Insert Foot on what Nirvana and Boston have in common.

This week rock music fans celebrated an important milestone in the history of guitar rock.

Boston released its first single “More Than a Feeling” 45 years ago. That’s not incorrect, but you’re probably thinking of the other one. Kind of weird how it’s pretty much the same anniversary of the world hearing “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” The songs have, pretty much, the same guitar chord progression.

I’ve frequently shared about Nirvana’s Nevermind and how it changed everything in the rock music world in 1991. Such a broad statement about anything is usually wrong, or seriously flawed as a hypothesis. Like Altamont ending the peace and love era of 1960s music. Or drummers not being able to sing … or not being musicians … or not being the good-looking one in the band.

In the case of Nirvana—and I’ll get back to Boston momentarily, I promise—don’t let the other music snobs tell you differently. Things really did change. Nevermind opened up avenues for so many bands to become popular that we wouldn’t have ever heard of. It changed how people played and wrote. There were bands leaving L.A. and the record companies’ front porch—unheard of before then, for the most part (Metallica doesn’t count)—to move to the faraway north.

It was so mind blowing —and, granted, Warrant was still being played on MTV—that I remember where I was the first time I saw the “Teen Spirit” video,  wondering “what in the holy hell is this and why didn’t we think of it first?” It was Black Sabbath meets the Beatles. People of a certain age (me, other ancients) remember where they were the first time they heard it.

But … it was also Boston, to a degree. Boston released that catchy little riff exactly 15 years prior. And it wasn’t just the same chords. It was the same sonic boom no one heard coming.

Now, it wasn’t plagiarism, and it was a different song, if for no other reason than the bands were polar opposites. The similarity just reenforces the idea that nothing in popular music is truly original.

Nobody heard the similarity for a while because no one was listening to Boston in 1991. I worked in an L.A. warehouse with a British guy who was once in a punk band called The Stupids, and he made fun of Boston relentlessly. I picked up the anti-Boston flag and flew it proudly for the rest of the ’90s, when I became a music writer and suddenly decided to have pointy opinions all over the place.

Like a lot of things back then (and since, and probably today) I was phenomenally wrong.

Boston really was like a giant guitar spaceship slamming into the world of FM radio in 1976. It was dramatic, it was party music, it was technical, it was inspiring. It was BIG.

And, like so many things that get huge really fast, Boston got slammed for being too much of all those things. Mostly, it was ripped for being “corporate rock” because it was so accessible and so many non-music snobs loved it.

Here’s where I part with the music snobs. I mean, I still am one … but when Boston comes on the radio in 2021, I still find myself singing along. I still find myself playing the songs on my steering wheel (an underrated musical instrument, that steering wheel).

It’s like the Bay Area punk scene (AKA unsuccessful musicians or people lacking the courage to even try) turning its back on Green Day because they got big. Or metalheads and Metallica, because they got so big. I never got that, because the idea of being popular is at least one of the points, isn’t it? Making money selling records and living off those songs the rest of your life? Seriously? They do that? Sign me up.

Maybe the difference was that Kurt Cobain was a different guy, a talented but romanticzed junkie who railed against corporate rock and ended up killing himself, at least partially because of his fame. Boston eventually became a bunch of guys you could see at the county fair. That’s actually really kind of cool, when you think about the alternative (working).

But don’t make the mistake of thinking Boston didn’t kick ass in 1976. I was all of 9 years old when Boston’s first record came out. I discovered it like I discovered most of my early favorite music–through the teenager living in the same house.

Then I went to a Laserium show featuring Boston’s first record, and MY BRAIN NEARLY EXPLODED.

Nirvana’s “Nevermind” was a game changer. But so was Boston’s self-titled first record. Both have stood up successfully to time. And both deserve some celebrating, despite the perceived difference in cool factor. Because making music people enjoy is always cooler than not making any at all.

Follow music critic Tony Hicks at Twitter.com/TonyBaloney1967.