Hey, Boston: ‘Don’t Look Back’

Personality and sociology can play a key role in defining the best rock bands.

The Rolling Stones’ raw sexuality and anti-authoritarian stance helped mirror the ‘60s counterculture. In the late ‘70s, the caustic rebellion of the Sex Pistols fueled a punk movement that revolutionized rock and spawned a multigenerational youth culture. In the early ‘90s, Nirvana reflected the disillusionment and restlessness of Generation X.

In contrast, the once mega-popular group Boston has neither a compelling personality nor an important social context to place it in. At its performance Saturday night at the Pond of Anaheim, the beantown band again showed why it has never been a critical favorite. Gracious but dull describes the veteran group’s stage presence.

Musically, Boston churned out its lyrically trite party-hearty rockers and sentimental love songs in the technically proficient, rather workman-like manner that’s long been its trademark. During many of the songs, the unit had four of its six members playing electric guitars, which helped duplicate the densely layered instrumental sound of its records.

Boston hasn’t grown much creatively since its self-titled debut album became a smash hit back in 1976. (The disc has gone on to sell an amazing 15 million copies in the United States.) It hardly seemed to matter that only two of the musicians on stage were part of Boston’s two most popular albums in the ‘70s. For the most part, this has been less a band than a vehicle for guitarist-keyboardist Tom Scholz’s singular vision. The MIT graduate writes most of its songs, produces and engineers its albums and plays multiple instruments. He’s notorious for his painstaking ways in the studio, which explains why Boston has released only four albums of fresh music in its two decades.

Original vocalist Brad Delp was on hand to ensure that the old hits sounded absolutely familiar. But he’s such a colorless singer that guitarist Fran Cosmo, who sometimes shared lead vocal duties, sounded very much like a Delp clone.

Boston’s early popularity wasn’t totally undeserved. Songs like “More Than a Feeling” and “Don’t Look Back” are likable and surprisingly durable radio-ready rockers. The ballad “A Man I’ll Never Be” is a grandiose guilty pleasure. But the band doesn’t have enough quality material to sustain the type of generous, 2 1/2-hour show it offered Saturday. Three desultory new songs from a recently released “Greatest Hits” CD seemed to indicate that Scholz is running on empty. The handful of instrumental jams and solos (many of them featuring Scholz on guitar, keyboards or organ) were tired exercises that should have been left buried in the ‘70s, the era best known for such indulgences.

Boston may have sold a ton of records a long time ago, but with a sizable number of empty seats at the Pond, its impact is quickly diminishing.