Boston --- Boston --- 1976
Is it really necessary for me to write about why I love this album? Apart from of course the superhit "More than a feeling", there's the epic "Foreplay/Long time", which satisfies both prog sensibilities with its rambling organ intro and AOR rockers with the second part, soaring guitar and a pounding beat, and then you have tracks like the (literally) "Smokin'", the almost-ballad-but-not "Hitch a ride", the punchy uptempo "Rock and roll band" and the stomping "Peace of mind". The powerful roar, often scream of the late, lamented Brad Delp rises triumphantly over everything and of course Tom Scholz keeps a firm control over everything else, some might say too firm as time went on.
Boston may have become something of a caricature of themselves in recent years (have you
heard "Corporate America"?) but in '76 they could do no wrong. Then they released their second album to resounding yawns and took another eight years to release their third, that point then marking the pattern where they would release an album every, you guessed it, eight years! Hard to keep the interest going over such long gaps, Tom my man! How many people would say, in the interim between 1978 and 1986, "Boston? Haven't they broken up?" They might as well have.
But this was and is a classic album, an example of when Scholz got it just right. "Third stage" almost made it too but possibly due to making fans wait too long, or maybe due to having two tracks which were basically the same song under different names, it didn't shake the world of rock as it should have.
If you don't have this in your collection you should be suitably ashamed. Rectify this error at once. Thank you.
TRACKLISTING
1. More than a feeling
2. Peace of mind
3. Foreplay/Long time
4. Rock and roll band
5. Smokin'
6. Hitch a ride
7. Something about you
8. Let me take you home tonight