Don’t Look Back … but I absolutely have to. Last week’s 7-hour drive south across the border to Missoula was a pilgrimage of sorts. Boston played the Montana outpost as part of their 40th anniversary tour. I sang their hits in the shower — but had never seen them live. Sadly, the glass-shattering lead vocals of Brad Delp were gone. I’d lost touch with the goings-on of the band and didn’t know he’d taken his life in 2007. A further google behind the scenes told how when Delp first auditioned for Tom Scholz, the band’s founder said he “knew in the middle of the first line that a guardian angel had just presented him with one of the best vocalists to ever step in front of a microphone.” There has since been a constantly changing line-up and a litany of law suits.
But it was Scholz’s meticulous touch and hard work that kept their music alive. It was a sweet, wonderful tide that night that picked us up and carried us away to the very heart of classic rock. As the familiar refrains of More Than a Feeling, Foreplay/Long Time, Rock’n Roll Band and others filled the sky behind Big Sky Brewery, the decades simply disappeared. Precise moments from the 70s and 80s zoomed into focus. Lead singer Tommy DeCarlo was very good, an impressive, welcomed copy of Delp’s voice, save for the high notes we all knew remained with the band’s original singer. The night was cathartic … an adrenaline rush … a true blessing in 40-years disguise. It was the vibrancy we need to revisit time and time again … for music has many emotional stamps, but Boston’s a biggie. … It is to listen. Thank you, Tom Scholz & Co.
“Screwball” is a tale about Hayward Templeton, a psychiatry grad student at the University of Iowa. He grudgingly agrees to pitch in a co-ed baseball game, discovers online how to throw a screwball pitch … and excels at it. He wins the game but during post-game celebrations, he’s accidentally dropped on his head. In an L. Ron Hubbard twist, while unconscious, classmates around him discuss an upcoming quiz on mental health … and he soaks it all in. When Hayward comes to … he unfortunately begins living various illnesses … on his way to the major leagues as a screwball pitcher.
David Belisle 