Well, hey, everyone. Welcome to episode 297 of The Vinyl Guide, the podcast for record collectors and music nerds,

and strap yourself into your guitar-shaped spacecrafts today, people, because this week we are celebrating the 45th

anniversary of the debut album by Boston with the man who shaped rock and roll radio records and

culture forever, Mr. Tom Sholes.

The debut LP from the band Boston was released August 25th, 1976, exactly 45 years ago this week.

And from that point forward, the music that Tom created in his

basement studio has been reverberating around the global radio waves and from record player

stylists around the world. The Boston debut album has reportedly sold in excess of 20 million

copies alongside a tremendous and irrefutable impact

on rock radio culture. Every track on that debut album took its place as an earworm for generations

to come, and all this from an album produced at the time by an amateur musician in his home-built basement

studio. It's as if an apprentice bricklayer built a Taj Mahal. The story of the Boston album

sits alongside the story of the founding of Apple Computers. Only instead of two guys named Steve,

it was one guy named Tom, a songwriter, musician,

and MIT-educated mechanical engineer who worked for the Polaroid company during the day

and labored over his musical passion at night. Tom Scholes built that first record,

created a sonic landscape unlike any other, and did it all himself, his way,

following his instincts and taste. The story of Boston is the story of the American dream,

and this week we celebrate the 45th year of this industry-changing and culturally seismic

album with the founder himself. Now, in today's episode, Part 1 of 2, we'll focus on the story of that first album.

The challenges of getting it completed, Tom's engineering approach in the studio,

some stories of the bungling record executives.

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