Remember Triumph? Those Canadian dudes that always got compared unfavorably to Rush? Seems that guitarist Rik Emmett, who has been very vocal about never playing with the other two guys again, had a change of heart when his brother passed away from cancer. His brother said, “Dude, reunite the band” or something to that effect.So they are playing the Sweden Rock Festival in Norje, Switzerland in June and Emmett says they may tour in 2009. Hmm. The other two guys, bassist/keyboardist Mike Levine and drummer/vocalist Gil Moore, have been inactive for years, so they are going to need to dust off their chops to share the bill with the likes of Judas Priest, Def Leppard, Blue Oyster Cult, and Joe Satriani, who have all been touring, well forever.
I saw Triumph on a total whim in the mid 80s. In the days when I would get concert tickets months in advance and get progressively more geeked up as the weeks flew by, it was a total anomaly to get tickets mere hours before a concert. But that’s what my buddies and I did for Triumph. Even still, we were able to stand right in front of Emmett and I remember thinking that they were great.
Go to iTunes and revisit the catalog: Fight the Good Fight. Magic Power. Never Surrender. When The Lights Go Down. A World of Fantasy.
They were pretty good. Pretty overlooked. We’ll see if they can dust the cobwebs off of their legacy.
2 comments:
Very cool, Isorski, Thanks for this heads up!
I have a lot of great memories of listening to Triumph. They were one of the very first bands I was into when I was about 12 and Allied Forces may be the first cassette tape I ever bought with my own money.
Although perhaps a random place to start buying rock and roll, a lot of good album purchases for all sorts of bands came swiftly on the heals of that early Triumph cassette.
In hindsight I can see they were merely a decent, hardworking 70s/80s rock band with a few really great songs. However, nostalgia can be a great (and often deceptive) musical aphrodisiac. I still get a little weirdly choked up hearing tunes like Magic Power or Fight the Good Fight. The songs are just basic hard rock hits, but they instantly bring me back emotionally to the days of discovering ALL of rock music.
Naturally, I'm curious what they can pull off with a reunion, but, if I'm honest, I'd actually rather just live with my memories.
The show in Portland from the Never Surrender tour was one of the best rock shows I have seen and I have seen many. The light show was as good as any from the era, complete with the bright Triumph logo falling from the sky.
Hopefully they can put together a real Triumph show in some decent venues. Seeing the trio at Dantes or something of the like would not be the same as the highly energized and flashy rock shows they put together in the 80's
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