For Your Weekend Listening Pleasure: Boston Headlines the Texxas Jam in the Summer of '87

A few months back we spoke of the late, great Texxas Jam, and I'll be honest -- that poster at right is mine. It's framed and hangs in the Unfair Park home office, near the framed flier for Joe Jackson's June 2, 1984, Body and Soul Tour stop at the...

By Robert Wilonsky

May 14, 2010

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A few months back we spoke of the late, great Texxas Jam, and I'll be honest -- that poster at right is mine. It's framed and hangs in the Unfair Park home office, near the framed flier for Joe Jackson's June 2, 1984, Body and Soul Tour stop at the Fair Park Bandshell. It's my sole souvenir from my one and only sojourn to the Cotton Bowl for the annual rite that was, for many of my friends, the top priority of the summer every summer from '78 till its '88 fade-away.

I was too young for the Golden Years -- oh, to have seen Boston and Van Halen in '79. And I still can't believe the only Texxas World Music Festival I ever attended featured Poison (sonofa), Whitesnake (areyoukiddinme) and Tesla (whatthehell) on a million-degree day, not to mention a newly sober Aerosmith and Boston out promoting Third Stage with just two original members (OK, so they were Brad Delp and Tom Scholz). Still, it could have been worse: Ever hear Savvy's story about how it won Q102's Battle of the Bands and got a slot on the '80 bill till Eagles management gave it the heave-ho? No. Now you have. Reads like a screenplay-in-waiting.

OK, then. Here's your work-week adios: the entirety of Boston's set from June 20, 1987, at the Cotton Bowl. It's an audience recording -- and, occasionally, it sounds like the taper was standing at the corner of Second Avenue and Scyene Road. But so what. It's all about the memories, right? What's left of them, anyway.

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