The Unite Us In Song [Unuson or Us] Festival
28th, 29th and 30th May 1983
organised by Apple tycoon Steve Wozniak.
Supported by: Men At Work, Divynals, Inxs, Flock Of Seagulls, Wall Of Voodoo, English Beat, Oingo Boingo,stray Cats,
updated 14 July 2008 - added John Mendelssohn review + photo
Glen Helen Regional Park .. and Mick Jones' last show. Clash Calling CD is the onkky soundboard but is incomplete. Fuller, lesser versions exist.
Audio 1 -
Sound 3.5 - 1hr 17mins - low? - tracks 20
Audience
Audio 2 -
Sound 4 - 1hr 18mins - low? - tracks 20
Audience
Safe European Home
Audio 4 – Clash Calling CD -
Sound 4.5 - 1hr 10mins - CD - tracks 20*
Soundboard - London Calling edited and intro Radio Clash missing
Safe European Home
Audio 5 - remastered audience
Sound 4 - 1hr 17mins - low? - tracks 20
Audience
Safe European Home
Audio 6 - one track from Historic Films
London Calling
Boot CD and FM sources
The booted CD Clash Calling has by far the best, near perfect sound BUT track one cuts before the end and jumps halfway into track two. This edit is on the ciculating video as well.
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Clash Calling Boot CD
The sound on the boot Clash Calling is excellent although on the original CD the first tracks merge into one with edits. However this is very highly recomended for performance, energy, sound. Probably the clearest Sound of Sinners live performance.
FM Tapes in circulation
The FM tape that circulates widely is complete but is poor. The sound is flat and a touch distant though there is no distortion.
However a new FM [?] tape has surfaced.
It has a very good sound. Almost as if it came from a 2nd or 3rd gen pro video tape. VCR recordings kinda lack that width, clarity somehow. Possibly, probably a soundboard source and it approaches the quality of Clash Calling CD. Rock the Casbah has a minor edit but importantly the first two tracks are complete.
Primarily it contains an excellent and full London Calling and Radio Clash, and IMO with some uplift, could be edited in.
The new FM I guess came from a video source and would confirm that a full and unedited version exists.
Chris Knowles – The Essential Clash Bootleg Bible includes this gig.
Graham i found this while working on Nirvana recordings
He apparently taped audience masters of 6/19/82, 10/29/82 and 5/28/83 audience master of the US festival without the annoying cut would be nice what about the other 2, are they circulating?
Video - Historic Films have the rights includingt the whole show, backstage and interviews
The original filmed masters for the US Fesitval could not be located for Westway. The original masters of this show (and a good number of other artists US Festival performances) are currently being shopped for an official DVD release in North America.
Filmed for Showtime - 3 gen
– two tracks were broacast on the ITV network not long after
– Few seconds of Kosmo from the US festival conference wanted
– upgrade of full gig plus press conference wanted
Historic Films have the rights includingt the whole show, backstage and interviews ...
Historic Films full London Claling with soundboard audio
Lesser audio
Visit these websites for a comprehensive catalogue of unofficially released CD's and Vinyl (forever changing) or If Music Could Talk for all audio recordings
Discogs 
Punky Gibbon Jeff Dove Ace Bootlegs
For all recordings go to If Music Could Talk / Sound of Sinners
‘SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?’: MICK JONES’ LAST PERFORMANCE WITH THE CLASH AT THE US FESTIVAL
01.03.2018 | Dangerous Minds
Steve Wozniak may have co-founded Apple, but it was his notorious “US Festival” that makes him one of the greatest rock promoters of our time. First held during Memorial Day weekend in 1982 at the Glen Helen Regional Park outside of Los Angeles, the US Festival (or “Unite us in Song”) was a hopeful outlook toward the coming future and a departure from the “Me Decade” that was the 1970s.
At the time, “Woz” was on leave from Apple after surviving a plane crash that left him unable to create new memories for half a year. Hoping to put together the “Super Bowl of Rock Parties” with a lineup of the best acts in rock music, Wozniak teamed up with heavy-hitter San Francisco promoter Bill Graham to help with the booking. Acts like The Police, Talking Heads, The B52s, Oingo Boingo, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Pat Benatar, Fleetwood Mac, and Jackson Browne all performed over three days. In addition to music, the festival was to feature the latest technological and scientific innovations at an on-site expo, while satellites linked attendees with those watching in the Soviet Union. The US Festival was also the first music event in history to use jumbo screens for unobstructed views.
