Welcome to the Week of EPs! No sooner do I finish the Record Stores Tales before I’m off on yet another series! Each day this week, I’ll be checking out a variety of EP releases, both famed and obscure. Let’s start with a major band: Aerosmith.
AEROSMITH – The Other Side (1990 Geffen EP)
The first time I bought this, it was on cassette in a mall in Calgary, Alberta in August of 1990. I also bought Judas Priest’s Hero Hero at the same store, also on cassette. A completist even then, there was no way I was leaving without The Other Side. Of all my finds on that trip, this one I had never seen before. I later replaced it on CD while working at the Record Store.
The Pump CD is a great album, probably my favourite. The two songs from Pump that are on this single are “My Girl” and “The Other Side”, neither of which are really as great as the rest of Pump. That’s in my opinion; “The Other Side” was a popular hit. Notably, “The Other Side” lacks its intro, “Dulcimer Stomp” which may make it interesting for some.
The CD also has two useless remixes of “The Other Side”. The “Matt Dike ‘Honky Tonk’ Version” is just as offensive as the “Club Mix”. Maybe the Matt Dike version is slightly less offensive, but the added backing vocals and dance vibe is just crap. Neither mix adds anything of value to the song, but they are dragged out to 5:09 (Matt Dike mix) and an agonizing 7:04 (Club mix).
The main track that I bought the disc for was “Theme from ‘Wayne’s World'”. I actually had no idea what Wayne’s World was, although my cousin Geoff apparently did. Back then, I wondered what the hell this was. There were no liner notes to help either. This track is a mere 1:29, and it’s a straight up recording of the Saturday Night Live performance by Aerosmith of that song. I didn’t give a shit, I love it now. Perfect filler for the end of a mix CD!
Since this CD consists of two album tracks, two pointless remixes and a 1:29 song, you must be sure not to pay too much for it. As a kid I rarely played it, and the same can be said of the adult version of me.
2/5 stars
mikeladano.com 
Party on, Wayne!
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Party on, Garth!
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Get the net!
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Cha! Right!
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Not an album I rated at all, but I quite liked My Girl & Other Side – does this make me the Anti-mike?
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It depends on how you feel about Janie…which I am so sick of I could puke.
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So funny as I sat here and read this, that was the song that my brain’s playlist coughed up!
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How many gigs is your brain’s playllist? That thing must be getting full!
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No I’ll happily puke alongside you to that one!
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I didn’t always hate it…I acknowledge that the lyrics were a big deal at the time. But man that song got old fast. And I’m sure they still fucking play it live.
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My brain is an endless source of music, on demand. I am my own iPod. I can run entire albums no problem in my big ol’ skull, but I probably couldn’t tell you anything of importance to the rest of the world unless I sat down and gave it a serious think.
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I sometimes wonder what my brain would be doing if I didn’t fill it with music. Maybe I would be the guy to invent warp engines, who knows. Too late for me now. I’m hooked on rock and roll.
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Me, if I didn’t have constant music in my head? I’d probably spend all day thinking about bewwbs bewbs bewbs bewbs bewwwwbs.
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Well, there’s those too!
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BAHAHA! Bewbs!
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They’re everywhere.
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Bought this as well on one of my Winnipeg jaunts like u for the Wayne’s World song!
On cassette as well….
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There ya go! Two cassette owners who bought it for a 1:30 track.
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Did it appear on the CD later, or was that a cassette-exclusive track?
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CD and cassette were simultaneous but I never saw it on CD back then.
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Ah see, if I had just looked at the picture of the back cover, where it says Compact Disc, I could have answered my own question. Le sigh.
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LeBrain is nothing if not helpful with his pictures! I do try to be generous in that regard. NO SHITE PHOTIES.
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Hooray for Eep Week!
I tended to stay away from EPs like this. I really just don’t like remixes, especially Dance Club screw-ups. It always seemed to me like, “well, we had all these different versions of this song, and we chose one for the album, but just in case we made the wrong choice here are a few more. And if you like one of these better, we sure will try to sell you more tracks like THAT in the future because we go which way the money goes.”
