Sunday 28 October 2012

The Jacksons - Triumph Tour medley

This is a medley (Showing bits of Ben, Rock With You, Don't Stop Til You Get Enough) from the The Jacksons performance in Los Angeles on their Triumph tour in 1981, in support of the album of the same name. I personally feel the Triumph tour was one of Michael's most important in terms of his development of a solo artist, as some of  his signature feature's of his solo tours originated on this one. The tour is an incredibly popular one (one of my personal favorites too) but no official DVD of the tour has been released. An incomplete recording of the show were this medley was taken from can be found on Youtube, but its worth noting that the footage is split into four screens and can be pretty annoying to watch, but its better than nothing! A high quality full recording though doesn't seem to be in circulation and its for that reason that the existence of this small piece great quality footage (albeit criminally short) does puzzle me. I mean comparing the short little medley to the fuller show, its clear that the picture quality has been enhanced immensely. I'm pretty sure this medley was fan made though, simply because the Rock With You segment doesn't actually use a recording from the actual tour itself, the audio comes from the Bad Tour in Yokohama. Its not a massive issue, although you can clearly hear a female voice (who's actually Sheryl Crow) singing backing vocals, even though the other members of The Jacksons sang backing vocals on tour on Michael's solo songs. Also, a live album was released of the tour so I do wonder why they couldn't have used that audio instead.  Having said that, whoever restored this has done an absolutely amazing job with the picture, especially considering how grainy the picture quality of the other recordings are on Youtube. It also gains extra points from me for being the only live footage I've actually seen of the Triumph tour performance of Don't Stop Til You Get Enough. In many ways this is bittersweet, its a brilliant little performance, but also highlights not only how badly his estate has handled releases, but also as a reminder to what a brilliant performer he was!

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