On Jan. 17 at 7:30 p.m., Aerosmith will be throwing another block party at the San Diego Sports Arena. With a 15,000-person capacity packed into the fifth-largest venue of its kind in the country, Aerosmith’s “”Just Push Play”” tour promises to be big.

It all started when drummer Steven Tyler met guitarist Joe Perry in a New Hampshire ice cream parlor. That was the origin of the most popular hard-rock band to emerge from the 1970s and one of the most enduring rock icons in pop culture history. It was the band’s hard and crunchy guitar riffs, the jaunty yet discordant vocals and the bluesy, swaying lyrics of each rock song or soulful ballad that would influence the face of rock ‘n’ roll for decades to come.

The band would survive alcohol and drug abuse, the trials and tribulations of the road and each other, and the daunting test of a 30-year time span of rock god glory. They would fall to the very brink and just when all appeared lost, resurface better than ever in one of the most astonishing comebacks ever seen in the history of rock ‘n’ roll.

Tyler often quotes Hunter Thompson: “”‘The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench.’ Right? ‘A long, plastic highway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.'””

Aerosmith travels that “”long, plastic highway”” as if it were a journey that would never end. By now, many of its members are well into their 40s and 50s. One wonders how long they will manage to keep this up — how they have come this far. To the band, apparently this is no secret.

“”The secret is moving and sweating and purging in your skin,”” Tyler says. “”The largest organ in your body is your skin. You’ve gotta sweat, you gotta let it know you’re alive.””

Whether it be the skin or the music, when considering Aerosmith, the audience has gotta wonder, “”What Kind of Love are You On?””