Corporate America

Boston

Product Details

• Audio CD (November 5, 2002)
• Original Release Date: August 27, 2002
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Artemis Records
• ASIN: B00006LI3R
• Also Available in: Audio CD
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (285 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #27,497 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

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  #14 in	Music > Indie Music > Rock > Hard Rock & Metal > Hard Rock
  #35 in	Music > Indie Music > Rock > Classic Rock

Track Listings

1. I Had A Good Time

2. Stare Out Your Window

3. Corporate America

4. With You

5. Someone

6. Turn It Off

7. Cryin'

8. Didn't Mean To Fall In Love

9. You Gave Up On Love

10. Livin' For You

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

There's something very curious about Boston's fifth album--and the road the band has traveled from arena-rock heights to its current less-than-lofty status. Here, after all, is a band--really, guitarist-studio wunderkind Tom Scholz and company--that emerged from nowhere and set sales records with their 1976 self-titled debut. Since then, Boston's profile has shrunk with each successive, widely spaced release. Their first indie release may not be causing much of a stir, but it's a strange creation from Scholz and his crew, which includes Brad Delp, the voice behind "More Than a Feeling" and "Don't Look Back." Like the Boston of the '70s, this unit creates polished, epic-scaled rock. Scholz's inimitable icy, soaring leads and polished production (call it heavy steel) remain in the fore. But Scholz has a pretty serious agenda here. The CD jacket champions a vegetarian diet, animal rights, and environmentalism, while the title track is a screed against modern living, business misdeeds, and, well, "DVDs, SUVs, and cyberspace." Who'd have thought Boston would pick up the banner of Rage Against the Machine? --Steven Stolder

Product Description

Boston's first album of all-new material in 8 years, Corporate America has been described by Tom Scholz as 'a marriage of alternative influence with unmistakable, classic Boston style.' It features founding guitarist, keyboard player, songwriter, engineer, & producer Tom Scholz collaborating with original vocalist Brad Delp. They are joined by guitarist Gary Pihl (with Boston since 1986's Third Stage), & Fran Cosmo who contributed guitar & vocals (also with the band since Walk On in 1994). Newcomers to the line-up include his son Anthony Cosmo (guitar & songwriting) & Kimberley Dahme (bass, acoustic guitar, vocals & songwriting). Artemis Records. 2002.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Some are nuggets... the rest are just kind of dull rocks., March 31, 2006

By	steventhomas42 (Verbena, AL United States) - See all my reviews

Tom Scholz is a tremendous talent. He is a brilliant songwriter, guitarist, and engineer. No doubt the development of the Rockman shows he is a genius as well.

He is also the quintessential perfectionist. He may very well be the George Lucas of the music industry. The difference is while the world has been patient with Lucas's contant revisions and delays while he gets it "just right", they haven't been so forgiving of Tom.

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A short history:

1976 - The first album, Boston, is released
1978 - The second album, Don't Look Back, is pried from Scholz's fingers and released before he is ready.
1986 - After an eight year drought, Third Stage is released. Scholz was ready, perhaps the world was as well, as it did sell, though nowhere near the numbers of the first two albums.
1994 - Another eight years have passed and the fourth album "Walk On" is released. Response to the album is lukewarm.
1997 - Greatest Hits is released.
2002 - Corporate America, the fifth "originals" album is released on an independent label, no surprise considering Tom's disdain for the world of big business. Public response is cool.

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I have long made it a practice to take Boston's liner notes with a grain of salt. OK, so Tom is a vegetarian and actively supports animal rights. That's his perogitive. Now he has a song and album title that show the disdain he holds for the large corporations of the world... including no doubt the ones that gave him a job out of college and the ones that gave him the recording contracts that allowed him to get his music in front of us.

What's so sad to me is this time, Tom has done the album 100% his way... no corporate bigwigs pushing him to release, and no creative differences with other bandmates. I would think, considering the great talent that he is, that this should be his best work.

