Captain Ed’s AOTM for July – Boston
So my first go-round for album of the month was a bit of a cheater, in that it was a compilation album. That’s okay, it’s where my head was last month and I have no regrets. This month, the album is CONSIDERABLY shorter, but hails from a similar time period, near “peak Bee Gees.” The album is the self-titled debut by BOSTON, released in August 1976. Now, I was only SIX when this album came out, so it would be some years before I heard anything more than just the radio singles from time to time, but it is a vitally important album for a few reasons.
Boston was the brainchild of MIT graduate and full-time corporate engineer at Polaroid (the instant camera people), Tom Scholz. Scholz was largely doing music as a hobby, but was obsessed with “crafting the perfect song.” His education fueled his desire to advance and perfect recording techniques, eventually leading him to create SRD (Scholz Research & Development), the company responsible for the “Rockman” line of products. The first headphone amp, called the Rockman (a play on Sony’s Walkman line of music players), was what I took off to college with me in the fall of 1988 so I could keep playing guitar without upsetting roommates or others on the dorm floor. His “Octoplus” product allowed for MIDI control of non-MIDI gear, and was a staple of my rig from the early 90s until I got my first modeler, the Pod HD500 in maybe 2010 or so. The Octoplus allowed my MIDI foot controller to change my very non-MIDI amp from clean to dirty channels for my different presets in my effects unit (Roland GP-16).
Anyway, Tom spent years building a home studio in his basement, writing, recording, and rerecording songs to make them “more perfecter.” This obsession would bite him in the ass later, but for now, it made for compelling music. Tom recruited several local musicians in his contact lists to do things he didn’t feel capable of doing justice to on his own. He brought in Barry Goudreau to play some lead guitar and Bradley Delp for vocals. Delp had a staggering range and an impossibly clean vocal tone and was truly gifted.
Interestingly, since at the time Boston wasn’t really a “band,” they never played a gig together. Ever up to that point, I think. When Epic records signed them to a record deal, they made it conditional that the band had to perform a showcase, to prove that Boston wasn’t “just a mad scientist in his basement.” Scholz and Delp pulled their friends together and did the show in a warehouse for the record executives. Still technically not a gig.
And the album has, to date, sold in excess of 25 million copies around the world.
Listen carefully to the chorus of album opener More than a Feeling, and you might recognize the chord progression from “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Peace of Mind is pure hippie anti-corporate talk with Scholz shaking his fist at his bosses at Polaroid, where he still worked full-time until giving his two-week notice shortly before the album went gold.
Foreplay is a glorious intro to proggy stuff, with a dominating Hammond B3 organ that lets you know that no matter how ahead of its time this album is sonically, it’s writing and performances are firmly rooted in the 1970s. I love the bass tone here. The segue into Long Time features what is probably my very favorite lead guitar tone of all time – it’s just so BUTTER and a try to recreate it all the time, and never get there.
Rock and Roll Band is “the dream,” going from empty clubs to the World Stage, the fame and the glory and everything. I always thought it was "their story," written after they got signed and were putting the album together, but no - it was written years earlier as a dream. You can hear the frustration of that dream in the line "when we got up on stage and got ready to play, everybody listened." See, when you're starting out and playing shitholes, that's the part that's most disheartening - of the few people that are there in the club, very few are even paying attention to you pouring your heart out. It sucks.
The back end of the album is a lot more mellow overall, but the songs remain wonderfully crafted and performed. Delp co-wrote Smokin and has sole songwriting on Let Me Take You Home Tonight. Smokin' has a great, open guitar part under the organ solo that makes for great dynamics in the song. Hitch a Ride has a killer outro solo and just - like the rest of the album - staggeringly good melodies and harmonies. Let Me Take You Home Tonight starts mellow and gets pretty rousing, a solid end to the album. Clocking in at less than 40 minutes, this is about how long albums ran back then. More than 45-48 minutes was difficult for machines of the time to press into vinyl.
Eventually, Sholz was sued (unsuccessfully) by his own record company for taking too long to make records. While the follow-up album “Don’t Look Back” came out just two years later in 1978, Scholz obsession with improving sound engineering delayed the third album, “Third Stage,” until 1986. The 8 year delay was NOT looked on favorably, but Scholz argued that he should be allowed to make the album sound as good as possible, and he won. Later Boston albums sounded quite sterile, as Scholz had realized that the biggest problem with sound quality was microphones, and he worked tirelessly to end the idea of dropping a mic in a room for ANYTHING except vocals. I caught Boston on tour for Third Stage in late 1987 or so. I don’t remember much about it, honestly, but that just means that while they didn’t blow me away, they also didn’t suck.
Scholz is still tinkering, occasionally releasing a new album, but the fire is gone. Nothing they did since or will do will ever top that first album, a true gem. He also made his mark elsewhere in music, pioneering some recording techniques and equipment and, I believe, creating the first amp modeler, in the Rockman. Unfortunately, singer Brad Delp ran a hose from the tailpipe of his car and killed himself by carbon monoxide poisoning in 2007. He was 55.
Give the album a spin and let me know what you think of one of the biggest albums of the 70s. The sounds, the tones, the production, the writing - whatever. Let me have it!
