The Program

Triumph and the Us Festival. Holy crap. There's nobody under the age of 30 reading this review, is there?!

Let's approach these two entities one at a time: Triumph was a staple of the late 70s/early 80s hard rock scene. The Canadian trio, featuring (in its classic line-up) guitarist/vocalist Rik Emmett, bassist/keyboardist Mike Levine, and drummer/vocalist Gil Moore, had a slew of AOR hits, including "Rock and Roll Machine", "Hold On", "Lay It On The Line", "Magic Power", "Follow Your Heart", "Somebody's Out There", and "Spellbound." The group also had a huge video hit with the trippy "A World of Fantasy" from the 1983 album Never Surrender. Their music was loud, driving, power-chord hard rock but not quite heavy metal; their lyrics and arrangements often showed tendencies towards quieter, more folksy and acoustic sides. And dare I say, a lot of there songs attempted to be... spiritually uplifting? Heck, even in "Hold On" Rik Emmett reassured us to "Hold on, and I will take you there." Take us where? The Us Festival?

Speaking of which, let's discuss. Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple Computers, decided to sponsor two huge outdoor rock-and-roll festivals, one in 1982 and the next in the following year. The Us Festivals weren't simply just loud, crude rockfests with top line recording artists, women in bikinis, and the sweet waft of marijuana smoke billowing above the crowds. Wozniak's shows also had technology expositions, air-conditioned pavilions that showcased the technology behind the show, as well as promoting emerging and prototype technology of the day. That's right kids: this was Rock-N-Roll Epcot!

Just to give you a slight idea of the type of acts attracted to the Us Festival, the 1982 show alone featured the likes of Oingo Boingo, the Grateful Dead, The Police, Tom Petty, The Kinks, The Cars, Santana, Fleetwood Mac, and Jimmy Buffett. The 1983 show had INXS, The Clash, Quiet Riot, Motley Crue, Ozzy Osborne, Judas Priest, Van Halen, U2, Joe Walsh, and David Bowie.

In other words, these were big shows with A-list acts.

I was a Triumph fan, back in the day. I remember Rik Emmett wrote an amazing column for aspiring axe-slingers in Guitar World... or was it Guitar Player... in any case, he actually took the time to instill musical theory, jazz progressions, and classical thought into would-be Al DiMeolas everywhere, rather than simply transcribing the opening riff to "Spellbound" on a monthly basis. The band was tight, their music was solid and their touring act always played to over-enthusiastic houses. Unfortunately, Emmett left the band in the late 1980s, and while Triumph persevered with a revised line-up and Emmett continued to record as a solo act, neither has achieved the recognition they achieved in their prime.

Still, it's a real pip to watch Triumph: Live at the Us Festival, simply because the show is a swift reminder of what a great band Triumph was, and what a grand time the Us Festival seems to have been.

Triumph: Live at the Us Festival contains the following set list:

1. Allied Forces
2. Lay It on the Line
3. Never Surrender
4. Magic Power
5. A World of Fantasy
6. Rock & Roll Machine
7. When the Lights Go Down
8. Fight The Good Fight

The DVD

Video:

Let's look at this from a realistic standpoint. Triumph: Live at the Us Festival was videotaped live twenty years ago, and the resulting time and degradation of the source material results in a presentation that will never look as pristine as something taped on HD-cameras last year. The video is in its original full-frame aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and looks darn good... for twenty-year-old videotape! The image suffers from some softness, color bleeding, ghosting, streaks, and magnetic noise that are inherent to the source material. Some compression and pixellation noise is occasionally present, but overall this is a good transfer of what is admittedly limited source material.

Audio:

Now here's where things get a little interesting. The audio is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0, 5.1, and DTS 5.1. The DD 5.1 and DTS tracks are mostly identical, with the DTS track exhibiting higher volume levels and more pronounced surround activity. Both six-channel tracks do a reasonable job in expanding the soundstage, showcasing more aggressive surrounds and pulsating LFE activity. I preferred the 2.0 track only because it was the most "natural" sounding of the three. While the six-channel tracks were louder and more expansive, they seemed slightly artificial in comparison to the stereo track.

Extras:

Inside the Rock & Roll Machine runs roughly thirty-two minutes long, and is a behind-the-scenes look at life on the road with Triumph on their 1986 "Sport of Kings" tour. This is a no-holds-barred look at setting up the amps, speakers, lights, lasers, pyrotechnics, explosives, demolitions -- is this a tour or the frickin' Anarchist's Cookbook?! While This Is Spinal Tap has inevitably altered the way everyone looks at rock tours, I still moderately enjoyed this feature.

A 2003 Interview catches up with Triumph members Gil Moore and Mike Levine, as they reflect upon the Us Festival, Steve Wozniak and his dream of creating an eighties rock-and-roll lovefest, and how the band got involved with the show. The interview runs for about thirteen minutes, and makes for a nice addition to the disc.

Two classic Music Videos are included on this DVD: "Spellbound" and "Follow Your Heart", both from the 1984 album Thunder Seven. Finally, Speaker Set-Up is a sort of 5.1 Sound Check for your system. Check One. Check One. Check Two. Sibilance. Sibilance.

Final Thoughts

And there you have it, a loving look at a time past but not forgotten, a world of unadorned hard rock, stadium tours, band jerseys with the logo on a white background and red sleeves that go down to your elbows, rock festivals that didn't result in people setting other people on fire, and music that... gee, I dunno... didn't suck? I enjoyed my time watching Triumph: Live at the Us Festival, but I'm carrying a lot of nostalgia with me to the entire affair. While the show barely lasts an hour, there are some fairly substantial extras included on this release, and the look and sound of the entire affair is about as good as you could reasonably hope them to be. If you're a fan of old-school hard rock, I would definitely give this one a rental.