#tom sholz

[best-overplayed-song]

fun facts

when asked what the inspiration for "Africa" was, David Paich said: "I would see UNICEF commercials on TV, way back in the day, and I was a big reader of National Geographic. I’ve just always kind of been fascinated with Africa. I just kind of romanticized this story about a social worker that was over there, that falls in love and can’t — is having kind of a paradox, trying to tear himself away from Africa to actually have a life."

Toto drummer Jeff Porcaro added: "… a white boy is trying to write a song on Africa, but since he’s never been there, he can only tell what he’s seen on TV or remembers in the past."

Tom Sholz said that the Marianne named in the song was inspired by his older cousin, who he thought was the most beautiful girl in the world when he was around eight years old

[hard-rock-music]

BOSTON - Live In The USA 1987 [Alive The Live Japan release only] (2022) , MP3+FLAC

BOSTON‘s mastermind Tom Scholz is known for his obsession of perfectionism, with the band albums taking a lot of time to be finished. It has been said he has recorded a single note dozens of times before getting satisfied. Well, seems Sholz is a perfectionist on stage too, and he personally supervised everyting before each show. Continue reading BOSTON – Live In The USA 1987 [Alive The Live Japan…

[rollingstoneart]

Tom Sholz by Randall Enos.

Rolling Stone | October 30th, 1980

[driftawayonceaday]

Foreplay/Long Time

January  31st

How could you not like a song that starts out with some foreplay?  “Foreplay/Long Time”, which appears on Boston’s 1976 debut album, is comprised of two separate songs usually played together.  The two-plus minute instrumental intro (the “Foreplay” portion of the song) has an orchestral feel to it.  Like much of Boston’s music, it has a synthesized sound. Normally, this would turn me off, but their music as a whole is powerful rock and roll that you can’t help but enjoy.  And the rock and roll orchestral beginning is impressive.  So much so that it’s considered as one with “Long Time” and, even though the coupling makes the song last almost eight minutes, it became a hit.

The guitar work of Barry Goudreau, the organ work of songwriter Tom Sholz, as well as Sib Hashian’s drums, really do sound like an orchestral arrangement.  As you listen, you can almost picture a conductor directing the music.  The organ and rising drums transition into the “Long Time” portion where the guitar breaks out and introduces the vocals.  From then on, there are intervals of the powerful electric guitar work that Boston does so well, along with the driving drums and organ, and periods of hand-clapping and acoustic guitar.  The final hand-clapping section is accompanied by the electric guitar.  

“Foreplay/Long Time” isn’t just another high-energy Boston song, there’s something unique about it that has pretty much made it their signature song for hard-core Boston fans.  It’s different from other signature songs (like Skynyrd’s “Free Bird”, Aerosmith’s “Dream On”, and Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven”) because it’s more about the music than the lyrics.  It’s a journey into music, rather than a journey into the heart or soul like the other signature songs.  It’s not that the music of the other songs is not significant or pleasurable, but the lyrics in the other songs are more deeply meaningful to people.  “Foreplay/Long Time” is like a joy ride, so hop on for the seven-plus minute trip.

[thefrogholler]

Happy Birthday Tom Scholz! – guitarist/singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist/inventor of the Rockman portable guitar amp – #Boston – group hits include – Long Time – More Than A Feeling – Don’t Look Back – Amanda – Peace Of Mind – 3/10/1947

See more #musicalbirthdaynotes at TheFrogHoller.com

#TomScholz #thefrogholler

[realityzen]

Melodic rock music at its finest. It’s amazing that Tom Sholz was putting out this kind of music over 40 years ago. He was way ahead of his time - and then he created the future.

[elbowhickey]

What do Tupac, NWA, Green Day, The Beastie Boys, and Boston all have in common? 

It’s almost 2019 and only 4 of them are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I have sat on this for a long time (no pun intended but I’ll take it), but reading the recently released list of the 2019 inductees https://www.rockhall.com/rock-roll-hall-fame-announces-nominees-2019-induction, I am officially past my limit. 

What. The. Hell. 

The reasoning behind this is that Boston has such a small body of work, a total of just six studio albums, and that’s somehow the leading factor. ‘They just didn’t make much music’. I graduated with a degree in Strategic Communications, basically a PR degree, but I started in Pre-Law. So, let me go old-school and formulate an argument, because I cannot understand this to save my life. 

