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At show time, the program was behind schedule, and there was not an extra second to spare. As I hear Carter Allen announce "...BOSTON," I look to my left to see Michael Sweet desperately trying to get sound from his guitar and a swarm of tech's feverishly pulling plugs in and out of his pedal board.
If this had been a normal BOSTON show we would have just begged a little extra time from the audience, and fixed the problem. But tonight, I knew we had to start if we were going to get to "Don't Look Back" before they pulled the plug on us.
Michael's guitar rig was out for the first half of the set, and he had to deal with tech's fiddling with the pedal board at this feet while he tried to get to his mic to sing the opening songs. With incredible cool he got through his songs in spite of it all, finally chucking the guitar all together for "More Than a Feeling."
His guitar playing and singing had been so good in rehearsal just the day before that both Gary and I spontaneously stopped to tell Michael that these songs had never sounded so good live as they did now with him playing. Unfortunately, no one other than us has gotten to hear that, yet.
There were massive sound and equipment problems on stage for most of the set, but somehow, it just didn't matter. It didn't dampen anyone's enthusiasm; it didn't bother anyone in the audience; unbelievably, it didn't even bother me! The night was magical, or maybe just blessed, I don't know. Especially when it came time for me to speak near the end.
Basically, I don't do public speaking. So as I expected, when I stepped up to the mic my mind simply went blank. There was a TelePrompter on the floor with some notes I had made, but I couldn't quite read it. Somehow the thoughts came to me at the right time from nowhere. Never happened before, will never happen again! It seems like there was a lot of divine intervention going on that night, and maybe all week long.
Like for instance Michael Sweet out of the blue offering to interrupt two recording projects to fill in for Brad at what had to be an impossibly busy time for him. He drove back and forth through Cape Cod traffic to rehearse with us for days. His filling in for Brad really saved us, he was literally a God send.
And then there was the fan from North Carolina blindly sending us a link to a page which played a recording for us of him singing a BOSTON song, exactly like Brad, even down to the slightest tonal changes and inflections. And unbelievably this miracle singer turns out to be just a nice, regular guy, who gets on a plane to Boston, climbs on stage with a band he's just met, and blows everybody's mind! Didn't even get a sound check! Now that you've heard Tommy DeCarlo, did anybody miss Mickey Thomas?
Now I have to start on thank you's to the dozens of people that made it possible for us to pull this off, starting with my wife, Kim, who was behind anything that I managed to accomplish, and the only reason I made it through the last three weeks, then all the numerous Boston members who put in their time, the guest singers who lent a hand, the dozens of people in the crew and behind the scenes who held our effort together, the fans who put on and attended the pre show fundraiser for the DTS Charitable Foundation, especially Bill, Melissa, and George, and also Ernie Boch Jr., sprang for the video coverage they put up on the jumbotron!
But especially I have to thank all those people who stayed late and stood for the entire set! No band has ever been treated so well; thank you all!
I'm still stunned by the unprecedented outpouring of honest to God love that I've witnessed over the last few days; for me this gathering has given me new hope for the human spirit. Thanks Brad.
Tom Scholz
PS... While we were busy getting ready for this event, Jon Viscott took it upon himself to design and put up a website for the DTS Charitable Foundation (www.DTSCF.org) entirely on his own volition, without charge. Thank you so much Jon, and please forgive me for being a little late with that thank you!
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