Cynical? Haha maybe.
Wayne’s World! Party On! Excellent!
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I didn’t exactly pick a “winner” to start this week did I? Well there was no rhyme or reason to that, just wanted an interesting band.
Remixes are filler 98% of the time.
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Well, Aero is one of those bands that has done so much good stuff, it’s hard to stay mad at them when they cough up a hairball.
Remixes. Generally – ugh. Almost an insult to the fans. Like, here, we’ve got this album track some of you might like, but instead of throwing in a couple of other tracks that didn’t make the album, we’ve got these DJs (turntableists hahaha oh my sides) who put all sorts of crap all over it so the tune is barely recognizable! So lng and thanks for all your money!
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Agree with all of this.
And yes it’s hard to say mad when they cough up a hairball, especially bad then. But as a fan I’ve grown to expect very little out of remixes, but back then as a kid, I was disappointed!
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I fall somewhere between you and Mr 1537. I liked Other Side but thought My Girl was awful. I guess I’m the Derek Smalls-esque lukewarm water between you guys?
I hope they didn’t blow all of the 10p design budget they had on that cover!
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Lukewarm Scott.
You didn’t like the useless, also meaningless EP cover Scott? :)
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Meaningless? NO WAY! That thing is a conspiracy theorist’s wet dream! Eastern religion mixed with a blindfolded dude (he’s obs ‘justice’) while the third eye stares out from a raised palm? And the moon! ‘Cos we never went there! All floating mysteriously over the sea of our ignorance! Oh, and a hot chick with vaguely middle eastern features and a red face – is she the devil?!?
Man, they could go on for days on this thing. I think this cover says A LOT! [adjusts tin foil hat]
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…And the moon is waning, obvs representative of the fall of our own roman empire over here, and it’s shaped like a scimitar so there’s lots to discuss there. The other side, indeed…”
[prepares diatribe for youtube]
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I’m going to loan you my Jesse Venture conspiracy books to help!
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Honestly, it’s so bad I’m not sure I could have brought myself to buy it. I’d probably have ended up chickening out and buying something less embarrassing instead, like porn and condoms!
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Porn and condoms in that order.
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And every Friday night, switch it up for condoms and porn, in that order.
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The wrestler? He’s a conspiracy guy?
Man, I love reading that stuff. It’s better entertainment than a lot of stuff out there that calls itself comedy.
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Yessir! He’s one of the leaders in the conspiracy field, if you’ll call it that. Several books and a TV series.
I actually do like the books. The series was crap, a waste of time. The books are great and have extensive bibliographies for further research, and I will say, he’s done his research. Even went so far to ask Fidel Castro what he knew about the JFK assassination.
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Haha who knew? Fascinating. My library has one of his books, 63 Documents the government doesn’t want you to read, something like that. I put a request in for their copy. ;)
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I have that one. It’s not as provocative as the title implies, and post-Snowden not all that shocking, but still fun.
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It’s EP week, party time, excellent!
Your cousin Geoff sounds like a wise man :D
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Something about his name, perhaps.
Hey, off topic. My old customer Warren (RIP) had a funny habit of pronouncing it “Gee-off”, not Geoff. He used to refer to the guy from Asia as “Gee-off” Downes. Ever heard that before?
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I’ve likely heard most variations on both first & last names – not an easy one to spell!
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Within the album context those two songs are fine. Taken away from it, not so much. This is the reason I’ve never been into EP’s that are just taken directly off records with no b-sides or outtakes and I’m never one for Dance remixes.
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Yeah agree. Both songs had a place on the album. The Other Side when paired with Dulcimer Stomp opened side two, I think.
So essentially this CD should be bought only for the Wayne’s World song.
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Is it a studio cut or taken right from the show?
Why am I even asking this?
lol
check 1, check1, sibilance, sibilance
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Lol! It’s a remixed track from the SNL audio.
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The Other Side was the first Aerosmith tune I ever really heard (thanks to True Romance) and led me to check out more. This EP doesn’t look like much, though.
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