10 reasons Steve Wozniack needs to release the US festival in full on dvd/blu-ray

What do Apple Computers, Steve Wozniack, Mtv, Ozzy Osbourne, The Ramones, the Cars, Pat Benatar, Stevie Nicks,

The Us festival quite possibly was the best festival since Woodstock and Altamont

 Fleetwood Mac, the Grateful Dead, Missing Persons, and Willie Nelson all have in common? The greatest music festival since Woodstock 1969 of course: not the butt of a Homer Simpson joke on The Simpsons but rather the US Festival!

What is the US (pronounced “us” not “u-s”) festival you ask? It was the biggest musical festival since Woodstock and the poorly planned 1969 Altamont festival. It happened on Friday, September 3 and went through Sunday, September 5, 1982 – Labor Day Weekend and happened again on Memorial Day Weekend, 5/28/1983-5/30/1983. It finally ended on July 4, 1983. There were different themes for each day: country day, rock day, new wave day, and heavy metal day. The lineup consisted of such great artists as INXS, Pat Benatar, Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Nicks (both with Fleetwood Mac and as a solo act), Van Halen, U2, and the Clash.

It was literally the biggest festival since Woodstock.

However, it has never been released on dvd or blu-ray. But it has been shown in increments on VH1 Classic. I think that needs to change, don’t you?

Here are the 10 reasons Steve Wozniack needs to release this great festival on dvd and blu-ray:

1. Bono climbs the scaffolding during U2’s set.

Bono is a great showman, no doubt. However, this is the height of greatness when the greatest frontman of one of the greatest (and possibly the most controversial) Christian bands of all time decides to pull a stunt that could quite possibly put him one more step closer to God.

2. Breakfast with the Grateful Dead

What happens when you get pothead’s that are ending their “last dance with Mary Jane” all in one place? You get “Breakfast with the Grateful Dead!”

3. A blitzed David Lee Roth takes shots at Mick Jones of the Clash onstage.

You gotta love it when one rock star fights another. It’s like one of those moments that says “sucks to be you buddy!” As history has it, the Clash and Van Halen already had a fight going on when guitarist Eddie Van Halen decided to criticize the music that the Clash played by saying that it was “like music that I played in my garage.” At the Us festival, a clearly blitzed David Lee Roth said “I wanna take this time to say that this is real whiskey here… the only people who put ice tea in Jack Daniel’s bottles is The Clash, baby!” Roth only took one time to bash the Clash.

4. Heavy Metal Day

The artist lineup for that day was quite possibly the best lineup of heavy metal artist that ever walked the face of the earth. It was a sellout crowd with an estimated 375,000 attendants. It was, as Motley Crue’s Vince Neil put it “the day that New Wave died & rock & roll took over.” With a lineup that included the likes of Van Halen, Quiet Riot, Motley Crue, Ozzy Osbourne, Judas Priest, Triumph and Scorpions – Neil’s point is well-taken.

5. Stevie Nicks babble’s and has technical issues.”

The night was a rather interesting night for rock goddess Stevie Nicks. For starters, she was high and a little off-key on her hit single “Edge of Seventeen.” But the more funnier and greatest moment of her set was when she performed her upcoming new hit single (and signature song) “Stand Back.” Nicks says nice things like “I am only talking cuz I should keep my mouth shut” and then tells the audience that she will “hand deliver it [her now-classic album The Wild Heart] to each one of you. I will! We will………sorta like Girlscout cookies!” She is clearly high at this point. she shows that she has a sense of humor when she starts explaining the lyric “be standin’ in” means and of course introduces the band. However she gives a great performance of “Stand Back” for the first time ever and that is what makes this performance memorable. Also, during the performance of “Edge of Seventeen,” Nicks dedicates the song to her late best friend, Robin, who passed away from leukemia during the success of the release of “Bella Donna.”

6. The Ramones perform “Rock and Roll Highschool.”

Words cannot describe this.

7. Pat Benatar sings “In The Heat of the Night.”

Never has a song been so fitting for both the time of day (or night in their case) and even the weather – which was a blistering 110 degrees in the middle of the day.

8. The Divinyls

Now, to anyone born after 1985, such as myself, they are known as a one-hit wonder band. Apparently they were labeled wrong because they did a bang-up set at the Us Festival. However, one must wonder what was lead singer Christina Amphlett was thinking with the fake ugly teeth.

9. Fleetwood Mac performs Tusk minus a marching band. However, the mac daddy and company make up for it by having keyboardist Christine McVie rock out on the accordion. Who knew that playing the accordion could make a person even more amazing than they already are? Christine pulls it off very well.

10. David Bowie electrifies the crowd with “Let’s Dance.”

David Bowie is one that never ceases to amaze.

Pat Benatar heats things up with “In The Heat of the Night”

Pat Benatar is one of the feistiest singers in rock & roll. In 1979, she hit the music scene with a vengeance with In The Heat of the Night.

Benatar exclaims to her ex-lover “you’re a heartbreaker/dream-maker/love-taker don’t you mess around with me” on the smash single Heartbreaker. Benatar’s gritty albeit beautiful vocals, combined with guitarist and future husband Neil Giraldo‘s searing guitar solos, make this track one of the quintessential songs of Benatar’s career.

Subtlety works well on the title track. The bass line, combined with a much more vocally subdued Benatar, makes this for one unforgettable early Benatar track.  It gives it a suspenseful feel. In a possible homage to the movie The Stepford Wives, Benatar tells of a fake woman living the life of another in My Clone Sleeps Alone.

One of the weaker tracks is If You Think You Know How To Love Me. It is essentially filler music and does absolutely nothing to make the album better.

Benatar shines on such other tracks as We Live For Love and Rated X. Rated X talks about a porn star who seeks out love in all the wrong places. While she wants love, all of the men that she seeks out want sex. According to husband Neil Giraldo in her autobiography Between a Heart and a Rock Place, We Live for Love was written as a love song for Pat Benatar by her future husband. However, she thinks otherwise that it was written for another woman.

Though it is not a perfect album, it is still a good album. In The Heat of the Night only gives us a taste of what to expect of her other albums including her followup to this album, Crimes of Passion and Precious Time.

 

Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo hit one out of the park with “Crimes of Passion”

When you have classical opera training behind your belt in rock music, you can’t lose. Pat Benatar is no exception to this rule with her release of Crimes of Passion.

Both Benatar and Giraldo kick the album off with a nice request for a man to treat a woman with dignity with the album-opener “Treat Me Right” – which is a stark contrast to her previous album opener: the hit single “Heartbreaker” on her first album In the Heat of the Night.  “Treat Me Right” is also a rather significant song in rock music history: it was the second music video that aired on the then-fledgling Mtv.

However, knowing Benatar’s trademark angry style, she kicks it into high-gear shortly after with the hit single “You Better Run” where she screams the chorus you better run/ you better hide/you better leave from my side. She continues this on the heavy-lyric-laden but guitar driven (no thanks to her husband Neal Giraldo) “Hell is for Children.” “Hell is for Children” is a song that speaks of the horrors of child abuse.

One nice change on this album is the fact that this time Benatar shows her soft side with such songs as the lushful rocker “Never Wanna Leave You” and her beautiful albeit with a rock touch cover of the Kate Bush classic “Wuthering Heights.”

Overall the album is a great album. B+