Bosstown Sound

The Bosstown Sound (or Boston Sound) was the catchphrase of a marketing campaign to promote psychedelic rock and psychedelic pop bands in Boston, Massachusetts, in the late 1960s. 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. Lorber chose Boston for his plan because of the several bands developing in the city, the abundance of music venues (such as the Boston Tea Party), and the proximity of MGM Records, which had signed the core groups.

The Bosstown Sound was promoted as harnessing the hallucinogenic essence of psychedelia, also known at the time as acid rock. Numerous bands were involved, but the groups Ultimate Spinach, the Beacon Street Union, and Orpheus were the most prominent. The Boston music scene briefly captured the interest of the youth culture, and recordings by bands from Boston achieved positions on the Billboard 200 chart. However, by the end of 1969, the campaign faltered, its advertisements rejected by listeners. Critics panned the groups involved, and few of the Bosstown bands survived after the scene collapsed. Opinions are still mixed, but the music of these bands has receive more positive assessments in recent years.

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. 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". The heyday of these bands pre-dated the Bosstown Sound, and they did not have much involvement in the Sound's development, with the notable exception of the album Basic Magnetism, by Teddy and the Pandas. The main problem was a lack of viable rock music venues to bring the groups together into a unified music scene. Also missing were the local and regional record labels often associated with a developing rock scene. 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. Their influences later emerged in the music by mainstay Bosstown bands Orpheus and Earth Opera.

...
Wikipedia