Bosstown Sound
The concept was conceived by the record producer Alan Lorber as a marketing strategy intended to establish several underground musical artists native to the city on the national charts and compete with the popular San Francisco Sound.
Prior to the Bosstown Sound, Boston had a burgeoning garage rock scene with bands such as the Remains, the Rising Storm, Teddy and the Pandas, and the Rockin' Ramrods at the forefront.
[1] The most commercially successful group in the area was the proto-punk teen band the Barbarians, who reached the Billboard Hot 100 twice with the singles "Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl" and "Moulty".
[4] Perhaps more evident in what grew into the Bosstown Sound was the city's equally active folk scene which was led by key figures like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Mimi Farina.
[7] Ill Wind and the Hallucinations' performances helped establish the Boston Tea Party as a must-go-to venue for the city's psychedelic scene, and soon other like-minded musical acts—among them the Velvet Underground, the Peanut Butter Conspiracy, and Lothar and the Hand People—became frequent attractions.
[10][11] Record producer Alan Lorber materialized a concept to congregate several progressive Boston bands, and promote them as a new unique music scene, in a similar fashion that led to the birth of the San Francisco Sound.
[16] Summer was directly responsible for the initial radio boom that Bosstown musical acts would experience, and arranged concerts and outdoor festivals in the Boston area where the local bands could hone their skills in anticipation of being signed to a recording deal.
Later benefiting from their more commercially accessible sound, Orpheus was among the few Bosstown bands to have a single ("Can't Find The Time" in 1968 and 1969, since covered by the Rose Colored Glass and by Hootie and the Blowfish, and the minor 1969 hit "Brown Arms in Houston") chart on the Billboard Hot 100.
[21] Emerging from the original three MGM-signed groups, Ultimate Spinach—masterminded by singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Ian Bruce-Douglas—achieved the most commercial success from their debut effort, which peaked at number 35 and sold approximately 110,000 copies in 1968.
[25] Apple Pie Motherhood Band deviated from the psychedelic sound, recording two LPs that incorporated an assortment of bluesy originals and covers.
[28] Another group known as Listening recorded a self-titled album in late-1968, which encompassed performances by former Velvet Underground bassist Walter Powers and guitarist Peter Malick.
Another issue discussed was the diversity among Boston's musical artists, which brought to question whether there was an actual effort to create a unified scene or a manufactured attempt to cash in on the popularity of psychedelia.
[13] A few articles, such as one in Newsweek, attempted to defend the scene, saying a sense of unity was found in "subdued, artful electronic sound, an insistence on clear, understandable lyrics, the spice of dissonance and the infusion of classical textures".
[12] While interviewing Bruce-Douglas in 2001, critic Gary Burns stated Ultimate Spinach, which received the brunt of the media stigma focusing on Bosstown, "deserved a much better fate.