So my first go-round for album of the month was a bit of a cheater, in that it was a compilation album. That’s okay, it’s where my head was last month and I have no regrets. This month, the album is CONSIDERABLY shorter, but hails from a similar time period, near “peak Bee Gees.” The album is the self-titled debut by BOSTON, released in August 1976. Now, I was only SIX when this album came out, so it would be some years before I heard anything more than just the radio singles from time to time, but it is a vitally important album for a few reasons.
Boston was the brainchild of MIT graduate and full-time corporate engineer at Polaroid (the instant camera people), Tom Scholz. Scholz was largely doing music as a hobby, but was obsessed with “crafting the perfect song.” His education fueled his desire to advance and perfect recording techniques, eventually leading him to create SRD (Scholz Research & Development), the company responsible for the “Rockman” line of products. The first headphone amp, called the Rockman (a play on Sony’s Walkman line of music players), was what I took off to college with me in the fall of 1988 so I could keep playing guitar without upsetting roommates or others on the dorm floor. His “Octoplus” product allowed for MIDI control of non-MIDI gear, and was a staple of my rig from the early 90s until I got my first modeler, the Pod HD500 in maybe 2010 or so. The Octoplus allowed my MIDI foot controller to change my very non-MIDI amp from clean to dirty channels for my different presets in my effects unit (Roland GP-16).
Anyway, Tom spent years building a home studio in his basement, writing, recording, and rerecording songs to make them “more perfecter.” This obsession would bite him in the ass later, but for now, it made for compelling music. Tom recruited several local musicians in his contact lists to do things he didn’t feel capable of doing justice to on his own. He brought in Barry Goudreau to play some lead guitar and Bradley Delp for vocals. Delp had a staggering range and an impossibly clean vocal tone and was truly gifted.
Interestingly, since at the time Boston wasn’t really a “band,” they never played a gig together. Ever up to that point, I think. When Epic records signed them to a record deal, they made it conditional that the band had to perform a showcase, to prove that Boston wasn’t “just a mad scientist in his basement.” Scholz and Delp pulled their friends together and did the show in a warehouse for the record executives. Still technically not a gig.
And the album has, to date, sold in excess of 25 million copies around the world.
Listen carefully to the chorus of album opener More than a Feeling, and you might recognize the chord progression from “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Peace of Mind is pure hippie anti-corporate talk with Scholz shaking his fist at his bosses at Polaroid, where he still worked full-time until giving his two-week notice shortly before the album went gold.
Foreplay is a glorious intro to proggy stuff, with a dominating Hammond B3 organ that lets you know that no matter how ahead of its time this album is sonically, it’s writing and performances are firmly rooted in the 1970s. I love the bass tone here. The segue into Long Time features what is probably my very favorite lead guitar tone of all time – it’s just so BUTTER and a try to recreate it all the time, and never get there.
Rock and Roll Band is “the dream,” going from empty clubs to the World Stage, the fame and the glory and everything. I always thought it was "their story," written after they got signed and were putting the album together, but no - it was written years earlier as a dream. You can hear the frustration of that dream in the line "when we got up on stage and got ready to play, everybody listened." See, when you're starting out and playing shitholes, that's the part that's most disheartening - of the few people that are there in the club, very few are even paying attention to you pouring your heart out. It sucks.
The back end of the album is a lot more mellow overall, but the songs remain wonderfully crafted and performed. Delp co-wrote Smokin and has sole songwriting on Let Me Take You Home Tonight. Smokin' has a great, open guitar part under the organ solo that makes for great dynamics in the song. Hitch a Ride has a killer outro solo and just - like the rest of the album - staggeringly good melodies and harmonies. Let Me Take You Home Tonight starts mellow and gets pretty rousing, a solid end to the album. Clocking in at less than 40 minutes, this is about how long albums ran back then. More than 45-48 minutes was difficult for machines of the time to press into vinyl.
Eventually, Sholz was sued (unsuccessfully) by his own record company for taking too long to make records. While the follow-up album “Don’t Look Back” came out just two years later in 1978, Scholz obsession with improving sound engineering delayed the third album, “Third Stage,” until 1986. The 8 year delay was NOT looked on favorably, but Scholz argued that he should be allowed to make the album sound as good as possible, and he won. Later Boston albums sounded quite sterile, as Scholz had realized that the biggest problem with sound quality was microphones, and he worked tirelessly to end the idea of dropping a mic in a room for ANYTHING except vocals. I caught Boston on tour for Third Stage in late 1987 or so. I don’t remember much about it, honestly, but that just means that while they didn’t blow me away, they also didn’t suck.
Scholz is still tinkering, occasionally releasing a new album, but the fire is gone. Nothing they did since or will do will ever top that first album, a true gem. He also made his mark elsewhere in music, pioneering some recording techniques and equipment and, I believe, creating the first amp modeler, in the Rockman. Unfortunately, singer Brad Delp ran a hose from the tailpipe of his car and killed himself by carbon monoxide poisoning in 2007. He was 55.
Give the album a spin and let me know what you think of one of the biggest albums of the 70s. The sounds, the tones, the production, the writing - whatever. Let me have it!
Last edited:
(at approx 0:30)
Thanks Ed!
absolutely adore this one Captain ! One of Dad’s favorites ! Many road trips growing up this bad boy was in the cassette player ! (Image included for all the youngin’s 
I wonder why. After your comment I noticed the Spotify album songs are arranged in a totally different order than the old cassette tapes. This is going to aggravate me now lol
Still owing The Ultimate Bee Gees my review but I hope I have the time to finish writing both of them this week 
