Boston "Boston" [1976]

Faceless, soulless, paint-by-numbers corporate rock by a collegiate pinhead and an oversized group of session-caliber musicians = big-hit during the U.S.'s bicentennial (of course it was!). If we didn't know we were spiraling downward rapidly as a society back then, it's crystal clear in retrospect. "Boston" is schlock that's been positively shellacked. Overdubbing guitar and vocal tracks with an uncommonly ridiculous compulsiveness that seems to want to shame both Jimmy Page and Freddie Mercury while coming off like a more svelte (but just as hairy) Bachmann Turner Overdrive, Tom Scholz, Bradley Delp and their partners in arena-rock crime wound up shaming everyone who turned on a radio in the mid-70s. A mere five years after the "important" people in rock all offed themselves, the rock music industry wound up already completely devoid of any integrity. This is clearly what happens when the leaders of a genre die, burn out or otherwise stop leading: we get glossy boneheaded "professionalism" like Foreigner, Journey and these anal-retentive schmucks. The music here is so sterile the band members all should be wearing lab coats; fittingly, as everything was indeed created in a lab at MIT. And then they have the audacity to claim they're "just another band out of Boston"? I'm glad Epic Records ripped them the fuck off.