Great to be back home! Most of my vacation was spent with family, but I did manage to sneak out to catch Aerosmith along with 22,000 fellow Cheeseheads at Summerfest in Milwaukee. Cheap Trick opened, and was a major disappointment. No show, no real enthusiasm. I don’t know if they thought they were still in front of a reserved Japanese crowd, but they played like it. Aerosmith hit the stage and opened with “Draw The Line”. Steven Tyler showed why he’s one of the greatest front men of all time, as he came out smoking, and made sure he peppered the crowd with F-bombs between the songs. At one point Tyler told all of us, “How you doing Milwaukee, are you F-Ing ready to F-Ing Rock and Roll? F-yeah it’s F-ing great to be at an F-ing Rock and Roll Party!”. Looks like Tyler is ready to lose any cleaning of his image that Idol gave him! The show started out smoking, with Tyler’s vocals dead on, and Joe Perry every bit the guitar player he once was. But the show bogged down a bit with the universal 10 minute drum solo, followed by a mash of new material and deeper album cuts. There was only one encore, that featured Tyler at the piano hammering out “Dream On”, and that was worth the price of admission alone. Curiously, they didn’t play “Rag Doll” or probably their best known hit, “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing”. It was a great show, and everyone of those 22,000 fans got the message loud and clear. Steven Tyler is no longer a TV star, he’s back to Rock and Roll. And he’d probably say F-Yeah!