Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
The US Festival was actually two concerts, one over Labor Day weekend in 1982 and one over Memorial Day weekend in 1983. They were put on by Steve Wozniak of Apple, who built a huge outdoor amphitheater specifically for the shows, which attracted hundreds of thousands of fans. The 1983 show was really groundbreaking, with four consecutive days split up by musical genre - new wave day, heavy metal day, rock day and country day. Vince Neil of Motley Crue declared that this was the day that new wave died and rock and roll took over, and he may have been right. It ushered in the 80s heavy metal era, led by - remember these guys? - Quiet Riot:
That brings back memories. Here's Ozzy doing Paranoid and Mr. Crowley, when he still had some of his brain stem functioning. This was after Randy Rhoades had died, when he was playing with Jake E. Lee:
Heavy metal day was headlined by Van Halen and this was when they were really at their peak. Here's an obscure old song, but one of my all time VH favorites, Bottoms Up. And the chaps are a nice touch, don't you think?
At one point, David Lee Roth insulted The Clash on stage, which really pissed them off. But the Clash had done a great show the night before. It was their last show with Mick Jones. Here's London Calling and Radio Clash:
And a great performance of Rock the Casbah:
Here's Pat Benitar in her absolute prime, doing Promises in the Dark. God she was great for a few years.
Here's Hell is for Children (her best song, in my opinion):
New wave day actually had some great bands, including U2 and INXS. Here's The One Thing by INXS:
U2 put on a great performance. They were really going through their first prime at that point (they've since had at least 3 more as they've evolved and stayed relevant, but this may be my favorite period of theirs). This must have been around the same time they recorded Live at Red Rocks, which is still an amazing album. Here's Electric Co:
The immortal and incomparable Sunday Bloody Sunday:
Here's 40:
Comments
I have a fun Pat Benatar story. I was living in L.A., and I worked on a Keith Richard music video at a soundstage in Hollywood (something off his first solo album).
Anyway, in the stage next door, Pat Benatar was rehearsing her concert act. She had the entire light rig brought indoors and was rehearsing all the lighting and effects and stuff indoors. She had the whole band and was essentially giving a "private concert". She was GREAT. We could wander in from next door and watch for a bit. It was awesome. This was probably around '88 or '89, something like that.
Posted by: Rick R | January 20, 2008 10:24 AM
Good clips -- but why did you type "US" for "U2"... *twice*? :)
Posted by: Squiddhartha | January 20, 2008 12:08 PM
Great stuff Ed, I watched a recording of the show on the Irish TV channel RTE2 a couple of months after the festival and still remember it. The Clash were fantastic that day but I also seem to recall that The Scorpions and The Stray Cats were great.
Posted by: Sigmund | January 21, 2008 2:12 AM