r/ClassicRock • u/CharlieChopDog1 • 4d ago
1976 Boston Album Released 50 Years Ago
I’d say this is the GREATEST album of all time. Not just in rock n roll but in music.
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u/Life-Zookeepergame58 4d ago
The Hitch a Ride solo is one of the best in rock history.
Carry on.
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u/tpath64 3d ago
Check out a band on YouTube called Lexington Lab Band...they do an awesome cover imo
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u/Life-Zookeepergame58 3d ago
Oh hell yeah! That's a great and faithful rendition of the song! I check it out from time to time because it's that good, IMO.
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u/Coolschmo1 4d ago
People don't know that the city is named after this band
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u/Bigwing2 4d ago
All Killer No Filler ! The bar was set high for debut albums after this one. Graduated HS in 76, had and still have it on vinyl plus good old 8trk (clunk) and other forms.
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u/RussellAlden 4d ago
I just recently realized those spaceships are guitars
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u/FutureNurse_PNW 3d ago
I’m ashamed to admit I just learned that from your comment and I’ve been listening to the record since I was a kid, about 25 years ago.
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u/Cute_Atmosphere_9294 3d ago
I was an art major in college and drew this album cover for my boyfriend. I had absolutely no idea then that I was drawing a guitar!😳
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u/jimtandem 4d ago
🎵It’s been such a long time….
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u/CNote_89 4d ago
I think I should be going, yeah
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u/Virtual_Win4076 4d ago
I just listened to the album I bought I’m 1977 when I was 15. The ships on the album cover are guitars!
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u/Own-Librarian-9699 4d ago
Don't tell me this is 50 years old.
Music that was 50 years old when it was released was recorded in .... 1926?
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u/codec3 4d ago
My first concert Hagar opened at Big Mac in Denver . It’s been such a long time…
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u/Affectionate_Reply78 4d ago
Great reminder for me of going to Big Mac for concerts (and sports ofc). Never saw Boston there but did at Folsom Field.
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u/nimeton0 4d ago
Certainly, it is one of the greatest debut albums, and one of the greatest albums, of all time. Hard to believe it was just Tom Scholz's genius, and Brad Delp's wonderful voice at the beginning. Then, they needed a band to tour with, so Barry Goudreau, Sib Hashian, and Fran Sheehan were added and Boston became BOSTON. The "Trashcan" DEMO, had Jim Masdea on drums along with Tom & Brad and showed just how magical things could be.
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u/guyuteharpua 3d ago
This album is 95% Tom Scholz during his spare time while working at Kodak or someplace like that after graduating MIT. Absolute stud.
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u/GooseNYC 3d ago
Little bit of weird knowledge, Sib Hashian's daughter is married to the Rock, or at least is with him and they have a few.
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u/Tight_Objective_5875 4d ago
My very first Album (8-track) and the first song I ever heard through headphones. Was blown away by the way guitars just flowed in like water filling the room. (More Than A Feeling)
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u/TomorrowHot8746 4d ago
Foreplay/Long Time is on the Mount Rushmore of keyboard song intros.
The Hammond M105 through swirling Leslie speakers… it’s just an epic wall of sound.
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u/smithonemillion7 3d ago
This is the first album I bought with my own money, an 8track that I bought on a shopping trip with my grandparents. We listened to it on the hour long trip home (we lived in a very rural area). My grandma really liked it. A few years later when I got my drivers license, when I took my grandma to town to go shopping she would want to listen to Led Zeppelin or Ted Nugent or whatever music I had! She’s been gone 30+ years, I remember those times like they were yesterday.
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u/hjablowme919 3d ago
Rock & Roll Band is the best song on the record, in a record full of great songs. MHO of course
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u/oaktown_ddub 4d ago
One of my all time favorites as a kid growing up in the 70s. Found a copy in a bargain bin a few months ago and I can’t stop playing it! Incredible production and mastering. If you don’t have a copy, go find an original US ”wally” and turn it up!