High ticket prices ($37.50 for three days) and 112-degree heat made the inaugural US Festival a commercial flop. Dedicated to his vision, Wozniak was quick to begin working on his second US Festival, held over Memorial Day weekend in 1983. This time around, Colorado promoter Barry Fey assisted with the booking and they separated each day by genre: New Wave, Heavy Metal, and Rock. The biggest draw of the festival was Heavy Metal Day and its headliner Van Halen, with a record-setting 375,000 tickets sold. Motley Crüe’s Vince Neil referred to it as “The day new wave died and rock ‘n’ roll took over.”
Van Halen set another world record at the US Festival: “highest amount paid to an act for a single performance.” The Guinness World Book of Records even had to invent a new category in order to include them in the 1984 edition. The group was originally intended to make $1 million on the gig, but upon finding out that the late lineup addition of David Bowie also cost $1 million, Van Halen demanded $500,000 more or they weren’t going to perform. Wozniak agreed, in part due to a favored-nation clause in their contract that stated they were to be paid more than any other act at the festival. Van Halen arrived to their set three hours late and completely obliterated. David Lee Roth was so drunk that he could barely recite the lyrics to the band’s songs.
Read what promoter Barry Fey had to say about Van Halen’s fee increase (courtesy of the OC Register):
“The festival was completely booked,” Fey recalls, “and Van Halen had a favored-nation clause in their contract that said no one could get more than them – and they were getting $1 million. Then Steve came to me and said, ‘God, Barry, I really love David Bowie.’ I say, ‘Steve, there’s no room. Let’s put this to bed.’ And he says, ‘Well, I really do love David … could you try? It is my money and my festival.’” So Fey called Bowie, who was then touring Europe a month after the release of his blockbuster album Let’s Dance. He would return that August for two sold-out shows at Angel Stadium. “David tells me: ‘We’ll have to interrupt our tour and charter a 747 to bring our equipment and get it right back again.’ So I went to Steve: ‘David’s gonna cost you a million and a half, but it’s gonna cost you an extra half a million for Van Halen.’ He just shrugged his shoulders: ‘So?’ The addition of Bowie ultimately cost $2 million.”
Van Halen wasn’t the only problematic headliner at the US Festival. Closing out the first day were guerrilla punk-rockers The Clash, who promised their own political objections to the event. Upon discovering Van Halen’s ludicrous guarantee, band leader Joe Strummer demanded that Wozniak and some of the bigger acts donate a portion of their proceeds to charity. When it was discovered that the ticket price had raised unbeknownst to them, The Clash refused to play unless Apple donated $100,000 to charity. Their guarantee was $500,000.
Two hours after their proposed set time, The Clash finally took the stage. Projected on the screen behind them was a banner that read “THE CLASH NOT FOR SALE.” Their set was intense, sloppy, and there was a perceived hostility between band members and with the crowd. It was believed that this tension arose from a conflicting abandonment of their punk ethos, while accepting such a large festival payout on the wave of success that was 1982’s Combat Rock. Also, they really hated Van Halen. Throughout the set Strummer demanded hostility from a lackluster audience, stating his disgust in an event that was not focused on the future, but rather on commercialization and big profits. He also mentioned that his band wasn’t walking with what they deserved in comparison to the others, to which the fed-up festival organizers retaliated with fury. Soon afterward, The Clash’s check was projected on the big screen, showing the audience that the non-commercial freedom fighters in front of them were walking with an exuberant payment of half a million dollars. After their set, the band got into a physical altercation with security and refused to play an encore.
Four months after the US Festival, guitarist and co-vocalist Mick Jones was kicked out of The Clash. This was his last performance with the band before being replaced by guitarists Nick Sheppard and Vince White. It was also the final performance by Stan Ridgway with Wall of Voodoo. The Clash went on to release one final album Cut the Crap in 1985, before disbanding in early 1986. The US Festival did not return for a third edition in 1984, and it was reported that Wozniak lost $20 million dollars of his own money on the event over two years. Barry Fey regarded it as the “The most expensive backstage pass in history.”
Steve Jobs thought Wozniak was crazy.
picture copyright www.Corbis.com
T Shirt - Photo courtesy Bev Davies
picture copyright www.Corbis.com
Bev Davies - this is one of my fav Clash photos. this press conference was called and I was late so wasn't out there, hung back behind them and got this very special photo.
Did you go? What do you remember?
Info, articles, reviews, comments or photos welcome.
