With so many bands, genres, eras, and songs out there it is hard to choose The one favorite band or artist. To narrow it down for me it would be best to first say that my favorite types of music are Country and Classic Rock. After this being said my choices have largely decreased. Now I could choose from Journey, Guns n Roses, ACDC, Foreigner, Elvis Presley, Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, Keith Urban, George Straight and many more. But it doesn’t take much thought to choose that one band that stands out more than any of them in my mind and that is Boston. After just typing that word I immediately imagine an electric guitar breaking out in the solo from More Than A Feeling. What can I say? There is just something magical about a solo hitting every note perfectly, feeling the room with sounds bouncing off the walls into my ears while my ear drums scream. Immediately I want to close my eyes and rock out on my own air guitar.
The first time heard Boston I was in the middle of my all Classic Rock phase and my father and I cruised up to our house when Peace Of Mind started playing on The Eagle. I had learned that my father listened to Classic Rock when he was growing up and when immediately I wanted to learn as many songs as I could to impress him. Soon after I downloaded a surplus of Classic Rock songs my motivation suddenly changed to just an enjoyment for the music. While we were listening to Peace Of Mind my father said that it was Boston who played this song and it was is favorite band growing up. I thought, “Well, so far he has great taste in music so I will check them out.” I did and to my surprise every song that I listened to was enjoyable. This is usually not the case with me. Sometimes I will like a song when I first listen to it but usually I really start to like a song when I’ve heard it several times and have learned some lyrics. This wasn’t the case with Boston. With every song I could immediately sit back and just enjoy every bit of it: the vocals, the instruments, the solos, the lyrics–all of it.
The first thing that stood out to me the first time I heard Boston was the vocals. I never knew that someone could actually sing with a pitch that high before. It was beyond anything that I had ever heard and yet it was still fun to listen to. Boston is one of those band that anyone can have a blast rocking out to but make sure that track doesn’t stop because as soon as it does everones incapacity to sing anything like these vocals will show. This isn’t a bash on the singer but simply props to the vocalists of Boston. Then comes the background singers. This is nothing short of a grand choir harmonizing and amazingly keeping up with the lead singers.
After the initial shock of the vocals, the way these songs were put together amazed me. First you would hear an awesome electric, followed my an explosion of drums and then…an organ? Yep, an organ. And it works too. And then the syncopation that keeps it all interesting. Each song has extreme vamping that gives the vocalist an opportunity to really show off. After all of this bombardment with awesome music comes my favorite part of every Boston song–the solo. At this point I grit my teeth, sneer my nose, wrap my arms around my air guitar, get ready at this time of silence, and perfectly synchronized with the first rumble of Barry Goudreau’s guitar my whole body comes crashing down on my chords playing along with him. What a rush.
Along with all the great instruments and vocalists the lyrics are something to mention. Good lyrics often are hard to find. In my generation most pop lyrics consist of sex, drugs, busty women, money—mostly material self seeking things. Boston took a very different approach. The song that sticks out in my head is Peace of Mind. This song talks about how people of today are obsessed with climbing to the top and being the best. The song promotes forgetting about those things in our life that don’t matter and seeking peace of mind. This kind of song has substance. It’s inspiring, enlightening. I like to listen to songs that are going to be beneficial to my character and listening to songs that solely exist so the singer can brag that they have 6 BMW’s, a 15 room mansion, diamond rings on each finder, and a necklace that spins. Yeah, they may have a catchy beat and are fun to sing but why not have the best of both worlds. With Boston you can rock out and be edified all at the same time.
Boston has had an odd history compared to other great bands. The band was brought together by Tom Scholz, an engineering graduate that worked at Polaroid. They put their first album, Boston, out in 1976 and didn’t put another album out until 1978, Don’t Look Back. The next album would take even longer–Third Stage in 1986. Then there was another eight years until their next album–Walk On. This whole time the relationships between the band members were disintegrating with lawsuits with back royalties plaguing the situation. Through all of this they were still able to create wonderful music.
Discovering Boston was one of the greatest music moments of my lifetime. It transformed what Classic Rock is to me and what good music is all together. Unfortunately for all other musicians, I now have a higher standard of what good music is. Like all bands, they unfortunately had to hang up their guitars and put their drum sticks in the drawer but not without leaving us great albums to enjoy for a lifetime.
Journey to the Heavenly Country 
Brad Delp – the guy who did all of those vocal tracks, actually – recently passed away, and it looks like plans for their new album were/have been put on hold, but there was an album put out in 2006. It had Brad Delp and Tom Scholz (who have always been the core of the group, in a lot of ways), Fran Cosmo, and Gary Pihl, as well as some new guys, including Fran’s son Anthony and a bassist named Kimberly Dahme. The album was called Corporate America, and while it’s got a wide range of different stuff – there’s an acoustic number, and a couple of attempts to fit in to what rock was doing at the time – there’s still a good bit of that classic Boston sound.
Sorry for all that, but I thought you might want to know. They’re one of my all-time favorites, too.
“With Boston you can rock out and be edified all at the same time.”
Heh. What a great line. My dad was all about things that edified.
I like Boston but haven’t played much air guitar to their music. I enjoyed how you incorporated your dad and your assumption that his taste in music would be bad. Most kids feel that way about their parents’ music.
This whole post had an air of authenticity. By the time I finished, I could picture you and your air guitar.