Tag: triumph

Another Day

Today is Wednesday and it is my third consecutive day in the office. The traffic was bad. I want to go home. It’s not even 9:00am yet and I already want to go home. I am going to have a super busy, super stressful work day today. I just don’t feel up to it. Ugh.

As I walked in this morning the guy who sits next to me said good morning. I said good morning in return, but the thought that went through my head was something like good morning apart from the usual soul crushing existential dread. Another day, another walk through the shadow of the valley of emotional wreckage. You know how it is. Of course I exaggerate a little, and I also… ya know… edited my thoughts… like you do.

That lead to another thought. A lyric from a Triumph song. “Another day, another dollar, another pretty face. Another chance to lose yourself in this endless race.” That’s from the song Hold On from the album Just a Game. It’s a good record.

I think I am feeling gloomy for a physical reason. Let me tell you all about it.

When I was a high school brat I had a period where I dealt with some pretty bad acne. Not as bad as some of my classmates, but for a little window of time there it was bad. Bad enough that we asked a doctor about it. They put me on some Retin A (or whatever it was called) and it helped a little. Mostly, just getting through puberty is what resolved the issue. Fast forward to yesterday and I felt like something was in my eye. Weird. My right eye kept getting watery and that would blur my vision just a tiny bit. I thought maybe it was the start of a little conjunctivitis. Yippee for me. This morning I discovered the truth. It’s not pink eye or anything like that. It’s a pimple… on my lower eye lid. No, let me rephrase… it’s a great big muther of a zit and it’s on my lower eye lid. What the hell?

A zit on my eye that is big enough to cause my eye to water a little and I can just about almost see it. Again I ask, what the hell?

So if you’re wondering why I am in a weird funky mood today, that is probably it. Chalk it up to teenage acne coming back for another round of fun in my 50’s and punching me right in the freakin’ eye. Stupid zit. Stupid, stupid zit.

Triumph Doc

Triumph was the first band I ever saw in concert. I think it was early 1986 (maybe late 1985) at the Worcester Centrum. My Uncle Johnny took me. It would have been better had it been the other three piece band from Toronto, but this was pretty awesome anyway. It was only a couple of years after that show that they were gone. I thought I would be able to keep following the guitarist’s solo career but… well… it wasn’t very good, at least not at first, and he lost me. The other two guys came back after a while with a new guitar player and again… not that good. Better, but still not good enough for me. Also, the 80’s had become the 90’s by then and my tastes had changed. So maybe not bad, more like too late. Whatever.

When I listen back to them now some of it stands up. Some of it… not so much. They were a killer 70’s band that sat at the point where the 70’s morphed into the 80’s and at first they handled it, but the glossier and cheesier (and hairier) it got the less it worked. Even if it isn’t as good now as it was then, “Fight the Good Fight” is still one of the best rock songs ever written.

This documentary is made by the same team that made Rush Beyond the Lighted Stage which was fan-friggin’-tastic. My only complaint about that doc, and based on this trailer I’ll have the same complaint about this one, is the effin’ clown from the band Skid Row. I really don’t give the faintest shit about what that guy thinks about anything. Other than that… bring it on.

It’s debuting at the Toronto International Film Festival soon. This week, I think. The first showing is going to be in a drive in because of Covid and I don’t know about the rest of you, but that sounds absolutely awesome to me.

Triumph

You can blame this one on my former band mate, Steve. He posted something about the band Triumph on Facebook the other day, and now I can’t stop listening to them.

They were the first band I ever saw live. My uncle took me. It was 1985, I think. It might have been 1986. They were, of course, the other three piece band from Toronto with a singer whose voice was so high only dogs could hear it. The difference between Triumph and Rush was that Rush seemed completely uninterested in the mainstream, while Triumph pretty much lived there. In the 70’s they were one of an infinite number of straight ahead heavy rock bands, but in the 80’s they got steadily slicker and more radio friendly. Back when I was in junior high and high school, I thought Thunder Seven (from 1984) and Allied Forces (from 1981) were the best records. I still think that’s true, but we can throw in Just a Game (from… ummm… was it ’78?) in there too. I think those records, mostly, still stand up. I was never into their first US record, Rock and Roll Machine. That was actually a compilation of their first two Canadian records. It just didn’t sound very good and at that time the recording quality meant a ton to me. Today, I give it a listen and think it’s okay and then put Thunder Seven back on. Never Surrender was another big one for them, but it seems to be a little weak to me today. The Sport of Kings (the album the were touring when I saw them) is just way too glossy 80’s for me now. There are a few good songs, but most of it sounds like the sort of thing Journey would have been pleased with. I can’t even listen to the last album they made, Surveillance I think it was called, but I couldn’t stomach it back when it came out either. Progressions of Power was from… 1980 maybe? That one seemed weak back then, and it still seems weak today. It’s not that bad, it just seems like a step down.

Here’s a video from the US Festival back in 1983. As I watch this, I recall that they had a stage show that was so huge you kind of imagine Pink Floyd looking at them and thinking, we got some work to do. I remember lasers and explosions and a flying drum set and all sorts of crazy arena rock stuff that Nirvana and Pearl Jam thankfully flushed down the toilet. At the time it was okay, I guess, but it took so much attention away from the music that I never missed that sort of thing. In this clip though, it’s a festival and they didn’t have their own stage show. They just played the music. Novel thought, eh? I remember Rik Emmett being one of the guys who wore his guitar up very high. That is actually the correct way to hold a guitar, even though it’s not nearly as cool as slinging it down by your waist. I don’t remember the way his hands were positioned though. His left hand seems to be holding the guitar WAY out in front of his body, and his right hand is almost coming at the strings from underneath. It looks weird and uncomfortable to me, but I can’t argue with the way he plays. Lightning fast and impeccably clean. Then there’s Gil Moore (was it Gil or Gill? Can’t remember. I think it was Gil). He also looks weird as he plays. I can’t quite put my finger on it. It’s almost like he’s seven feet tall and the drums are down below his knees. As for Mike Levine, he’s exactly as I remember him. He often looks like he’s going to fall over backward, but that’s just a good old fashioned 70’s rock posing for you.

Triumph – Fight the Good Fight at the US Festival in ’83.