Release Date: June 13, 2006

Original Release Date August 8, 1976

Length: 37:00
Label: SONY LEGACY
Catalog #: 69699 86322 2
UPC: 696998632226

RIAA Certified 17 Million Copies
   
Newly Remastered from original tapes By TOM SCHOLZ and new 12-page booklet that contains new photos, new liner notes.
 
Track Title Length  
1 More Than a Feeling (Scholz) 4:45  
2 Peace of Mind (Scholz) 5:03  
3 Foreplay/Long Time (Scholz) 7:47  
4 Rock and Roll Band (Scholz) 2:59  
5 Smokin' (Delp/Scholz) 4:21  
6 Hitch a Ride (Scholz) 4:11  
7 Something About You (Scholz) 3:47  
8 Let Me Take You Home Tonight (Delp) 4:46  
 
From the liner notes in the BOSTON reissue:

In 1976 sitting on a folding metal chair in my basement, I was tweaking the mix of a demo that Brad Delp, Jim Masdea and I had recorded on my home-brew studio gear. The possibility that anyone would be listening to this song, "More than a Feeling," 30 years into the future was incomprehensible. In fact, the thought of holding someone's interest for 30 minutes was a long shot!

 

Some kind of magic took over when Jim and I got together to work on my songs; the basement walls disappeared and were replaced by a huge arena filled with screaming fans...as long as the headphones were loud enough. Alone later, as I played the bass organ and guitar parts to the rolling tape, I could close my eyes and the same vision reappeared, inspiring a far better performance than this dingy space deserved. Although just a fantasy, this would prove to be a vision of things to come. After creating what I thought was a symphony of rock with the instruments, it was Brad's turn with the tape. Methodically he would overdub a one man vocal orchestra that relegated my 1st chair musical efforts to the second row! Listening from the back seat it was clear that Brad's voice brought the music to life.

 

This was the demo and subsequent album that turned the disco crazed music industry on it's head and broke all the known rules for succeeding in the world of rock n' roll. It's seemingly sudden and relentless success belied six years of abject failure, and quickly made it the model abducted, imitated and used by marketing executives to mass produce radio friendly "corporate rock." Guilty only of stumbling onto the secret formula of pop music success while performing musical experiments in the basement, we would eventually be victimized and smeared with that same heinous label. An odd nombre for a few amateurs making freakish basement tapes like "Foreplay." Odder still when you consider the same corporations steadfastly scorned this music for six years, and soon accused me of being creatively "uncooperative" in a lawsuit. Such a rebel.

 

Nothing about Boston, it seems, was done by the book. Perhaps the strangest twist resulting from the label's refusal too allow the original six song demo to be used as the actual album; the material had to be recorded over again in a "professional" studio exactly the same way! But I had completely adapted to playing and engineering alone in my basement; I knew I couldn't duplicate those performances without the solitude which had become both a blessing and a curse. In a gutsy move, Epic producer John Boylan made me an offer: I record the multitrack masters in my basement by myself, while he decoys the company recording a couple of Brad's songs in LA with Barry, Sib, and Fran. Then I join him in LA for vocal overdubs and mixing. Oh, and we split the producer's royalty! You mean I even get paid? Deal.

 

So after laying Sib and Jim's drum tracks, I settled in for the lengthy ordeal of reproducing a band's worth of bass, guitar, and organ performances on the new, nearly identical, recording. Barry joined me to play the excellent lead electric guitar on "Longtime," and Fran to play the bass track for "Foreplay." In LA, Brad's "Let Me Take You Home" was recorded in it's entirety, and is the only song to embody performances of all five musicians to eventually ended up on stage for the first ever "Boston" concert in 1976.