Boston has sold a measly 76 Million albums worldwide, 31 Million in the US. That means they have more albums sold than Journey, The Police, and Aretha Franklin - all current members, btw. But, I digress.  

Let’s say that we’re keeping Boston out of the voting because of their short body of work. I will leave FIVE of their six albums out of this. That’s right, let’s look just at their 1976 release, “Boston” for just a second. That ONE album is number 15 - no, you did not misread that - NUMBER FUCKING FIFTEEN on the all-time album sales list, as in all of forever and everyone that has ever made music in the history of humankind. That album had just eight songs, so if we take just half of that one album - More Than a Feeling, Peace of Mind, Foreplay/Long Time, and Rock and Roll Band - you will find three songs that made it into the ever-coveted the Top 40. The album stayed on the charts for 132 weeks. If you suck at math, that’s 2-1/2 YEARS. Am just curious, who was the first band ever to debut at Madison Square Garden? Oh, yeah. It was Boston, because of that ONE album. Because of that one album in a total of six which is too small a body of work. 

So yeah, let’s rule them out because their body of work is so small. I mean, is just one album, right? 

Except a Top-5 hit in Don’t Look Back, several Top-50 hits over the next few years, a throw-away album a decade later which produced a meaningless #1 hit (Amanda), a mediocre-at-best Top-10 hit which everyone who makes music apparently manages to do (We’re Ready), and a squeaker into the Top-30 that we’re not even remotely going to talk about. Because those were different albums. I said one. 

So, there’s that, but can we focus for one moment on what we’re actually talking about here? We’re not talking about the most album sales of all time, because let’s face it, as of 2018 ‘The Bodyguard’ soundtrack is #6, which still falls short of Shania freakin’ Twain. But what is it that we ARE talking about? Oh, yeah, it’s ROCK AND ROLL, and the supposed “Hall of Fame” institution that surrounds that phenonmenon. 

I will throw punches with you blow for blow if you can even attempt to tell me that Boston did not shape Rock ‘n Roll in the 70s and 80s, or that their influence is less important than NWA or Green Day. As a guitarist, I can take someone who has never even touched a guitar and teach them damn near every Green Day song in less than a week. And get the fuck out with any argument you can possibly give how NWA (samples? loop editing? ACTUAL SONG WRITING? anyone?) shaped Rock ‘n Roll more than Boston. I will end you. Listen to any classic rock station in any even remotely major US city for a few hours, and tell me that at least three Boston songs are not still played in heavy rotation on a frequency that rivals any classic rock band not already in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, or any other classic rock band at all. It won’t happen, I openly challenge any bean counter. 

I adore Tupac, I grew up on NWA, and I played the Dookie album so many times over - I will never argue that all their contributions were unimportant to music history (to MUSIC HISTORY), but I will feed you knuckles and not feel the least bit guilty about it if you can honestly tell me they meant more to rock history as a whole than Boston has.

But if you want the #1 reason I am posting this rant? It’s this man right here. It’s Tom Scholz. Yes, he’s aloof as balls. Yes, he downplays his playing ability and his contribution more than anyone over the last several decades. Yes, he’s so humble as to never discredit anyone who has ever done anything at all or recorded anything on their Tascam 4-track in their mom’s basement. He’s a total goofball. He’s flakier than Kellogg’s. He’s your stereotypical rocker toolbox. 

But... he’s a genius. And I don't mean his engineering degree from MIT. He is a tone-chasing perfectionist. He was never satisfied with “ well enough”. I read an interview years ago where he was recording on tape and wanted to add something extra so on a whim he reached over and pushed on the spindle of the tape as it was recording and produced a tone bend that is not possible to play as it recorded. It was just a thing to him, but became something that virtuoso musicians have chased for decades and are still unable to reproduce on an instrument. Tom Sholz was never ok with ok. And THAT is what makes Boston incredible. Tom Sholz is a tone guru who was never satisfied with “what will sell albums”, which may have to do with why there was only six. You know, his all-time  record-setting one and the other five that weren’t just wet sneezes in a bandana but are somehow overly ignored. His music is precise, and exact, and technical, but that somehow falls within a “limited body of work”, despite the one and only one body of work as I’ve instanced here in an attempt to incite a riot being record-setting as fuck and blowing away almost all of history as recorded by mankind.

There are plenty of snubs when it comes to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, but none are as heinous as leaving Boston out. Again. Still. What the crap, world. I openly hate all of you. This so wrong that the word wrong doesn’t even remotely begin to cover how wrong it is. Boston belongs in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.