BOSTON
Boston is an American rock band from Boston, Massachusetts, that achieved their most notable successes during the 1970’s and 1980’s. Centered on guitarist, keyboardist, songwriter, and producer Tom Scholz, the band is a staple of classic rock radio playlists. Boston’s best-known works include the songs “More Than a Feeling”, “Peace of Mind”, “Foreplay/Long Time”, “Rock and Roll Band”, “Smokin’”, “Don’t Look Back”, and “Amanda” They have sold over 31 million albums in the United States, of which 17 million were from their self-titled debut album and seven million were for its second album, Don’t Look Back. (More from Wikipedia)
Inspired by Boston, the first album by Boston in 1976 – one of the fastest selling debut albums in rock history, and one which reinvigorated the progressive rock scene into what became known as arena rock – Trillion was founded by Chicago musicians Patrick Leonard (keyboards) and Bill Wilkins (drums); they initially went by the name of Whisper.
For the second album, Trillion went back to the drawing board. To produce the album, the band even lined up John Boylan, the producer of Boston’s debut album (which had inspired the formation of Trillion in the first place).
An interesting thing about progressive rock bands is that most of them did not hit the ball out of the park with their first album, the way that King Crimson and Boston did. As I noted in my last post, the first hit songs for Yes came on their third album, The Yes Album. Journey didn’t make any real noise on the music scene until vocalist Steve Perry joined up for the fourth album, Infinity. The breakthrough album for Styx, The Grand Illusion was their seventh album. Leftoverture was the album that put Kansas on the map, their fourth album.
(October 2012)
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I have never seen any of these local CD’s anywhere except at the place where I bought them. But lesser known and unknown albums accumulate with the hit albums, and record stores offering both new and used albums try to sell them also.
I guess I first learned of this when I would go into a record store and start flipping through the stacks. Many stores have separate sections set up for major artists like the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Pat Benatar, the Band, Black Sabbath, David Bowie, the B-52’s, etc. Then at the end would be a section simply marked “B”; here would be found albums by other artists whose names start with B. Some would be well known – a stray Boston or Blind Faith or Jack Bruce album might be found there, say – but most were utterly unknown to me. I would kind of flip through them, but I rarely bought anything.
Now when I go into a record store that has major artists in their own marked sections, I usually pass those by and go straight to the plain “B”!
(December 2015)
