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BrowardApr 3, 2004Sunrise, FL

Aerosmith Brings Tour to Sunrise and Films Live DVD Footage

Aerosmith turns the Office Depot Center into a live recording studio this Saturday, with camera crews capturing the Sunrise concert for what will become the band's You Gotta Move DVD.

Aerosmith turns the Office Depot Center into a live recording studio this Saturday, with camera crews capturing the Sunrise concert for what will become the band's You Gotta Move DVD. For the thousands of fans filling the arena's seats, the show is both a standard tour stop and a piece of Aerosmith history in the making.

The performance arrives as part of Aerosmith's Honkin' on Bobo tour, which is rolling through American arenas this spring. But the Sunrise date carries a different weight: multiple professional video cameras are positioned around the floor and balcony, recording not just for local TV highlights but for a full commercial DVD release. By the time the house lights come up, the building on Panther Parkway will have become a film set as much as a concert venue.

For Broward County rock fans, the footage gives the evening a layer of significance beyond the usual weekend concert. Attendees know they are watching a show that will be packaged and sold nationwide, with their own reactions and applause mixed into the final product. It is the kind of local connection that makes national releases feel personal — the knowledge that a scene in a Best Buy rack can be traced back to a specific Saturday night in Sunrise.

The Office Depot Center itself has only been open for a few years at this point, but it is already building a reputation as a reliable tour stop for major acts crossing Florida. Its location in western Broward County, near the Sawgrass Mills mall and the Florida Turnpike, makes it accessible from both the Miami and Fort Lauderdale metro areas without requiring a downtown trek. For Aerosmith's management, that geography works: the venue can draw from the entire South Florida region while keeping the band's travel logistics relatively simple.

Inside the arena, the setlist leans on the Honkin' on Bobo blues-rock material along with the classic-rock staples that have kept Aerosmith on radio playlists for decades. Songs like "Dream On," "Walk This Way," and "Sweet Emotion" still draw the loudest crowd responses, but the newer blues covers give the band a chance to show off the raw, unfiltered side that originally defined their sound in the 1970s.

For Piper High students and other Broward teens, an Aerosmith concert at the Office Depot Center is exactly the kind of event that can dominate hallway conversation on Monday morning. The band's age-spanning appeal means that parents who grew up with Toys in the Attic can be in the same arena as kids who know Aerosmith primarily from "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" on late-1990s radio. That generational crossover is part of what makes arena shows in Sunrise feel like countywide gatherings rather than niche fan events.

When the DVD eventually ships, Sunrise will be listed alongside cities like Boston and Los Angeles in the credits — a small line in the packaging that ties a global rock product back to a specific patch of western Broward. For concertgoers in the building tonight, that connection turns a standard souvenir into a personal artifact. For everyone else in South Florida, it is one more reminder that the arena off Sawgrass Expressway has become a place where national tours don't just pass through but sometimes pause to create something permanent.

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