Boston King (c. 1760–1802) was a former American slave and Black Loyalist, who gained freedom from the British and settled in Nova Scotia after the American Revolutionary War. He later emigrated to Sierra Leone, where he helped found Freetown and became the first Methodist missionary to African indigenous people.

He published his autobiography in 1798, which was one of only three by Black Nova Scotians and also notable among slave narratives as a work that was trans-Atlantic. King, who had been born a slave in South Carolina, was apprenticed as a carpenter. He joined the British when they occupied Charleston, as they promised freedom to slaves.

Boston King was born in South Carolina, the son of a literate slave taken from Africa. His mother knew of herbal preparations from the Native Americans. Boston first joined the British near Charleston; after surviving smallpox, he made his way to New York during the American Revolution, twice escaping capture. In New York, he met and married Violet, an enslaved woman from North Carolina who had also joined the British. They had each made their way to New York on the promise of freedom for their contribution to the war effort. The Kings were among the 3,000 black American slaves who were given certificates of freedom, entered into the Book of Negroes, and evacuated with the British; they were resettled in Nova Scotia.

Boston (pronounced /ˈbɒstən/ or locally /ˈbɔstən/ ( listen)) is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper, covering only 48.43 square miles, had a population of 617,594 according to the 2010 U.S. Census. Boston is also the anchor of a substantially larger metropolitan area called Greater Boston, home to 4.5 million people and the tenth-largest metropolitan area in the country. Greater Boston as a commuting region is home to 7.6 million people, making it the fifth-largest Combined Statistical Area in the United States.

In 1630, Puritan colonists from England founded the city on the Shawmut Peninsula. During the late 18th century, Boston was the location of several major events during the American Revolution, including the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party. Several early battles of the American Revolution, such as the Battle of Bunker Hill and the Siege of Boston, occurred within the city and surrounding areas. Through land reclamation and municipal annexation, Boston has expanded beyond the peninsula. After American independence was attained Boston became a major shipping port and manufacturing center, and its rich history now helps attract many tourists, with Faneuil Hall alone attracting over 20 million every year. The city was the site of several firsts, including America's first public school, Boston Latin School (1635), and the first subway system in the United States (1897).

Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, recording engineer, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. Zappa produced almost all of the more than 60 albums he released with the band The Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. While in his teens, he acquired a taste for percussion-based avant-garde composers such as Edgard Varèse and 1950s rhythm and blues music. He began writing classical music in high school, while at the same time playing drums in rhythm and blues bands; he later switched to electric guitar.

He was a self-taught composer and performer, and his diverse musical influences led him to create music that was often impossible to categorize. His 1966 debut album with The Mothers of Invention, Freak Out!, combined songs in conventional rock and roll format with collective improvisations and studio-generated sound collages. His later albums shared this eclectic and experimental approach, irrespective of whether the fundamental format was one of rock, jazz or classical. His lyrics—often humorously—reflected his iconoclastic view of established social and political processes, structures and movements. He was a strident critic of mainstream education and organized religion, and a forthright and passionate advocate for freedom of speech, self-education, political participation and the abolition of censorship.

John Alec Entwistle (9 October 1944 – 27 June 2002) was an English bass guitarist, songwriter, singer, horn player, and film and record producer who was best known as the bass player for the rock band The Who. His aggressive lead sound influenced many rock bass players. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Who in 1990.

Entwistle's lead instrument approach used pentatonic lead lines, and a then-unusual trebly sound ("full treble, full volume") created by roundwound RotoSound steel bass strings. He had a collection of over 200 instruments by the time of his death, reflecting the different brands he used over his career: Fender, Danelectro, and Rickenbacker basses in the 1960s, Gibson and Alembic basses in the 1970s, Warwick in the 1980s, and Status all-Carbon fibre basses in the 1990s. In 2011, a Rolling Stone reader poll selected him as the No. 1 rock bassist of all time.

John Alec Entwistle was born in 1944 into a musical family in Chiswick, a London suburb. His father Herbert played trumpet and his mother, Queenie Maud Johns Entwistle (29 November 1922 – 4 March 2011), played piano. His parents' marriage failed soon after he was born, and Entwistle was mostly raised by his grandparents. He attended Acton County Grammar School and joined the Middlesex Youth Orchestra. His initial music training was on trumpet, french horn and piano, all three of which would feature in his later rock compositions.

The J. Geils Band (English pronunciation: /ˌdʒeɪ ˈɡaɪlz/) is an American rock band formed in 1967 in Worcester, Massachusetts, sometimes referred to as "The Bad Boys From Boston". They are best known for their 1981 single, "Centerfold" which charted #1 in the U.S. in early 1982. The band played R&B-influenced blues-rock in the 1970s before moving towards a more pop-influenced sound in the 1980s. Since its initial break-up in 1985, the band has reunited several times.

The band started as an acoustic blues trio in the mid 1960s, with singer and guitarist John Geils, bassist Danny Klein (Dr. Funk) and harmonica player Richard Salwitz (stage name Magic Dick).

The band formed under the name 'Snoopy and the Sopwith Camels', while Geils was attending Worcester Polytechnic Institute for a couple of semesters. In 1967, the band switched focus, starting to play electric guitar and bass and recruiting drummer Stephen Jo Bladd and fast-talking ex-disc jockey singer Peter Wolf, born Peter Blankenfeld, both from Boston. They became the J. Geils Blues Band, later dropping the word "Blues" from the band name. The following year, former fan Seth Justman joined as an organist. The group signed to Atlantic Records in 1970.