Boston’s Rocket Ascent Marks Newest Heroes
"Here's a band that makes its debut appearance in town as a headliner at the aud. In retrospect, not such a sensation now."-- Dale Anderson
April 1977; reviewed by By Dale Anderson
“Welcome the hottest new band in America,” emcee John McGahn announces Friday night. “Boston!”
The spotlight picks out rock’s freshest sensation – a tall, cool, lank-haired, 29-year-old named Tom Scholz. He wears a black jacket with big zippers and launches into the sound of a rocket ascent with his blond guitar.
Once he achieves liftoff, they’re all into it – a big, electronically-enriched, pulsating flow that rings as massively as must the music of the spheres.
Boston is proof that each new rock generation finds its own heroes. The recognition has been almost instantaneous.
A year ago, this quintet of Massachusetts bar band veterans was finishing their first album. Since its August release, that album has sold upwards of 3 million copies.
For their first visit here, more than 17,000 kids show up in Memorial Auditorium to see them – a huge and exuberant crowd, predominantly suburban high schoolers, that fills all the seats but the oranges behind the stage.
Their hit, “More Than a Feeling,” comes second in their hour-long set. It’s followed, as it is on the record, by “Peace of Mind,” where Boston’s dense tripled guitars and straight-ahead beat recalls the Doobie Brothers’ “China Grove.”
As they review their album (Scholz speaks out once – to introduce “Smokin’”) and introduce some likeable new numbers for their two encores, it’s clear that Boston is not a tuneful band.
A catchy phrase is enough for them. They build the rest on effects. Particularly Scholz’s solos. They float on waves of carefully-crafted fuzz and distortion – once with no hands. That’s what he did for 5 years in the basement.
Scholz’s mysterious intensity balances the gregariousness of Brad Delp, a curly-haired screamer with a penchant for shaking hands along the lip of the stage. Another balance is struck as second guitarist Barry Goudreau duets with Scholz.
Setting up Boston’s sound – which at close range numbed the ears and resonated through the thorax – added 15 minutes to the intermission.
Opening was Cheap Trick, a Midwestern band with a new debut album and a knack for the teen rave-up.
Cheap Trick satisfies that ‘70s dictum of something for everybody.
Most of all, there’s a goofy guitarist in a baseball hat who mugs and lurches about the stage in wigged-out abandon. His name is Rick Nielsen and he’s the most compelling performer since Paul Stanley of Kiss. Cheap trick? Yes, but it works.
