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With their vintage flying saucer cover art, epic guitar riffs and blended harmonies, the band Boston define 1970's corporate arena rock. On steroids. Singles like "Rock & Roll Band" and "More Than A Feeling" practically come with a built-in lazer light spectacular and air guitar rock out sessions. Boston's big trick was keeping rock fun and high-energy, while also making it safe and easily accessible. If you were a surly young punk band in the late 1970's, Boston was everything you hated, but if you were the prom king then this was absolutely your summer lovin' soundtrack. Looking at Boston objectively, you would have to agree that few bands seem less likely to make it big, much less go on to sell over 30 million records and dominate Top 40 radio. In the early 1970's, founder and multi-instrumentalist Tom Scholz (also an MIT engineering graduate and Polaroid lab tech) began experimenting with home recording and multi-tracking his songs using his basement equipment. Wait, are we talking about some new indie band? Scholz contacted Ron Patti, singer for local bar band Boston Crème to do vocals. These early recordings actually included some of the band's biggest hits, like "Hooked On A Feeling", "Foreplay/Long Time" and "Hitch A Ride." Engineer that he was, Scholz even went on to build his own recording equipment to better capture the sound he wanted. Professional studios are overrated anyway! With new singer Eric Delp, the band signed with Epic Records. Amusingly, the label instructed Scholz to re-record his future hits in a real studio, but he snuck back home and did it all himself. With a shattering 17 million copies sold, the band's 1976 self-titled debut Boston remains an unprecedented success. That and a sold-out arena tour with Black Sabbath made the band instant rock stars. Following their nearly instant success, Scholz's obsessive and meticulous studio antics would ultimately hinder the band and lead to sporadic musical output for the rest of Boston's career.

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