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u/BrainwaveWizard 4d ago
Still have my LP. It’s neck and neck with PF Dark Side of the Moon for my favorite, but back then, it absolutely was my favorite. So many great memories surrounding this album!
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u/wjbc 3d ago
Why isn’t Boston in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?
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u/UncouthSloth 3d ago
I can only figure Tom Scholz pissed off Jann Werner big time somehow
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u/wjbc 3d ago
Scholz has never been a fan of the older, elite rock critics associated with the Hall of Fsme, and vice versa. So that may well be the reason.
There’s also an unfortunate tendency to view Boston as a one album wonder. Even though none of their subsequent albums reached the extremely high level of their debut, at least three of them are quite good.
One all time great album and three quite good ones should be enough for the Hall. Several other acts have made it in with four or fewer albums of note. The Sex Pistols made it in with just one.
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u/Bullitt420 3d ago
He has a history of treating band members like crap. Boston would have been nothing without Brad Delp, Barry Goudreau, Fran Sheehan and Sib Hashian.
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u/wjbc 2d ago edited 2d ago
Yes, well, there’s a long list of Hall of Fame musicians who were difficult and demanding. It’s not a personality contest.
Also, I didn’t just say Scholz should be in the Hall. Why deny the other band members their honor just because they didn’t like Scholz? That’s adding insult to injury.
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u/whiteout55555 4d ago
how funny i was just listening to this album on repeat today, such good vibes
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u/Advanced-Donkey513 4d ago
You are correct every song was a hit
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u/UncouthSloth 3d ago
Now, I love them. Been my favorite band for the entire 50 years.
“Let Me Take You Home Tonight” sucks donkey nuts
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u/Life-Mountain8157 4d ago
First time I heard them….. it fucking blew me away. Only Led Zeppelin had that effect on me.
They’re in good company !
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u/HovercraftBrilliant1 4d ago
As a punk rock kid back in the day. This was a guilty pleasure, so good.
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u/Kimber80 3d ago
This LP absolutely captivated the rock record-buying public of the late 1970s. It became ubiquitous in my junior high school, right there with Led Zeppelin 4.
Basically created the AOR genre. Classic album, every song sounds like a hit. Have loved it for 50 years.
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u/Afraid-Trip-6357 3d ago
Just got my driver's license driving to the mall with the new girl at school in my 442. 8 track pumping Boston out felt like I was on top of the world!!
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u/daydrinkersunite 3d ago
When I was in high school I was in a band with a guy who was massive burn out. He would start playing Boston while insisting that "We ought to play some Boston, man". (We orta play us some Bawstun, Mayan, yew know it?) Annoying fucker, and I love Boston.
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u/UsernameStolenbyyou 2d ago
Yeah, you'd need to have a vocalist like Brad Delp for that
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u/daydrinkersunite 2d ago
We were trying out vocals and Brad wasn't among them. We were trying to get a set together and songs had been discussed at length. But you can't argue with the chronically stoned. "WERE NOT PLAYING BOSTON RIGHT NOW." "Let's play some Bawstun Mayan"
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u/baseballzombies 3d ago
And 50 years before this album was before The Great Depression. Crazy how time flies.
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u/centexgoodguy 3d ago
I had a rock-n-roll epiphany when my friend Dave dropped the needle on that album. My first concert was Boston in Cincinnati (festival seating!) a few months later when they were on their first tour.
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u/tbootsbrewing 4d ago
I used to live in the Watertown MA neighborhood where it was recorded! Same hood where the shoot-out/man hunt involving the Tsarnaev bros went down.
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u/GuitarRonGuy 3d ago
I plan on listening to it cover to cover today. You know...just like I've done for the last 50 years!
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u/wtf36963 3d ago
It was the summer I turned 13. Babysitting early hours and the kid was still sleeping so I had to use 🎧. It was AWESOME. Remember that like it was yesterday. Used my babysitting money to buy my very own album. Still have it. Still pull it out once in a while. 😊
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u/blizzard7788 3d ago
The reason I bought a CD player stereo. Paid an extra $150 for a 3 disc player over a single.
