THE BAND: Steven Tyler (vocals, piano, harmonica), Joe Perry (guitars), Brad Whitford (guitars), Tom Hamilton (bass), Joey Kramer (drums & percussion).

THE DISC: (2005) 2 discs containing 34 tracks and approximately 158 minutes of music (78:56 on disc-1, 79:48 on disc-2). Included with the discs is an 18-page booklet containing some great band photos (studio and concert pictures), a 9-page brief history of the band, song titles & credits and what songs came from which albums. Songs on "Gold" range from material written from 1985 through their live album "A Little South Of Sanity" in 1998. Label - Geffen.

ALBUM REPRESENTATION: Done With Mirrors (3), Permanent Vacation (6), Pump (6), Get A Grip (6), Big Ones (2), A Little South Of Sanity (4), B-Sides/Misc (7).

COMMENTS: Like many other reviewers here, I too have to raise the question - how many Aerosmith compilations do we really need? As of 2005, I put Steven Tyler and Joe Perry right up there with Kiss' Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley money hungry mits... simply too many (Greatest Hits, Gems, Box Of Fire, Big Ones, O Yeah!, Pandora's Box, Made In America, Young Lust... and now Gold). Though many a negative review here, I'll take the opposite route and point out the good. First and foremost is all the B-Sides and rarities all in one place... "Ain't Enough" (from "Pump" - Japan only release), the Doors' remake of "Love Me Two Times" (soundtrack of "Air America"), "Head First" ("Eat The Rich" - Germany only release), "Don't Stop" (unreleased B-Side), "Can't Stop Messin' (unreleased B-Side), "Deuces Are Wild (soundtrack of "Beavis & Butt-Head Experience"), as well as the 2 previously unreleased songs from "Big Ones" ("Walk On Water" and "Blind Man"), and acoustic/orchestra versions of "Livin' On The Edge" and "Amazing" respectively. "Gold" runs similar to "Young Lust - The Aerosmith Anthology" (2001), but I'll take this one due to these special hard-to-find tracks. Keep in mind also - this is a GEFFEN release - anything they did with Columbia is not here (which is all their classic 70's material and anything from "Nine Lives" or "Just Push Play")... for contractual reasons. I have all of Aerosmith's studio albums on disc, but never took the plunge on a compilation of theirs... simply because I loved all their albums so thoroughly. I looked over the other Aero compilations - and went with "Gold" fairly easily. If you want a best of package to compliment this one, go with "Greatest Hits" or "Gems" which is strictly their 70's material. The only thing I disagree with is in the cd booklet where the author writes "Some things get better with age... Aerosmith rocks harder after 30 years in the business"... well, the band certainly still rocks, but I honestly don't think they rock as HARD as they did in the 70's. As far as track selection goes - the songs taken from the above mentioned studio albums are pretty much dead on (in my opinion missing only "Flesh", "Magic Touch" and Hoodoo Voodoo - Medicine Man") ...overall great track selections (4.5 stars).

This is a repackage of "Young Lust" (which I don't think did well due to "O Yeah" being released the same year), which is good if you like the "Permanent Vacation" to "Get a Grip" era. They went back to Sony/Columbia for "Just Push Play", "9 Lives" and "Honkin On Bobo" and the song they did for "Armageddon" won't be here....

The only good thing about this are the alternates and b-sides. I think if you have "Pandora's Box" this one is a good supplement to it. But everything from mid-90s on would be left out...

"O Yeah" is still the most comprehensive and has the best of both labels.

I think Geffen (the label that sued Neil Young for not sounding like Neil Young when he was on the label) would've been better off putting out the videos on DVD and rereleasing "Big Ones" as a combo CD/DVD as well as the MTV "Unplugged" they did.

The music's still good, but the fact that it's a repackage of a CD that wasn't released that long ago takes this one down a few pegs.

Fans of Aeromsmith may notice that the track listing on this album looks conspicuously like that of a greatest hits collection, "Young Lust: The Aerosmith Anthology," released less than four years ago and now conveniently unavailable at a discounted price. Perhaps unaware that the lack of sales in the previously collection was most likely related to the release of yet another Aerosmith greatest hits album in 2002 by Columbia, Geffen Records has slapped a new cover and title on the 2001 anthology and rereleased it, presumably hoping to sucker a few fans into buying a new copy. Fortunately, it appears to be near the bottom of Amazon's CD sales rankings as of this review (I only came across it because Amazon's algorithms put it on the home page for me), and that is precisely where it should stay.

Oh, the actual musical content warrants four stars, by the way. But who really cares at this point?

I don't want to overwhelm anybody with a lot of unnecessary babbling, so please, bear with me: this is a REPACKAGING of a previous compilation called "Young Lust" released in 2001, which focused on the "Geffen Years 1985-1997", meaning by that that the compilation includes songs from "Done with Mirrors" (1985), "Permanent Vacation" (1987), "Pump" (1989), "Get a Grip" (1993), "Big Ones" (1994, Greatest Hits package) and "A little south of sanity" (1997, live album). This one has THE EXACT SAME SONGS as "Young Lust", but with a MAJOR difference (the change in the cover notwithstanding): the price. It's probably half the price of the original. And please, please, bear in mind the following: THIS IS NOT, I REPEAT, NOT A GREATEST HITS PACKAGE!!!

It is an anthology, so it features A LOT of material that NEVER made it to the radio. If you're looking for the "hits" and nothing but the hits of that era, you need to get "Big Ones". But if you're interested in digging deeper into that period of the band's career, AND THAT PERIOD EXCLUSIVELY, then go ahead and get this: my guess is that you'll be pleasantly surprised by some of the songs included here, most of which have been overlooked, such as the material from "...Mirrors" (some of my fav overall), some non-album tracks (the cover of The Doors "Love me two times", tracks only previously available on singles and/or imports, such as "Can't stop Messin'", "Head First", etc) and some live tracks (good renditions of "Dream On", "Sweet Emotion").

Bottom Line:
- if you're a die hard, 70's Aerosmith fan: sorry, this compilation is probably not going to cut it for you. Get "O Yeah Ultimate Hits!" instead.
- if you're an Aerosmith completist: by all means, get this!! You'll find all of their latter day hits, and a few nuggets as well.
- if you're a casual fan: avoid this. It is probably a little too "complete" for you, since quite a bit of the material included will not be familiar to you. Get "Big Ones" or "O Yeah Ultimate Hits" instead.

I bought this expecting a decent Greatest Hits-type collection. With Aerosmith lately cranking out at least two "Best Ofs" per year (and they started back as early as 1980 with Best of Aerosmith!) I now wish I had purchased "O Yeah! The Greatest Hits" because "Gold" (released through Geffen) is pretty much just a bunch of their recent popular stuff, with a few older songs but none of the truly great ones. The fact that "Walk This Way" is not included in its original form, but with the more popular mainstream Run-DMC remix, is suiting.

What maddens me the most is that Aerosmith (or their labels) are really milking fans now - I mean, O Yeah is released, then this, and we have yet to even see a new album in between.

I'm not saying this is a totally worthless CD; it isn't. It has some good songs. But really, it's good for fans - if I were new to Aerosmith, I don't think this collection would really grab my interest or turn me on to their music.