaven, as if a bunch of eleven year olds understand the awesome power of Led Zeppelin (not many twenty-somethings understand the awesome power of Led Zeppelin). I don’t remember many songs, but I remember Angel, why? Because I danced with a girl (and in the end it’s always about a girl), it’s the only slow dance I remember of the night (I’m sure I danced with a few lovely ladies) but I danced with Grace (I’m pretty sure, I’m gonna go with yes). We had been friends since first grade and it’s weird slow dancing to a song that well let’s face it we didn’t understand the lyrics to. “Where do I put my hands?” “Do we kiss?” (We didn’t, that I recall.) All kinds of questions run through your head because not long before this dance we had started learning, sometimes the hard way (no pun intended) about puberty. Girls had boobs and the girls with the bigger boobs (or had them at all), even then, got more attention (not much changes). Now I won’t say that I’ve never noticed girls, I’ve always liked the ladies and they’ve always liked me… as a friend. I do vaguely remember sitting at a computer in sixth grade talking to a girl named Nicole and realizing that she had boobs and had yet to learn to wear a bra and not wear button up shirts, but I digress. So there I am eleven year old, completely freaking adorable me is being asked to dance by a girl I’ve known since first grade and (no offense Grace) had absolutely no interest in (it would totally be Tara for pretty much all of middle school and high school, though I don’t think she knew until she was my nurse when I was twenty-one and under the influence of anesthesia proclaimed my love for her) and Grace is asking me to dance to dance to Aerosmith, my second favorite band of that time period. (Let’s be honest I had a small music collection at the time, Garth Brooks, The Lion King Soundtrack, Green Day “Dookie” and Aerosmith “Big Ones” my choices for favorite band were limited and my big revelation [The Beatles] were still a year away.) My voice had not dropped, I don’t even think it had cracked by that point, I had no idea what to do and frankly I still don’t when it comes to dancing or girls. I don’t remember much of the dance, I’m sure it was probably pretty awkward and maybe Grace doesn’t even remember it, I am known to remember weird things and of course this is related to music after all.
So lets back track a little bit, here’s a little band history (I’m keeping it short). Aerosmith is a “Boston” band and by Boston I mean Sunapee, NH (Okay it really was Boston, but Tyler and Perry both met in Sunapee). By the late seventies they probably could’ve be considered The Junior Rolling Stones (I’d say they did more drugs, but lets face it Keith Richards could out snort both Steve and Joe) and they ended the decade and started the 80’s on a mostly down note. Somehow they all got cleaned up (riiiighhhhhttttt) and released a bunch of pop/hard rock records in the mid to late 80’s and early 90’s that they are almost primarily known for now. Classics such as Dude Looks Like A Lady, Amazing, Janie’s Got a Gun and other such hits were not the blues-rock thunder of Walk this Way or Sweet Emotion, they’re more in the vain of Dream On (to which Joe Perry absolutely hates, reportedly, though I’m sure he loves the royalty check he gets from the song) power ballads, it was what every sensible hard rock band did in the mid-80’s. Angel might as well be Aerosmith’s Every Rose Has it’s Thorn for all the upmf it lacks by a once mighty, hard rocking band. Here I am twenty-seven years old, watching the video (that I never even knew existed) on youtube and finding that it’s just as cheesy as I remember. And yet in that little whine “You’re my aaaannnggeellllllll, come and save me tonight…” I apparently loved even at eleven years old, proving that I’ve always been a pop music whore.
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