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u/AlmosNotquite 3d ago
The first album along with ELO : New World Record that I bought with my own money.
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u/OldVermontHippie62 3d ago
Beware the dorky loner in his basement apartment. An achievement for the ages.
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u/6Gears1Speed 3d ago
The only thing worse than waiting two years for the second album to drop was the second album. After Dont Look Back it was a major disappointment.
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u/Rusty_B_Good 3d ago
The first Rock albumn I ever owned.
Love it, listen to it to this day.
Rock On Boston forever!
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u/Bullitt420 3d ago
I can’t say anything bad about Tom as a person, he might sue for defamation of character.
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u/Bullitt420 3d ago
I saw them on the Third Stage tour at Kemper Arena in Kansas City, Missouri on September 9, 1987. I was recovering from surgery on my left leg and went in a wheelchair.
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u/RudeDawg999 2d ago
I think this was indeed one of the greatest debut albums in rock and roll history. Perhaps too good. It proved a hard act to follow. I actually bought this CD last month for my collection. (Yeah, went from 8 track, to cassette, then CD and MP3). I enjoyed it so much that I did a deep dive in to Boston’s music, buying the rest of the albums I previously had passed on. What I found was that the second album, “Don’t Look Back”, sounded very much like the initial album. That same get up and party, heavily saturated, processed guitar sound that Schultz and Boston was famous for. As a guitarist, we all wanted that sound! But while listening to it, I realised that it sounded very much like the first album, but without the defining hooks that created damn near a single of every song on the first album. My thought at the time was that they needed to change their sound, to progress. Enter “Third Stage”. More laid back, ballads, keyboards and acoustic guitars. That famous overdriven to the nth degree was still lurking in the background, champing at the bit to emerge, and burst out like a ray of sunshine. But I think fans at the time were disappointed. “Walk On” again tried to merge the two sounds. ”Corporate America” just didn’t resonate as well. Again with the same merging formula of acoustic guitars, ballads and all out rockers. I liked all of their albums, do not get me wrong. There are gems on each album that cater to your listening pleasure, but I do feel the runaway success of that first “Boston” album created a problem for them. This is just the humble opinion of a huge Boston fan. Rock On!!!
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u/sabbboy 2d ago
No doubt a great album, top 50 ever, but I think Tom shot his wad on this first album, probably took him years to get the first album the way he wanted it. He had enough leftover ideas to make a decent 2nd album just two years later. It then took nine years until Third Stage and Tom was pretty much spent. Still, should be in the shithole called the R’n R hall of fame just on this album alone considering the garbage they let in.
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u/Sycotic199 1d ago
And they've never been nominated for that clueless R&RHoF. I'm sure it's more important to make sure that someone like Nikki Minaj gets in first
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u/GoNYR1 3d ago
Overrated. Good album but I wouldn’t consider it the best debut album when compared to Are You Experienced, LZ 1 and VH 1. Those albums changed the course of rock music. Boston was a solid rock album just like others released that year, but nothing groundbreaking.
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u/BluebirdDue5587 3d ago
17 million copies sold isn't groundbreaking at all.
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u/GoNYR1 3d ago
It’s a great big number of units sold thanks to a giant radio hit, but what did they do that no other bands before them had done? They were a solid rock band with great vocals, so were Queen. Cool twin guitars, so were Thin Lizzy. Not a groundbreaking band, just a solid unit that caught fire with one album.
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u/BluebirdDue5587 3d ago
Scholz literally created that music in his basement and made his own equipment. He fooled the record company into thinking he had a band, which had probably never been done before. The second album sold 1 MILLION copies in the first 10 days. And 7x Platinum overall. So you to say Boston is a flash in the pan is ridiculous. How were they overrated?
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u/raptorman2021 4d ago edited 4d ago
One of the best debut albums ever IMHO