Tracks 9, 10 11 and 12  from Third Stage (1986)

Tracks 13, 14 and 15 from Walk On (1994)

Boston are a funny band full of contradictions. To many, they epitomize ultra-commercial "corporate rock," but their biggest album was self-recorded in a basement studio, and they derided big business in a concept album named Corporate America in 2002 (that is the only one of their six studio albums not currently on Spotify, so it's not covered in the playlist). One of the band's signature songs, "Rock & Roll Band," self-mythologizes Boston as a ragtag group of road warriors gigging around New England for years to make it big, but Tom Scholz spent years in that aforementioned basement studio honing the band's sound as the songwriter/producer/multi-instrumentalist before they became a real touring band with a full performing lineup. The first time they played New York City, they headlined Madison Square Garden. 

Occasionally, I will struggle in this series to extract "deep cuts" from albums that were full of hits, but Boston's 1976 debut is the ultimate challenge. Only 3 of the 8 songs on Boston were official singles and Top 40 hits, but the whole album is an AOR staple. Once about a decade ago, I was doing some research and a friend sent me some Mediabase data including the top 500 most played songs on classic rock stations, and all 8 songs on Boston were on the list (by comparison, Led Zeppelin IV is 5 for 8, and AC/DC's Back In Black is 6 for 10). But "Hitch A Ride" was the lowest on the list, with "Something About You" a little higher, "Let Me Take You Home Tonight" a little higher than that, "Smokin'" a little higher than that, and "Rock & Roll Band" up with the singles (two of the singles from Don't Look Back were also on the list).

Tom Scholz's songs and Brad Delp's voice were a golden combination that made a beautiful, joyous sound that sold an incredible number of records. But it seems they never got to really enjoy it, partly because Sholz was a perfectionist who worked at his own pace, before the music allowed its profitable acts to do that. Boston signed one of those crazy '70s contracts that required them to make 10 albums in 6 years, a number they never got close to reaching in several decades, leading to a lot of blown deadlines and lawsuits instead of happy people sitting back and letting the money roll in. Delp left the band for a few years in the '90s, with Fran Cosmo doing a decent Delp impression on Walk On. Delp returned to the band but then committed suicide in 2007, and a few of his final tracks with Boston were included posthumously on 2013's Live, Love & Hope.