Please email blackmarketclash
"This was the first day of the us festival 1983 (new wave day). The clash were the headliner. This was the only time i saw the clash. I’m glad i was able to see such a great band before they called it quits.I was very close to the stage. I remember the clash wouldn’t come out and play until the promoter (steve wozniak of apple computers) agreed to give a million dollars to a charity that the clash would choose. The band finally came out. "
"I was there, too, and what I remember is that the band came out and played a short set (maybe 30? 45? minutes) and stopped abruptly and left the stage. (Perhaps that's why some of the recordings cut out.) They disappeared for a long time - 45 minutes? even 60? - so much so that thousands of the crowd left.
The announcements speakers even said, at one point, that "The Clash Have Left The Festival." But thousands remained standing in front of the stage, myself included, demanding more. Finally, the band came back; I remember seeing crowds come streaming back through the gate.
The band then played the bulk of their set, one of the hottest shows I've ever seen. Tired but thrilled, I stayed through the end. It was an amazing show, as you know from the recording. I seem to remember that "Rolling Stone" magazine later wrote that the reason the band left early was that they'd gotten a much smaller fee than the other headline bands (and were quite enraged about that), and that they spent that gap extorting money out of Steve Wozniak, the show's promoter (and half of the team that founded Apple Computers).
They only came back, that article said, once Woz had sat down and written them a fat check. I don't remember that the article said anything about charity... But someone else can research that."
US Festival 83: No More In 84
John Mendelssohn, The Record, Summer 1983
AFTER PUNK, audiences weren't supposed to pay large amounts of money anymore for the privilege of watching superstars from the length of a football field away, shouting "Yeah!" whenever those exalted beings designed to demand. "Everybody having a good time?"
Over the Memorial Day weekend, between 375,000 and 700,000 rock fans attended the 1983 US Festival in Devore, California. Each of them paid Unuson, the purportedly nonprofit corporation that staged the festival, at least $20 a day to endure scorching heat and dangerous levels of air pollution by day, dampness and cold by night, to get done dirt at the concession stands, and to try to make their heroes out on Diamond Vision. Behold again the extent to when punk failed.
The U.S Festival's 400,000-watt sound system was excellent. However high the ozone sulfate level, no one was asphyxiated. Wall of Voodoo. Men At Work, Stray Cats. Ozzy Osbourne, U2 and The Pretenders all performed fine to sublime sets. Stevie Nicks and the Thin Bronzed Duke both looked supremely videogenic on the gigantic monitors that flanked the stage. And the little Hitlers of The Clash and Unuson fighting it out until neither did the other's will proved fab soap opera.
But for every good thing that might be said about the 1983 US Festival, at least 75,000 bad ones flock to mind, especially if one had attended on a magazine's behalf.
They'd seen fit to give everything from Newsweek to The B'nai B'rith Brannual Bugle equal credence. So whenever a writer bemoaned his lack of access to an area from which he might watch the festival's musical performances live, rather than on Diamond Vision, without having to claw his way through 25,000 sweating, squirt-bottle-wielding, ozone-sulfate-stupefied rock fans, the good folks of Unuson were able to gasp with incredulity and sputter. "Let 1200 members of the press up on stage? No way!"
Once having achieved admission to the bleachers on either side of the stage, one was so loathe to quit them that he vented his bladder in empty soft drink or beer cups. Early in the evening of Heavy Metal Sunday, when the inhabitants of the bleachers ran out of empty cups, a group of photographers waiting below to be led to the demilitarized zone in front of the stage found themselves doused with golden fluids from on high.
But no indignity to which the media were subjected compared to being placed in the care of Sid Silver. "If dis [a good turnout] continues," this (relentlessly) self-described "former member of the working press" announced with what he unmistakably fancied to be vast wit and infinite portentousness at least half a dozen times during the afternoon of the first day, "dere will be more in '84."
By about noon of Heavy Metal Sunday. Sid had grown weary of being snarled at about the press's lack of backstage access. He removed his red, white, and blue polyester cap and looked grave. With what he unmistakably imagined would be perceived as Great Candor, he cautioned that he was about to speak not as the voice of Unuson, but as plain Sid Silver, Former Member of the Working Press. "You made dese groups," he indignantly intoned, his voice all a tremble. "It's up to you to tell your readers how dey treat you."
Knowing no better, the correspondent for the B'nai B'rith Biannual Bugle applauded. Whereupon, Sid took to snatching his cap off and delivering the same valiant oration approximately every hour on the hour, until everyone got sick to death of it and not even the B'nai B'rith Biannual Bugle applauded anymore.
