Singles 45's and Under: Aerosmith - Uncle Salty

Aerosmith began as a single for me.

“Dream On” to be exact, released a few years after it appeared on the debut.

Released when the iron was hot after the release of Toys In The Attic, “Dream On” was all over the radio that year. The flip side was another song off of the debut, “Somebody.”

I liked both songs enough to pick up another single, this time “Walk This Way.”

As awesome as it is, I was also drawn to the flip side, “Uncle Salty.” Sometimes a friend from the neighborhood would come over to my house when the weather was bad and we’d fart around and look for things to do. A favorite for me was “Uncle Salty,” where I’d put a lot of emphasis on the creepy line “Oooh, it’s a sunny day outside my window” of the chorus.

It wasn’t until college that I actually bought the full-length of Toys In The Attic. A guy I knew at college suddenly found God in the form of a girl who was herself a heavy Christian.

Evidently, she pulled out an ultimatum, telling him that his extensive collection of rock and roll cds had to be reduced, particularly the ones she felt were immoral.

Now all of this was explained to me by this guy, who went on to offer me the unbelievable price of $4 a cd if I wanted to help remove some of the offending titles.

I chose Aerosmith’s Get Yer Wings, Toys In The Attic, and Queensryche’s Operation: Mindcrime.

I also bought a couple of Marillion 12” singles.

He asked if he could buy those back a few months later. When I asked him why he had a change of heart, he went on to explain that the Christian girl when back with her boyfriend, leaving my acquaintance in the cold.

In retrospect, I probably should have offered to return the 12” Marillion singles. He liked them more than I ever did and he probably needed them more too.

But I wanted to teach him a lesson to not discount the music that fueled his experiences, and for him to cheapen it because of a girl’s lame brain idea or to demonstrate that the music doesn’t hold power over him was ludicrous.

He also drove a Yugo.

We didn’t speak much after that, but I have a strange suspicion that he’s probably right where I left him a few decades before: still in the basement of his parent’s home.

Check out the rip of The Beatles "I Want To Tell You" in it.