The US Festival at 40: an oral history

Some good stuff here for those of us of a certain vintage:

https://www.spin.com/2023/05/us-festival-40th-anniversary-oral-history/

 

This is the first time I have heard of this. This has to be the Woodstock of the Gen Jonesers.

 

I was there on New Wave Day - day one in 1983.

Divinyls
INXS
Wall of Voodoo
A Flock of Seagulls
Oingo Boingo
The English Beat
The Stray Cats
Men at Work
The Clash

It was packed, hot, dusty and impossible to move.

That oral history is very kind to The Clash. The reports at the time were that when it was time to go onstage they refused unless the organizers paid them what they were paying Van Halen for their set a day later. They insisted they would use the money to host free punk shows in Los Angeles. That led to a two hour delay. Joe Strummer spent much of the set berating the crowd, which thinned out significantly starting a few minutes into it. I loved the Clash at the time, but couldn't listen to them for years after that show.

Men at Work was great, by the way. And seeing the actual English Beat was incredible -- they broke up a few months later. (The thing that tours these days isn't the Beat.)

Dude from Flock of Seagulls stared at his own hair the whole set. And Brian Setzer spoke in a southern accent -- a lot of "Well well well... how y'all doin' out here tonight?" shit. He's from New York.

I have no memory of Boingo's set at all. I saw them several times back then, so I guess it didn't stand out.

It was the final Clash show with Mick Jones, and I believe it was also the final Wall of Voodoo show with Stan Ridgway.

Divinyls' big song then was "Pleasure and Pain." It was several years before "I Touch Myself." And this was "Shabooh Shoobah" era INXS -- they were barely known in the US at the time.

 

Wanted to go but was just 11. Brother went.

 

INXS ended up the biggest commercial success of the lot, although The Clash were probably more historic.

 

I enjoyed this video immensely, although it was mostly deep cuts. "What Are Words For," "Walking in LA" and "Destination Unknown" were the only three songs I recognized. I mostly know this band as a pioneer for the likes of No Doubt.

 

I guess my parents were pretty successful keeping me away from MTV the summer I was 7, because I have no recollection of this whatsoever. By contrast, it felt like Live Aid was the talk of the summer just two years later.

 

It's kind of funny to look back now at how MTV was considered the devil in the 1980s. My mother refused to get cable for years because of it after watching her friend's kids staring at it like zombies. When she finally relented in 1987 the deal was, "if I see you watching MTV, it's outta here." I was such a baseball nerd at the time that I didn't GAF about MTV, gimme WOR and Braves games on TBS. When I finally did take a peek at MTV one afternoon when my mom wasn't home my initial reaction was, "it's just music videos. Who cares?"

Fast forward 40 years and kids are digesting much more toxic shit on social media and no one bats an eye.

 

Men At Work is kind of underrated, I think. They were the hottest shit in 1982-83, popular as any band going before their internal issues kiboshed it. People forget that.