CD Review- Aerosmith: Castle Kings 1994

Another CD review? Zoinks!

What you see pictured above is the cover of a live bootleg by Aerosmith recorded back in June 1994 as Aerosmith headlined the yearly Castle Donnington Festival in England.

Get A Grip was a long tour that stretched from April 93 to December 94. I was fortunate to have caught this tour about 5 shows in when the tour hit Minneapolis. It was fantastic so when I came across this bootleg here in Thunder Bay here in early 95 It was a quick grab.

St James was a local record shop here in Thunder Bay and they would get bootlegs in so…

Aero up to that point had not really released many live albums. The 80s brought those two Classics Live records but I wasn’t really too fond of them so for me it always comes down to Aero’s  Live Bootleg (1978) which is the ultimate live experience committed to vinyl as far as I’m concerned.

Back then buying bootlegs back was a gamble. The only thing I would consider buying a bootleg was long as it was recorded from the soundboard. If it was an audience recording forget it. I don’t need to hear some fella hollering a bunch of jibberish in an arena.

Castle Kings is a soundboard recording and features 22 songs and as you can see by the back cover track listing there’s a split of MTV Aero and Pre MTV Aero.

Get A Grip I thought was a decent enough album. Perhaps a few songs too many on it but overall it had some stellar tracks like Eat The Rich, Living On The Edge, Fever to name but a few.

Once I saw the 70’s material on Castle Kings like Toys In The Attic, Rats In The Cellar I was hooked but it was those rarely played tracks like Kings And Queens and especially Bright Light Fright that had me sold.

Both of those tracks come from the Draw The Line album and Kings And Queens has the Aerotrain kinda going off the tracks somewhat at the start with the guitars but they pull it together. You hear it for your self below… Crank it!

Bright Light Fright is rarely if ever played so to hear Joe Perry singing the lead vocal is cool (he also sang Walk On Down right after as well). BLF is a barnstorming good time hard-driving sax rock track.  Crank this mutha below…

That’s the great thing about boots. This is the band 100% live.  No dicking about in the studio. Warts n All.

Even the packaging for this disc looks pro.

I did take a look online to see what this disc is going for today and it’s still selling anywhere between $40- 50 American!

A pretty good snapshot of Aerosmith during there huge early 90s success.