I caught the Permanent Vacation tour twice and the Pump tour once; haven't seen them live since. But those shows were fantastic, and I've watched a lot of concert footage from the 90s / 2000s. Once they sobered up, they turned into a monster live act -- tight, polished, but still raw & dirty. Live recordings from their drug days were definitely raw & dirty, but also sloppy in a bad way, especially Steven's vocals. He was hitting unbelievable notes live from the late 80s on -- that last verse of "Draw the Line," for instance; yikes.
But I'll always prefer their 70s material over what came later. Permanent Vacation was a fine comeback, and I still enjoy "Heart's Done Time," "Hangman Jury," and a couple of others. Nothing really grabbed me about much of anything that came after, at least not the radio/MTV hits. I haven't dug deep enough to judge all of it, there may be some good album cuts that I'm just not familiar with.
Everyone knows the big hits from Aerosmith's 70s albums, but the first four all have great album cuts as well. Particularly recommended:
Debut album: "One Way Street." That swing, and those guitars, both Brad (first lead) & Joe (second lead).
Get Your Wings: "Woman of the World," "S.O.S. (Too Bad)," "Seasons of Wither." "Seasons of Wither" especially -- nice long slow build in mood.
Toys in the Attic: "No More No More."
Rocks: My all-time favorite Aerosmith record. "Combination," "Sick as a Dog," and "Nobody's Fault" are solid deep cuts. "Sick as a Dog" was recorded live, in an interesting way - Joe Perry played bass on most of it, with Tom (bass player) on rhythm guitar -- but then during that little breakdown toward the end, Joe handed the bass to Steven to play on the outro, picked up a guitar, and came in with that smoking double-stop outro lead (which reminds me of the outro lead on "No More No More," lots of heavy-Chuck-Berry stuff). "Nobody's Fault" may be the heaviest song Aerosmith ever did -- Testament recorded a pretty decent cover of it.