Boston: Amanda

Once again I'm back after a long delay. Life gets busy and blogging can be hard to keep up with. But speaking of long delays, tonight's subject is the song "Amanda", the #1 hit single from Boston's 1986 album, Third Stage.

I had become acquainted with Boston through that album. For me, it was a well-worn tape borrowed from my older brother, with its amazing fold-out cassette cover art of a giant organ-powered spaceship in orbit, and the liner notes detailing how Tom Scholz created fantastic soundscapes with homemade equipment over a 6-year period while dealing with all sorts of problems in his basement studio.

Third Stage (and to a lesser extent the equally fantastic 1994 follow-up Walk On) really defines the sound of Boston for me, much more than their first two albums, and reflects a generation gap in Boston fans-- the first two albums had appealed to the youngest of the Baby Boomers, while most late Gen-Xers like me were either in diapers or too busy watching Sesame Street to pay attention to rock-and-roll during Boston's initial 70s heyday. So Third Stage was the Boston album for my generation.

"Amanda", along with many other songs, has a lot of meaning for me. In the summer of 2004, I started spending time with a beautiful young woman who had sat next to me in a religion course in college the year before. She had a sparkling, spunky personality, and was one of the sweetest, kindest people I had ever met. After I had called her a couple of times, she came up to me and flat-out asked me on a date, (I was rather shy and still am) and over the course of the next several dates I fell head-over heels for her. Suddenly, it was like someone had turned on a switch and I understood the meaning behind the words of this song. It perfectly detailed what I was feeling, the introspection, the worry and anticipation, and the overwhelming desire to tell her I was in love with her.

So I sat down with my guitar and my 4-track, and I recorded a terribly amateur rendition of this song, faking the chords as best I could in my own key, and replacing the name "Amanda" with the girl's name (which also started with an A). I packaged it up on a CD-R along with a few of my other recordings, and, after walking her home from watching the fireworks on the 4th of July, I gave it to her.

And, right then, she broke up with me.


The next day, we both got called to co-chair an important church committee for our student congregation. Talk about God micro-managing your life! To call it divine intervention is almost an understatement!

Several months later, after much soul-searching, with each of us dating other people and breaking each others' hearts, we got together for another date. And this time, I brought my guitar and sang it to her live. And this time, it worked.

That was over 4 years ago. This week, our daugher Amanda was born, weighing 5 lb 15 ounces.

Babe, feelin' the way I do
I don't wanna wait my whole life through
To say...
I'm in love with you.