 

Tom Scholz

 
Personnel
Bradley Delp - acoustic guitar, guitar, percussion, rhythm guitar, vocals, 12 string guitar, harmony vocals, 12 string acoustic guitar
Tom Scholz - organ, acoustic guitar, bass, guitar, percussion, electric guitar, rhythm guitar, keyboard, clavinet
Barry Goudreau - guitar, percussion, rhythm guitar
Sib Hashian - percussion, drums
Jim Masdea - drums
Fran Sheehan - bass, percussion
Production Remaster

Remastered (2006) by Tom Scholz, Bill Ryan and Toby Mountain at
Northeastern Digital, Southborough, MA
Hideaway Studio II
Analog to digital transfer by Tom "Curly" Ruff

Production

Arranged by Tom Scholz and Brad Delp with help from Jim Masdea
Produced by John Boylan and Tom Scholz
Engineered by Tom Scholz and Warren Dewey
Assited by Deni King, Bruce Hensel and Doug Ryder
A Great Eastern Gramophone Production
Recorded at:
Foxglove Studios, Watertown, MA (Winter '75)
Capitol Studios, Hollywood CA (Spring '76)
The Record Plant, Los Angeles, CA (Spring '76)
Mixed at: Westlake Audio, Los Angeles, CA
Assisted by Steve Hodge

Producers: John Boylan, Tom Scholz
Engineers: Warren Dewey, Paul Grupp, Stephen Saper, Tom Scholz
Assistant engineers: Bruce Hensal, Deni King, Doug Rider
Mixing assistant: Steve Hodge
Mastering: Wally Traugott
Remastering: Mark Wilder
Authoring: Stephen Saper
Reissue producer: Amy Herot
Assistants: Steve Hodge, Deni King
Special effects: Tom Scholz
Design: Paula Scher
Direction: Paul Ahern, Charles McKenzie
Photography: Jeff Albertson
Illustrations: Roger Huyssen
Cover illustration: Roger Huyssen

Charts
Album -Billboard (North America)

Year Chart Position
1976 Pop Albums 3
1987 The Billboard 200 101

Singles - Billboard (North America)

Year Single Chart Position
1976 "More Than A Feeling" Pop Singles 5
1977 "Foreplay/Longtime" Pop Singles 22
1977 "Peace Of Mind" Pop Singles 38


Original liner notes:

If you're looking for something to tell you that the band in question is composed of nearly notable former members of various bands, or how many jam sessions the drummer sat in on with rock superstars who are now dead or disabled, or retired, forget it. Unless the names Mother's Milk, Middle Earth, or the Revolting Tunes Revue ring any particular bells, where the people who make up this band called Boston came from is irrelevant to who and where they are now.

Listen to ebony porn the record!

As to how the band came together, we'll let lead signer Bradley Delp tell the story: "Fran knew Barry, and I knew Fran, and Fran had played with Sib, and Sib had played with Tom, and Tom knew me, but Fran didn't know that I knew that he knew Barry to, so what happened was..."

Listen to the record!

If you still need more information, try this. Boston is masterminded by a guitarist named Tom Scholz. An MIT graduate with a masters degree in Mechanical Engineering, Tom was living a split existence at the time his concept for Boston began to fall together. By day, he was a highly-touted member of a product design wing of a major Massachusetts-based corporation, helping to develop all sorts of media machinery he's not supposed to talk about. By night he was a member of any one of a handful of constantly shifting bands on the North Shore club circuit in Boston. Considering the day gig, when he bought 12-track recording equipment and began experimenting with basement tapes, mastering the machinery at his disposal posed no great problem. With these extraordinary homemade demo tapes, the band was soon better known to record company executives in L.A. and New York than it was to taste-mongers in its own hometown.

Listen to the record!

If you insist on having it further spelled out for you, consider this, what distinguishes Boston's music is although by it's definition heavy rock and roll, it evidences a greater concern for melodic and harmonic flow than practically any band you can think of working the same general territory. Also, consider the use of technology as an instrument, all the more remarkable because this is a first album. Of the tendency for technology to take over in the hands of lesser practitioners, Tom Scholz says, "It depends completely on the person using it. People have already fallen prey to that, in my opinion, with items that they just go out and buy to get a certain sound without really understanding where that sound comes from and how to apply it." Those who question how precise technology of the group's record will translate to a live environment will discover that, with the aid of some special sound innovations developed for performance by Scholz, the Boston concert will easily be a comparable experience to the Boston album. That's a lot to look forward to, but you know where to start.

Listen to the record!

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