David West has an unfashionable take on Boston. Some might recall that band as a bunch of studio wusses who hit huge with “More Than a Feeling” and “Long Time,” then went more or less directly into the rotation at classic-rock stations. But West says he is “flabbergasted by how great they are.” West is a roots guy who spent years playing with folkie Kate Wolf, backed Cajun accordion player Jo-el Sonnier, and led his own bluegrass band, the Cache Valley Drifters. He didn’t get in touch with his inner ’70s stadium-rocker until a few years ago, when he was asked by CMH Records to produce a batch of bluegrass instrumentals called Pickin’ on Boston.

“Basically, they are playing electric Bach. It’s very fugue-ish. I had to completely relearn the banjo to play it.” Pickin’ on Boston is just one of dozens of tribute discs that the LA-based CMH has been flipping like pancakes for the last seven years. The Beatles, Guns N’ Roses, Shania Twain, Tom Petty — they’ve all been picked on. And, says Sandee Curry, who directs the projects for CMH, “there is no end in sight.”

Recently released: a three-disc set of Grateful Dead tunes, Long Strange Trip: Pickin’ and Swingin’ on the Grateful Dead (with a horn-laden disc for the “swingin’ ”), plus tributes to Phish, Amy Grant, and Nirvana. All cover tunes. All instrumentals. All without any mention on the CD cover of who’s playing on the disc. All with art reminiscent of the original band — like the dirigibles floating on Pickin’ on Led Zeppelin. Sounds suspicious. But don’t call it muzak. That gets everyone involved fired up.

“That’s a cardinal sin among CMH producers,” says West. “The rule laid down for us is no muzak. It’s got to rock. The emphasis is on hot licks.”

A lot of times it works. “Same Old Song and Dance,” the opening track of Pickin’ on Aerosmith, is an unplugged killer. And it turns out the Dead’s vast songbook, and much of the Stones’, was pretty much built for bluegrass treatment. In addition to West and Nashville-based CMH producer and guitarist Mark Thornton, the hot licks come from stellar sidemen including fiddler Byron Berline (Bill Monroe, Emmylou Harris), guitarist Bryan Sutton (Béla Fleck, the Dixie Chicks, and Pickin’ on the Dixie Chicks), and blues-harmonica player Tom Ball, who’s released several solid discs with guitarist Kenny Sultan.

Sometimes, though, it veers mighty close to the M-word. Extract the Boss’s urgency from “Prove It All Night” or Neil Young’s anger from “Ohio,” unplug it, and you might as well pipe it directly into the dentist’s office. And there’s a good argument to be made that the likes of Stevie Ray Vaughan and the Allman Brothers picked it pretty well themselves. Still, Curry says top Pickin’ on . . . discs sell into the tens of thousands. Not platinum country, but pretty good for an indie.

It’s all a long ways from where CMH (the initials stand for Country Music Heritage), started. Label founder Martin Haerle was a native of Germany who heard country music on Armed Forces Radio and later moved to Nashville, talking his way into a mailroom job at the Starday label. He started CMH in 1975, recording bluegrass and country shredders including Lester Flatt and Merle Travis. The label is still in the process of putting some of that material out on CD.

But these days, the label is devoted almost entirely to tributes. “It all started with a title called Pickin’ on the Movies, says Curry, who supervises selection of artists and tunes for the Pickin’ on . . . series. “David Haerle (CMH president and the founder’s son) and the crew noticed we had a lot of movie themes done in bluegrass style already in the catalogue. They just went from there.”

And they just keep going. West, who plays most of the instruments on his 30 or so Pickin’ on . . . discs, says he’s turned down several offers to put together a Pickin’ on the Dead touring band. He doesn’t seem to mind the anonymity or the atmospheric forays through pop’s past. “The selling point is the bluegrass connection. Listeners want to hear somebody really rip it up on a version of a song they know from another genre.”

And that’s how Boston went bluegrass. “The reason I didn’t like them was a stylistic thing,” says West. “I didn’t have a shag haircut, polyester pants, and platform shoes. I couldn’t relate. Now I’m realizing my prejudice didn’t serve me well.”