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.
