Slideshow: 22 Demo Albums that Actually Rock
Boston, Boston

22 Demo Albums that Actually Rock

Put the sleepy jazz and classical music away -- it's time to test your audio system on all kinds of rock for you to hear in a new way.
Ozzy Osbourne, Blizzard of Ozz
Def Leppard, Hysteria
AC/DC, Back in Black
Living Colour, Vivid
Live, Throwing Copper
Tool, 10,000 Days
Jeff Beck, Blow by Blow
Alex Skolnick Trio, Goodbye to Romance: Standards for a New Generation
The Who, Who's Next
Neil Young, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon
Queen, A Night at the Opera
Led Zeppelin, IV (Zoso or Symbols)
Steely Dan, Aja
Jimi Hendrix, Axis: Bold as Love
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Slide 17 of 22
Boston, Boston

Another classic on which absolutely every one of its eight tracks you’ve heard countless times on the radio. Boston’s staying power may have fizzled out, but there’s little denying its self-titled album as one of the top debuts of all time.

It’s tough to find better guitar tone than Tom Scholz, who also helped engineer a re-master of the album that really brings out its nuances. Brad Delp’s vocals are as ear-pleasing as any in classic rock history, and the album includes an intro (“Foreplay/Long Time”) and outtro (“Hitch a Ride”) not to be missed. I remember “More Than a Feeling” slipping into Rolling Stone’s Top 500 songs of all time list a few years back right in that No. 500 slot, but the song represents this album’s mastery of integrating vocal harmony as if it were operatic composition, and a living, breathing instrument itself.

Signature Test Track: “Foreplay/Long Time” This truly features one of the great instrumental intros in classic rock, with bass lines, keyboards and drums wooshing through as the guitar steps in to take center stage.

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