But it wasn't until Memorial Day that Sid really hit his stride. Introducing the local fuzz at one of the last of the press's periodic crime updates, he noted, "We were just having a rap, not about law enforcement, but just a gentle rap...and I think the people of San Bernardino did a wonderful thing electing Floyd Tidwell sheriff."
(They should be relieved that they didn't elect him to teach their children the alphabet. "There's lots of acid out there." Tidwell kept assuring the press. In fact, what there was lot of Out There wasn't LSD, but PCP, in sufficient abundance to keep the security gorillas at the edge of the stage very busy indeed. In his determination to join Judas Priest in their finest hour, one obvious young user got himself punched unconscious and hurled back into the crowd no fewer than three times, only to reappear minutes later, spitting out his own features and shrieking in a language he alone could understand.)
Resembling the patron of one of those Urban Cowboy-inspired singles bars jammed with accountants in Stetsons and moustaches. Unuson president Dr. Peter Ellis proved even more mealy-mouthedly disingenuous than the ludicrous Sid. "I really respect the way the press doesn't let bullshit slide," he said with one-time Sunnyvale (Silicon Valley, California) Jaycees' "Outstanding Young Man of the Year" earnestness when the press asked him why Unuson was treating it so woefully.
This, apparently, was one hunk of bullshit he hoped the press would make an exception for, since he said no more on the subject until pressed, and pressed hard. "You're not the easiest guys in the world to deal with," he finally chucked nervously. "And of course the number one person we want to serve are the fans out there."
Behold some of the ways in which Unuson served The Fans Out There. If one wanted to eat at the US Festival, one ate what a Unuson-licensed concession stand sold him. No food could be brought in ñ that is no food. Guards were seen confiscating even the milk a young mother had brought into feed her infant child. The staff of a first-aid station was overheard advising frightfully scarlet young woman where she could buy the sunburn ointment she'd come to the station imagining she'd be given. Nor did their friends at Unuson squander a single opportunity to coax. The Fans Out There to buy an official program of T-shirt bearing the slogan "Today, Tomorrow, Together," or the logo of particular brand of beer.
Having been appalled by Van Halen's David Lee Roth, Ellis claimed that Unuson would henceforth have nothing more to do with heavy metal ñ but only until his Outstanding Young Man of the Year political instincts kicked in. Whereupon he rhapsodized about what Terrific Entertainers Judas Priest, Triumph, and Motley Crue (they of the dimestore Satanism) had all proved, and lauded Eddie Van Halen's Great Contributions to the music business. Of which business he'd only milliseconds before professed total ignorance.
Listening to festival creator Steve Wozniak, it was difficult to imagine him getting his own running shoes tied, let along having invented a machine (the Apple micorcomputer) that changed the world. "The mail I got from the kids who came to last year's festival was so incredibly positive," he gee-whizzed in his breathless, rapid-fire way during his first visit to Press Island, where the media were treated to free pretzels and dollar beers as a sort of bribe to make themselves scarce, "that I just had to give them that enjoyment again, like another Star Wars movie."
A faraway look appeared in his eyes. "They come from every state in the Union," he marveled." "They park their ears and vans and campers and RVs in the parking lot, and they stay up all night listening to the biggest, loudest radios. "Here his voice trailed off, as though to embellish so sublime a vision might be somehow to diminish it.
To their credit. The Clash weren't buying a syllable of Unuson's utopian rhetoric. Fully a week before the festival was to begin, they took to agonizing in public over the question of should they stay or should they go. By and by, they decided that they'd escape the taint of the extraordinarily huge amount of filthy lucre ñ $500,000 ñ they'd been offered only of Unuson and their fellow performers made donations to charity. Two hours before they were due on stage, it was later alleged, they'd phoned Unoson's attorney and told him that, unless The Corporation acceded to their latest demands, they'd be on a flight east at the time they were meant to take the stage, and wholesale mayhem would inexorably ensue.
Once on stage, the first thing Joe Strummer did was insult his audience, in a way that demonstrated that his mastery of geography is just about equivalent to his sociopolitical acumen "We're here," he croaked bihously, "in the capital of the decadent U.S. of A." This must have been exciting news for Devore, California.
Between the conclusion of their conclusion of their performance proper and what might have been their encore. Kosmo Vinyl, the loudmouth The Clash keep on their payroll to rile things up when their own energies flag, reportedly blindsided the festival's insufferable master of ceremonies for seeming to impugn the boys' motives. A punch-up between the band and Unoson stage workers purportedly ensued. Unfortunately, no one was hurt.
