US Festival

US Festival
Genre Rock music, pop music, etc.
Dates 1982-1983
Founded by Steve Wozniak, Bill Graham
Website
www.woz.org/cache/us-fest

The US Festival (US pronounced like the pronoun, not as initials) was the name of two early 1980s music and culture festivals.

Background

Steve Wozniak, creator of the Apple II, believed that the 1970s were the "Me" generation.[1] He intended the Us Festivals, with Bill Graham's participation, to encourage the 1980s to be more community-oriented and combine technology with rock music.[2] The first was held Labor Day weekend in September 1982 and the second was Memorial Day weekend in May 1983. Wozniak paid for the bulldozing and construction[3] of a new open-air field venue as well as the construction of an enormous state-of-the-art temporary stage at Glen Helen Regional Park near Devore, San Bernardino, California. (This site was later to become home to Blockbuster Pavilion—now San Manuel Amphitheater—the largest amphitheatre in the United States as of 2007.) The festival stage has resided at Disneyland in Anaheim since 1985, and has operated under various names and functions as the Videopolis dance club, the Videopolis Theatre, and the Fantasyland Theater.

Labor Day Weekend, 1982

The festival ran for three days, in 110 °F (42.5 °C) weather. There were 100 arrests and a reported 35 drug overdoses. One "associated" murder of a hitchhiker occurred the day after the event. The festival lost a reported $12 million.[4] (Bands are listed in the order they appeared.)

Memorial Day Weekend, 1983

The reprise festival ran for three days, this time at the helm was promoter Barry Fey, who with Wozniak added a fourth Country Day a week later. Attendance was reported at 670,000; the festival still lost $12 million.[5] There were two reported deaths.[6][7]

Home video releases

In 2003, the band Triumph released a DVD of their US Festival performance. In 2011 Shout! Factory announced plans to release a series of live concert DVDs from the US Festival. The first two of these releases, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, were released November 15, 2011. The third DVD release from Shout! Factory was Quiet Riot, released on March 27, 2012.

On September 18, 2012, Shout! Factory released The English Beat: Live At The US Festival, ’82 & ’83 on CD/DVD.[8]

On November 19, 2013, Icon Television Music released The US Festival 1983 Days 1-3 on iTunes. This is the only US Festival release authorized by Steve Wozniak and the Unuson Corporation.

Judas Priest's 30 year anniversary release of Screaming For Vengeance included a DVD with footage of their set from their 1983 appearance.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Remembering US '82 and '83 as Steve Wozniak's dream bash turns 30 - Soundcheck Blog: Orange County Register
  2. ↑ Devlin, Hugh (June 1983). "Experiencing Us". Electronic Games (letter). pp. 23,121. Retrieved 6 January 2015.
  3. ↑ Us Festival Took A Year Of Planning (AP) - The Telegraph - Sep 1, 1982 - Nashua, NH
  4. ↑ iWoz - Computer Geek to Cult Icon: Getting to the Core of Apple's Inventor; Steve Wozniak with Gina Smith; Headline Review, London, 2006; p. 255
  5. ↑ iWoz - Computer Geek to Cult Icon: Getting to the Core of Apple's Inventor; Steve Wozniak with Gina Smith; Headline Review, London, 2006; p. 256
  6. ↑ "Man Beaten to Death at Second US Festival". The New York Times. 1983-05-30.
  7. ↑ "Second Person Found Dead at US Festival". The New York Times. 1983-06-01.
  8. ↑ "The English Beat". The English Beat. 2012-09-18. Retrieved 2014-05-20.
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