Something 4 The Weekend # 29

John Inman, Jean Baudrillard, and now Brad Delp, former lead singer of Boston...

Brad Delp died today, at the age of 55, from unknown causes, at his home in the greater Boston area.

Man, I can still vividly recall the very day I bought Boston's debut album at Galaxy of Sound, a record store in the Manchester Mall in my hometown of Grafton, WI...Brand new vinyl, on sale for $3.99, and "Sting", the Punk/New Wave douchebag who managed the store, gave me sooo much shit for the purchase, because it wasn't the Sex Pistols, or the Ramones, or whatever, you know? I was fucking 11 years old at the time, so what the fuck did I know, and really, how fucking sad and pathetic is it for a 20 year old douchebag to be giving shit to a pre-teen?

"Sting" was one of these elitist bastards who simply couldn't like, let alone accept, any form of popular music because it fucked with his credibility as a so-called tastemaker and his image as a "punk", whatever the fuck that meant in 1977, or today...But the joke was really on him, in hindsight, because the truth of this particular matter is that in 1976/1977, that first Boston album was every bit as radical as Never Mind The Bollocks or Rocket To Russia...Yeah, you read that right...I mean, c'mon, The Ramones were nothing more than a bubblegum pop band with distortion pedals and a fondness for The Shirelles, and the Sex Pistols sang about feelings just as much as Boston did...Anger and cynicism ain't more than feelings, dig, so what makes 'em preferable, or better, than unrequited love and heartbreak?

Boston's essential sound, due in large part to Tom Scholz's engineering, was fairly groundbreaking in 76/77, and the same couldn't really be said about The Sex Pistols, who were as much a heavy metal band as they were punk, and as such, they simply didn't hold a candle to Black Sabbath or The Stooges...As for The Ramones...Well, let's just say that my belief has always been that The Ramones were/are one of the most overhyped bands in the history of rock music, and let's leave it at that...That doesn't mean I hate 'em, it just means, well, let's get real here kids...

Anyways...

Brad Delp died yesterday, and at first I thought I'd stream a Boston song in his honor, but instead, I thought I'd unleash this nugget from Barry Goudreau's 1980 solo album, and in case you didn't know, Goudreau was the lead guitarist for Boston, and his solo album was ostensibly the third Boston album, as it featured Delp on vocals, as well as Sib Hashian on drums...Hell, even Epic Records promoted the album as "Boston-Lite", which infuriated Tom Scholz, who subsequently fired Goudreau from the band. Of course, Boston never did anything significant again...

So, here's "Dreams", off Goudreau's solo album, featuring Brad Delp on vocals...Enjoy!

Barry Goudreau: Dreams: 128k mp3

RIP, Brad Delp...

Hotcha! Hank