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!

TOTP, but not quite.

Was watching yet another old TOTP show (can you tell I like to watch such things?) from 1977. I have to admit I didn't really enjoy that many of the songs on this particular episode bar this one which I'm sharing - The Jacksons - Show You The Way To Go. I've always really loved this song, one of their finest I think! For some reason the performance wasn't actually an actual Top Of The Pops performance, rather they showed a performance from The Jacksons Variety Show from CBS instead, honestly though, I can't say why this is. I mean, they did perform the track on TOTP definitely once (and I think it might have been twice if memory serves me), so that's a little odd. Never the less, this is a brilliant clip!

The Jackson's at Motown 25

This is The Jackson 5 at Motown 25. Whilst many people will remember the iconic performance Michael Jackson gave of Billie Jean much better, I'm going to be incredibly controversial and say I think this is a better performance, although in terms of career and popularity Billie Jean did far more and is easily the more iconic and talked about of the two. This is noteable for being the first performance with Jermaine Jackson since he left the group although Randy Jackson also joins the brothers on stage midway through for this conformance. The performance is a Jackson 5 hits medley, very similar to the hit melodies performed on The Jackson's tours and Michael's own solo tours which would still be a few years off. Having said that, the performance isn't just a straight copy of these tour medleys, as Never Can Say Goodbye was never used in such medlies but is before I'll Be There here. I've no doubt that I'll be There must have been a particularly poignant performance as Michael sings with Jermaine there. The performance of I'll Be There is beautiful, and probably my favourite overall performance of the song. Jermaine's microphone had technical problems, leading to Michael to act fast and share his microphone with Jermaine, and for me just makes the performance look all the more touching! The main reason I prefer it to Billie Jean is because Michael sings live here wheras he mimes Billie Jean. I think this is a good example that Michael could sing live, even though his high octane dancing on tour would often limit his voice and could sometimes make his voice sound a little worse for wear, and in other cases he simply would just had to have mimed a performance. Sadly, whilst Billie Jean has been released officially on DVD as part of Thriller 25, this performance does seem to have been largely forgotten about. The only place this has been made officially available is on the Motown 25: Yesterday, Today and Forever VHS which is a shame. I would really love a DVD compilation of individual performances of Michael Jackson's that contains both this and the much praised 1988 Grammy's performance, as this is him at the peak of his powers I feel!

Christmas goodies.

I hope everyone had a brilliant Christmas and got all they wanted. I certainly got spoilt rotten this year with plenty of new musical goodies. So without further adieu.. 

CDs:

• Erasure - The Innocents (CD+DVD Hardback Book edition)
• The Jackson 5 boxset containing first four studio albums
• Factory Records Boxset
• Pet Shop Boys - Christmas EP
• Depeche Mode - Sounds of the Universe (Boxset)
• Queen - Greatest Hits (3CD)

DVD'S/Bluray's:

• Erasure - Hits!
• Talking Heads - Stop Making Sense
• Michael Jackson - Life of an Icon
• Kylie Minogue - Ahprodite Tour 

Books:

•  Shaun Ryder - You're Twisting my Melon Man (Autobiography)
• Queen - 40 Years of Queen
• The Creative Life and Work of Michael Jackson
• Michael Jackson - Stories You Were Never Meant to Read.

I'll post about some of them individually in the coming days, I think the first one will be on the Depeche Mode boxset, enjoy the rest of the holidays everyone!