DATE: Saturday, July 26, 1997               TAG: 9707260465

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: CONCERT REVIEW 

SOURCE: BY SUE VanHECKE, CORRESPONDENT 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:   36 lines

BOSTON HAS SMILES AND FINE MUSIC FOR ITS FANS

They didn't cuss, and they didn't break anything.

In fact, the six members of Boston smiled - a lot. And an eager amphitheater crowd ate it up.

Boston's undeniable musicality - impeccable musical abilities and song-crafting rich with cresting melodies and lavish harmonies - is a welcome respite from the angst and anomie of much of today's rock.

At Boston's core is the band's founder, guitarist/keyboardist Tom Scholz, an MIT-trained engineer, inventor of innovative guitar equipment and the man responsible for Boston's singular sound. The dramatic double-guitar leads, four- and five-part contrapuntal vocal harmonies, were all conceived by Scholz in the '70s in his basement studio.

Live in 1997, that sound still translates. Surrounded by Scholz's custom-designed gear, today's Boston boasts four guitarists and a half-dozen vocalists.

Scholz, a stoic stage presence, is still at the center of the sound, casually reeling off the familiar licks of smash hits like ``Don't Look Back,'' ``Peace of Mind'' and ``More Than a Feeling,'' and pleasing the crowd with a solo featuring fluttering hammer-on technique.

Granted, the arena-rock theatrics - gushing smoke machines, a lighting scaffold space ship and ``Phantom of the Opera'' shtick, complete with a caped Scholz playing an ascending pipe organ, then swinging by rope back to the stage - were laughable in their Spinal Tap excess.

But it was worth it to savor the impossibly high, amazingly spot-on falsetto harmonies of Brad Delp, the only other original Bostonian, and Fran Cosmo, as well as Scholz's characteristically tasteful guitar, which beefed up even the sappiest of sentimental power ballads.

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