Boston (partially found radio and video recordings of concerts from American rock band; 1976-1979)

Screencap of unknown concert footage in 1979

Status: Partially Found

The purpose of this wiki is to document the existence of a partially lost, complete official concert recording of the band Boston from late 1979.

The First Tour 1976 & 1977

Boston playing at the Selland Arena in Fresno, 1977

Status: Partially Found

The 1970s rock group, Boston, released their debut album on August 25th, 1976. The massive success of this release led to a year-and-a-half-long tour across the United States, and eventually the release of the follow-up album, Don't Look Back, in 1978. During this tour, the band was recorded and filmed several times, both professionally and independently. Notable audio recordings include the Agora Ballroom 1976, The Spectrum 1976, Selland Arena 1976 and 1977, and Long Beach California 1977 (First Performance and Second Performance). The sources range in quality, but all were done professionally by the crew present at the concerts.

Several of these concerts were broadcast on the radio during the King Biscuit Flower Hour radio special. The only professional videos known to exist from this tour were both filmed at the Selland Arena in 1976 and 1977. The 1976 concert exists in full and is currently owned by the Reelin' in the Years video vault. Fragments of the 1977 concert were uploaded in a compilation video by Youtuber named FresnoMediaRestoration, who has since removed the channel.

The Second Tour 1978 & 1979 (Don't Look Back tour)

Boston performing at Giants' Stadium 1979

Status: Partially Found

Footage from the Don't Look Back tour is a lot more scarce; professional audio and video footage from this tour are almost impossible to find. The most notable (and only) full-length recording was filmed at Giants' Stadium on June 17th, 1979. Fragments of this concert have been circulating around on the internet for many years, until Wolfgang's Vault released the full video on Nov 11th, 2014. The video quality is decent, but the audio is very poor. The backing vocals are drowned out and muffled, and the high peak amplitude of the drums dominates over the rest of the arrangement. Despite the issues, no other footage was known to exist from this tour. No audio recordings or radio broadcasts have ever surfaced from 1978 or 1979.

Unknown Concert Incompete Footage

YT thumbnail of reuploaded video

lefty6666's video upload

In 2017, a Youtuber named lefty6666 uploaded a 15-minute sampling of a previously unknown and unreleased Boston concert from 1979. The video contained edited footage from several songs in the set, but the majority of the footage was cut. The quality of this clips' audio was far superior to that of the Giants' Stadium video, with the audio and mixing being much clearer and sharper. However, this video would eventually removed from Youtube, and would stay lost until it was reuploaded by user JustMyClassics, and can still be viewed here. Since the reupload, the video has gained over 100k+ views

Glimpse of concert from "One in a Million" video

Other Citings of the Unknown Footage

Clips from this exact recording were used in the filming of a documentary about lead guitarist Tom Scholz from YouTube channel NOVA's Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers, and can be seen in the following two videos:

• Tom Scholz: One In A Million" (at 1:02 & 2:10)
• Tom Scholz: Sound Machine" (at 2:47)