The deep irony of heavy Metal Sunday's predominantly young male audience ñ by far the festival's largest ñ was that, even while it exuded we-don't-take-no-shit-from-nobody machismo, it was also supremely acquiescent. No matter how many times vainglorious asshole lead singers dared to shriek, "I can't hear you," after the crowd had roared assent to the rhetorical question. "Are you having a good time?" the long-haired tens of thousands never refused to roar back more loudly yet.
And when, at the conclusion of the long, hot day. Van Halen kept them waiting two hours in the dampenss, did they storm the stage and pull the boys limb from limb? No. While their heroes ñ who'd needed no less than 22 limousiness to transport the 130 bodyguards, technicians, and sycophants they'd brought with them ñ readied themselves to party hearty, the longhaired tens of thousands huddled patiently near bonfires and emitted the only genuinely communal vibes of the whole festival.
And when the group finally did arrive on stage and David Lee Roth was seen to have partied so hard already that he couldn't sing even as well as he usually does nor remember lyrics, nor even remain upright in the early going, did they storm the stage then? No. Instead they roared their approval so as to make all of Devore quake, and raised their fists high in tribute to their heroes. And showed the world that as much as was dished out, they would take and more.
There turned out to be lets more to take. A third of the shuttle buses that were supposed to carry the audience from the concert back to their ears in the vast unmarked parking lot didn't show up at show's end, and tens of thousands remained stranded on the site at 5:30 a.m. Two of them were later found to have been killed in car crashes after falling asleep at the wheel. And a 12-year-old girl was run over while dozing in a sleeping bag on the edge of the parking lot.
For them, and for one doddering old fool who remembered being able to see the performers on stage without Diamond Vision from where he sat ñ yes, sat comfortably ñ in the third row from the back at Monterey in 1967, for one doddering old fool who remained convinced, a young heavy metal fan's lifetime later, that masochism and a love of live rock and roll aren't inextricably linked, there will be no more in 1984.
© John Mendelssohn, 1983
tickets, tickets, tickets
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London Calling |
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There are several sights that provide setlists but most mirror www.blackmarketclash.co.uk. They are worth checking.
from Setlist FM (cannot be relied on)
from Songkick (cannot be relied on)
... both have lists of people who say they went
& from the newer Concert Database
Also useful: Ultimate Music datbase, All Music, Clash books at DISCOGS
A collection of articles, interviews, reviews, posters, tour dates from the Clash's warm-up mini-Tour of Texas and their appearance at the Us Festival in San Bernadino California. Articles cover all of 1983.
If you know of any articles or references for this particular gig, anything that is missing, please do let us know.
Great Us Festival Joe interview at Long Beach Arena 24 January 1984
SOUNDS – Us Festival – 18 June 1983
Generations [Calif mag] ahead of US Festival
US Festival 83: No More In 84
John Mendelssohn,
The Record, Summer 1983
AFTER PUNK, audiences weren't supposed to pay large amounts of money anymore for the privilege..
Pulse Magazine July 1983
Van Halen/Clash fall out
over Us Festival
NME 10 Sept 83
Mick Jones sacked from Clash
US Festival '83: No more 1984
Record Magazine August
1983 Us Festival [600k]
Kris Needs book -
Joe Strummer & The Legend of the Clash
page 237
If you know any please let us know
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If Music Could Talk
The best Clash messageboard and which also has links to downloads on its megalists
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Go here for uploads and downloads. It's not a massive space so its on an as and when basis.
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If you are searching for articles in the USA - DPLA Find the local US library link here
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The Official Clash
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Clash City Collectors - excellent
Facebook Page - for Clash Collectors to share unusual & interesting items like..Vinyl. Badges, Posters, etc anything by the Clash. Search Clash City Collectors & enter search in search box. Place, venue, etc
Clash on Parole - excellent
Facebook page - The only page that matters
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Clash City Snappers
Anything to do with The Clash. Photos inspired by lyrics, song titles, music, artwork, members, attitude, rhetoric,haunts,locations etc, of the greatest and coolest rock 'n' roll band ever.Tributes to Joe especially wanted. Pictures of graffitti, murals, music collections, memorabilia all welcome. No limit to postings. Don't wait to be invited, just join and upload.
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I saw The Clash at Bonds - excellent
Facebook page - The Clash played a series of 17 concerts at Bond's Casino in New York City in May and June of 1981 in support of their album Sandinista!. Due to their wide publicity, the concerts became an important moment in the history of the Clash. Search I Saw The Clash at Bonds & enter search in red box. Place, venue, etc
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