BOSTON  -  BOSTON

YEAR:  1976
LABEL:  Epic
TRACK LISTING:  More Than a Feeling,  Peace of Mind,  Foreplay/Long Time,  Rock & Roll Band,  Smokin',  Hitch a Ride,  Something About You,  Let Me Take You Home Tonight
IMPRESSIONS:  Surely one of the most quintessential albums of the 1970s!  As Wikipedia so aptly says, the album "sold mightily" and became one of the biggest selling debut albums of all time and almost the entire thing plays constantly on classic rock radio to this day.  Something of a surprise to the record label as well as the band members themselves, the phenomenal success led to record labels trying to copy Boston's sound in order to make the cash registers ring.  Somewhat unfairly, the resulting "corporate rock" genre was laid at the band's door but they were only ever interested in making their music.  Subsequent knock-down, drag-out tussles with their record company over control of their future led to the band's stagnation as it was unable to release more albums for years.  But one of classic rock's bedrock albums still stands as something of a monument of the 1970s and something of a comet flashing across the sky of those UFOs on the cover.
MY FAVOURITE TRACKS:  More Than a Feeling,  Peace of Mind,  Foreplay/Long Time,  Rock & Roll Band,  Smokin,  Hitch a Ride,  Let Me Take You Home Tonight
FACT SHEET:  BOSTON is Boston's first album and has sold over 20 million copies worldwide and has been certified diamond.  It is the second highest-selling debut album of all-time behind Guns N Roses' "APPETITE FOR DESTRUCTION".  Boston consisted of Tom Scholz (guitars, bass, songwriting), Brad Delp (vocals, acoustic guitar), Sib Hashian (drums), Jim Masdea (drums on "Rock & Roll Band"), Barry Goudreau (rhythm guitars), Fran Sheehan (bass guitar on "Foreplay" and "Let Me Take You Home Tonight").  Scholz wrote or co-wrote most of the songs on the album years before and plays most of the instruments as well as recording and engineering all the tracks.  Album opener "More Than A Feeling" is about daydreaming and was inspired by the break-up of a school-time romance.  The Left Banke's "Walk Away Renee" was popular at the time and inspired Scholz in his misery; in fact, unconsciously the chord progression from "Walk Away Renee" appears in the song right after the line "I see my Mary Ann walking away".  Famously, Nirvana would appropriate the main riff of the song for their own "Smells Like Teen Spirit" years later.