This Ain't the Summer of Love

It's Been Such a Long Time

As you have probably heard by now, Brad Delp, the lead singer for the band Boston, died Friday.

I can’t remember the last time I thought of Delp or his band. They certainly weren’t on my list of possible subjects for This Ain’t The Summer Of Love, yet I find myself more strongly affected by news of his death than I would have thought. I’m not sure why that is, although I’d guess it’s got something to do with how evocative of a certain time and place their music is for me.

Now, I’m not here to argue that Boston was an important band or anything. They didn’t redefine what rock & roll sounded like, for the most part, and they didn’t push any sort of artistic agenda that I know of. There’s nothing revolutionary or subversive about them or their music. It’s all just big dumb fun – which, if you think about it, would also be a pretty good definition of a large portion of rock. Big dumb fun is a concept that I will defend, if not to the death, then at least until the point where I’m breathing hard and bleeding in a couple of places.

Journey in the 70s: No, Really, They Were Better Than You Think

Ok, I know this is gonna be a tough sell for a lot of you – maybe even all of you – but I want you to trust me when I say that the first couple of albums by Journey are Not That Bad. They’re really quite pleasant, in fact, if you have any sort of appreciation for prog/fusion. I’m not claiming that they’re the best example of the genre, or that they’ll change anyone’s mind about it. I like ‘em, anyway. That’s enough for me to drag you guys through the early Journey back catalog - kicking and screaming if it must be so, but this is really for your own good.

The Journey of 1975 was a very different animal indeed from the one infesting the airwaves of America ten years later. No Steve Perry, for one thing. You know, the guy who sings like a duck? He didn’t start lovin’, touchin’ and/or squeezin’ until ’77-‘78, so there was a time when the band made records with vocals that don’t make you want to pull your own ears off. Vox were originally handled by keyboardist Greg Rolie, who played that same role in the first line-up of Santana. Yep, that’s him singing “Black Magic Woman”.

Are you a little less frightened now?

LIKE PUNK NEVER HAPPENED: Patti Smith and the Hall of Fame

Editor’s note: Hey! Look! A Collaborator! And a good one, too. I’m very happy to have Caryn on board here at TATSOL. She has written for Backstreets, Blogcritics (where I first met her) and at her own exquisite spot on the web, jukeboxgraduate.com. Y’all are in for a treat. Also, for the record: I have never set foot in NYC and have been a fan of Patti Smith from the first time I heard her. So there.

When I was younger, I felt like everything I liked was out of style - at least in my peer group. When I was listening to the Jackson Five, they were listening to the Osmonds. When I was discovering the Beatles and the Who, they were listening to Aerosmith and Foreigner and Tales From Topographic Oceans. And, when I discovered The Class of 1977, it was all of the above and more so. (I mean, Jean-Luc Ponty, for heaven's sake. Boston. Styx. And worse.)

There were exactly three people in my high school that listened to punk rock (or at least made the mistake of talking publicly about the fact that they did). In Stamford, Connecticut, one of the few windows into punk rock was Saturday Night Live.  I remember watching Patti on SNL, and holding my breath the entire time, not wanting to act like I liked it too much, but not wanting to appear so bored my father turned off the tv set. And I remember the next Monday in school, as usual, SNL being a breathless topic of discussion in the lunchroom. Except, this time, there was nothing to ridicule or cause amusement: instead, you heard the "L" word being whispered from table to table. The message was clear: if you were so foolish as to espouse favoritism for the wild-haired priestess glimpsed on Saturday evening, you too would be branded with a very different kind of scarlet letter.