Hamilton's back in the saddle again

If you were expecting Tom Hamilton to take time off, forget it. The Aerosmith bassist, who has spent the better part of a year battling throat cancer, is back on his feet and ready to rock. Tuesday the band is bound for Brazil for a few South American shows and then to Europe for a full-blown summer tour. "The doctors warned me that the treatment would be an ordeal, and it was," said Hamilton, talking for the first time about the tumor detected last May at the base of his tongue. Tonight, as he has for the past several years, Hamilton is taking part in Banned in Boston , the annual madcap musical revue benefiting Urban Improv . An aspiring actor once upon a time, he'll play Borat in the show. (Nothing if not a good sport, Hamilton has also performed as Barbara Bush and Camilla Parker Bowles.) "Part of this is about giving back," he said, "and part of it's about having fun and participating." Talking about the cancer, Hamilton said he was treated at Massachusetts General Hospital for seven weeks last summer, receiving both radiation and chemotherapy. "Initially, I remember thinking, 'This really doesn't go with my plans,' " the fit, 55-year-old rocker joked. "But I was told I'd crash eventually if I tried to keep up my schedule, so I just surrendered." Hamilton, who admits he was in excruc iating pain by the fourth week of radiation, missed several Aerosmith dates last fall -- his first absences since the band got together in 1970. "Something like this really forces you to think how you're going to live without the band, and it's not pleasant," he said. "But then you get little whispers from inside saying, 'It'll be OK.' " For now, Hamilton is cancer-free and focused on the future. "I'm having a good time," he said, getting into his powder-blue Maserati. "I feel good again."

Tom Hamilton's bandmate, Joe Perry, was at T.T. the Bear's the other night when his sons, Adrian and Tony, took the stage. Two-thirds of a band called TAB -- their Duxbury buddy Ben Tileson completes the power trio -- the Perry progeny were playing only their third show. "They've improved 100 percent," said the Aerosmith axman, who watched his sons from the soundboard. "They're doing what they want to do. I haven't given them any advice unless they ask for it." The band rocked a few tunes from their forthcoming disc, "34 Percent Louder," before treating the crowd to high-octane covers of The Who's "My Generation" and Deep Purple's "Highway Star." . . . Just because Warren Beatty says he inspired the Carly Simon song "You're So Vain" doesn't make it so. Earlier this week, a British newspaper quoted Beatty as saying he is the charming cad Carly was singing about in the 1972 hit. But Simon's manager called us yesterday to say this: Maybe Warren's right and maybe he isn't. "It's all just hearsay," said Simon's rep. . . . It's looking more and more like Pops conductor Keith Lockhart and girlfriend Emiley Zalesky are bound for wedded bliss. The couple just bought a house in Brookline together. The 3,525-square-foot home has 10 rooms, including 5 bedrooms and 3 1/2 baths. The price tag? $915,000. . . .

Bummed because the Pats exhibition game in China was postponed? You can still go to the Patriots ProShop and pick up some NFL-approved apparel commemorating the historic game-that-wasn't. The shop at Gillette Stadium is selling several items, including a Tom Brady jersey, that have Chinese numbers and letters.

Normally, when movie stars come to town to flog a film, they're set up in a suite at the Ritz-Carlton or the Four Seasons. Not David Arquette, the writer/director of "The Tripper," an indie film about a group of pot smokers who run into a Ronald Reagan-obsessed slasher. Arquette was at a college bar on Commonwealth Ave. "We're giving away the van we used in the film -- a 1968 Ford Econoline van," said Arquette, who characterized as "outreach" his appearance at Great Scott last night. "We're looking for the ultimate tripper. We're going to give the van to the person who deserves it the most. . . . I don't know if that's legal, but we're doing it." The husband of Courteney Cox -- and brother of Alexis, Patricia, and Rosanna Arquette -- the director said he wrote the screwball script a long time ago. "I got the idea while attending a reggae fest in Northern California," he said. "It got dark, and we were surrounded by all these redwoods, and I just thought, 'Wouldn't it be crazy if a madman came out of the woods right now and started hacking up all these hippies. ' " The film, which stars Lukas Haas, Jason Mewes, and Paul "Pee Wee Herman" Reubens, arrives in select theatres on April 20 -- 4/20, code for marijuana. "4:20 is like pot-smoker's tea time," said Arquette, who confessed to knowing a thing or two about marijuana. Since we were talking to him, we asked Arquette about his wife's much-publicized kiss with Jennifer Aniston on her TV show "Dirt." "It wasn't too hot and heavy," he said, laughing. "And I'm kind of glad it wasn't."

Globe correspondent Steve Morse contributed. Names can be reached at names@globe.com or at 617-929-8253.