Boston Tour 2016: excellent 'More Than a Feeling' HD video Live in Chicago. Video by Raymond Britt.
Celebrating Boston's 40th Anniversary, the band delivered a superb, private, concert in Chicago on May 20, 2016.
It's well-known that Boston's self-titled debut, was far more than just one of the biggest-selling records by a rookie band. First, it's no secret that it's nearly a Tom Scholz solo album, in that he composed the songs, played all the instruments on most songs (the 'band' Boston recorded a single tune as a group), and most importantly, produced each song himself.
And that's the second point: he was even more than a first-tme producer; he skipped traditional mid-70s pop-rock formulas and re-wrote a new definition of composition.
He seemed to aspire to write songs that were, what I would call, symphonic rock which could feature as many as eight guitars simultaneously, with several different roles, layering them across the audio spectrum from left ear to right.
'More than a Feeling', the first cut on the debut LP is a good example. The song in this video, Amanda, also features the guitar orchestra approach. One song could take weeks, months and in more than one case years.
Years ago I believe I read Tom Scholz recall a discussion with his father, who wondered, ' if a song is 5 minutes on a record, why doesn't it take just a few minutes to write a complete song?'
Tom smiled, and answered, I'll paraphrase and hopefully get it right: 'are you kidding? it can take me a day just to write 5 good seconds of a song.'
Listen carefully, in headphones, take it all in, and you will understand. You'll be amazed how much more there is to this song, and dozens of other Boston tunes.
This video was shot in 720HD quality with a relatively old pocket digital camera: Panasonic Leica DMC-ZS25.
The song, all audio and video rights, are of course the full and undisputed property of the publisher/owner. Consider this as an education piece.