Sadly, it isn't. The album has its strong points. "I Had A Good Time" is a good reminder of the earlier songs that made Boston a household name. "You Gave Up on Love" is a good one too. I love the heavy bass at the beginning of "Corporate America," but that disappears after the first verse and the rest is a digital liner note of Tom's loathing of evil mega-companies.

I could have done without the Cosmo compositions... they weren't horrible, but they aren't what I bought the album for.

I was truly unprepared for Kimberley Dahme and "With You." I thought when the song began that something horrible had happened to my cd-changer and somehow a "Jewel" Cd had gotten into the mix. Then I thought perhaps a serious mistake had occurred and that we got a track from one of Artemis Records' struggling artists dropped into the middle of the CD. Then I referenced the CD case again and realized, "ohmygosh, they did this to us on purpose"! I must admit, I've never made it more than about 60 seconds into this track.

The entire album plays like a compilation album... gone is the constency of theme and concept, gone are the heavy rockers. What we are left with is little better than those various artists "made for charity" special editions one often finds on the counter at your local record shop.

I would rate this as the worst Scholz offering to date. And that's sad, because I love the first two albums, and I was happy to see Third Stage.

I think Tom needs the stress of corporation breathing down his back to produce a good album that the fans will once again appreciate.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars "Not bad" is not good enough, November 5, 2003

By	D. Lacalle Fernandez "Rock of Faith" (London) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

OK, first and foremost this is not a bad album. It's pretty decently written, melodic, sometimes energetic power pop (or softside of hard rock), but when reviewing it, we should never forget that this is Boston/Tom Scholz, one of the most underrated geniuses of popular music, and responsible for some of the most imaginative, intricate, beautifully crafted, detailed and exquisite mainstream rock music of the last fourty years.

So if the label said Corporate America,the new XXXX album, all would be acceptable, even alright. But being Boston, it's intolerable. Why on Earth did Tom have to copy Oasis of all bands in the utterly insignificant Cryin'? Why did he have to bow to market trends he never followed? Surely not for commercial reasons (the album, being released on a small label was destined to small sales figures from the start).

The worst of all is that this sounds rushed,unfinished, disjointed and bland. I don't mind an experimentation here and there, but this album lacks any cohesiveness in it. It's like a compilation of different styled singers and writers with the same backing band. Furthermore, considering it took him seven years to complete, makes this even less palatable. What happened to the melodies? They're forgettable, reheated versions of either older Boston songs or, even worse, other people's stuff.

What happened to the production? Who on Earth allowed Tom to use those dreadful drum hi-hat sounds yet again? Why does a Boston album sound as if it was played by one guitarist and a bass player with a machine drum? Where are the cathedral orchestrations and attention to arrangement detail?

In previous times we have seen Tom hit and sometimes miss but always with the saving excuse of his perfectionism and craftmanship, because one could feel the gargantual effort and monumental work devoted to each note, each sound. This is not an album that took so many years to record, as Third Stage or even Walk On proved with their multitude of angles and musical corners... This is an album that might have taken years "to release", but sounds as if it was written, recorded, and (worst of all) produced and engineered in Ramones-like time... which would have been nothing negative (I value the Ramones a lot) if it sounded fresh, innovative and raw. But instead it sounds bland and undistinguisable from any one of the hundreds of substandard low-key melodic rock releases plaguing record shops worldwide.

Redeeming features: The marvelous I Had A Good Time, and You Gave Up On Love, worth at least a listen. Wait for the next one.

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Half Boston, Half Something Else, November 15, 2002

By	D. Bodenheimer (California) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

Only about 5 songs on this album sound like Boston. The rest are a mix of Def Leppard, Green Day, and Carly Simon. I think all the songs on the album are very good, but I really really wanted a new Boston album that sounded like a Boston album. I only got half of one, and then a "mix-tape" with some other songs that are pretty good. I am therefore disappointed. The Boston sounding songs are great, and I want more of them! That full Boston sound with screaming guitars, super vocals, and flying keyboards is what I like about Boston. Leave the other stuff for a spin-off solo project!