The other day I was listening to "Night Time Nuggets" on KLOS, a show which I'll probably talk about another time on here. The DJ played a set of songs from the band Triumph. That reminded me of a story.
If you're unfamiliar with Triumph, they were a pretty corny heavy metal band, popular (sort of) in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They were like a poor man's Rush, in that they were a trio, they were hard rock, and they were Canadian. They also, like Rush, wrote epic tales about battles between good and evil, futuristic dystopian societies, and the occasional ballad.
Triumph had a couple legitimate hit songs on rock radio, but for the most part are sort of a forgotten band. Here is one of their more well known songs, Fight the Good Fight. This rendition below is from the US Festival in 1983. Note the bass player's resemblance to Spinal Tap's Derek Smalls. (Some people think Spinal Tap was largely based on Triumph...)
Click this to see Triumph at the US Festival: http://youtu.be/4W9TihpFMlM?t=3m
At the time, some friends and I were into Triumph. Even then we knew they were second or third rate, but we still thought they were a pretty cool band. Cool enough to go see them live.
Which we did in 1985 at the relatively new Worcester Centrum in Worcester, MA.
While at this show, the band announced that after the "real" show, they'd be filming a video. At the time, MTV was only a few years old, and they still actually played videos, so being in a video as an audience member was a big deal, to us anyway.
Even though one of our parents was waiting outside to drive us home, we opted to stay late as they filmed this video. There was about a half hour break first.
They ran a tape of the song and the band pretended to play. I was shocked! I knew, say, Duran Duran were lip synching as they rode fancy yachts or ran on tropical beaches, but a band on a stage?.....wouldn't they play the actual tune? Nope.
They played this song over and over, repositioning the cameras for different shots. The audience was asked each time to keep cheering as if they loved the song. The song, by the way, was totally unfamiliar as it was a new one. I remember the audience being asked, by a director, to cheer on the chorus when the lights shined on them.
We were so sick of this song by the end of it.
Abut half the audience was there for this - the rest had left, but you can't see this in the video.
Another sort of bubble bursting moment came when about 10 models were escorted onto the stage and put into the front rows. These girls then applauded and sang along for a couple takes, pretending to be fans.
Anyhow, I was determined to be "in" this video, so I took my Triumph t-shirt, which I'd bought on the way in, and began swinging it around. I swung this shirt for every take, all the way through. I figured, "this shirt will show up in the video, there is no way they can avoid it."
I remember my arm being so tired, but I was determined and never stopped swinging the shirt, to the clear annoyance of everyone in the near vicinity.
Well, the good news is that the shirt technique did work. Click this link and you can see the shirt waving. Also later in the video you see it again.
The bad news is that the song was really bad, even by Triumph standards, and pretty much flopped, so my shot at fame did not really materialize. It did get a lot of play, though, for a couple months, on "video station" V66, which was a local version of MTV in the Boston area.
This was a low-rent station, and had just started broadcasting. They had so few videos that they played the ones they had over and over. The new Triumph song was one of those videos. It was actually semi-amazing to see my shirt waving on my own TV, and I do remember people in my junior high talking about "Reardon's shirt" being in that video (mainly because I told everyone I could to watch for it.)
Oh, I also remember people asking me and my friends, "How did they get the lightning to strike? Did that look really cool in person?" As you probably know, the lightning is fake. We kind of cracked up to see that lightning, and also all the edits and fast cuts. In real life, it was just a plodding song we saw from thirty rows back.
So there you go, my cheesiest moment, maybe, and the only video that I'm in, at least that I know about.
