"pandora’s Box"

Aerosmith's 1991 three-CD box set Pandora's Box has just about everything you could possibly want: hits, demos, rarities, live material, key album tracks, and a booklet packed with classic photos, a bio, and the bandmembers' remembrances of all the tracks. Since the set was released by Columbia, none of their material from the mid-'80s through the early-'90s is featured (Done With Mirrors, Permanent Vacation, and Pump). But the '70s was when this legendary band was at their most raw and rocking best, and Pandora's Box is a superb overview of the group's work from their first self-titled album up until 1982's Rock in a Hard Place. Also included is solo material from Joe Perry and Brad Whitford, as well as an early track from Steven Tyler when he fronted a band called Chain Reaction in the '60s.

Aerosmith's 1991 three-CD box set Pandora's Box has just about everything you could possibly want: hits, demos, rarities, live material, key album tracks, and a booklet packed with classic photos, a bio, and the bandmembers' remembrances of all the tracks…

It makes no bones about it in the packaging so it would be churlish to get upset, but this collection of first album-era stereo mixes and alternate versions is strictly for Procol Harum collectors only. The ten-track CD has previously unissued stereo mixes of five songs from the Procol Harum album; an instrumental version of "Pandora's Box," date of original recording not given (good distorted guitar and organ dueling, though); "previously unissued alternate stereo mixes" of "Wish Me Well," a song from the Shine on Brightly album, and the single "In the Wee Small Hours of Sixpence"; a long version of "Repent Walpurgis," another song that appeared on Procol Harum; and the alternate stereo version of "A Whiter Shade of Pale."