The US Festival 1982: The US Generation Documentary
(2017)
The US Festival 1982: The US Generation Documentary Blu-ray offers solid video and mediocre audio in this overall recommended Blu-ray release
THE US GENERATION: THE MAKING OF THE 1982 US FESTIVAL is an in-depth look at one of the most influential music festivals of all time.
For more about The US Festival 1982: The US Generation Documentary and the The US Festival 1982: The US Generation Documentary Blu-ray release, see the The US Festival 1982: The US Generation Documentary Blu-ray Review published by Jeffrey Kauffman on August 30, 2018 where this Blu-ray release scored 3.5 out of 5.
Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music may be one of the best remembered American rock festivals in history, but how many folks who can recount which band played when during
those epochal days and nights in 1969 can also recount how the festival actually came to be? Are the producers of Woodstock at the tip of
every
music fan's tongue, even to this day? Of course not (at least, not for this music fan), but the situation is a bit different with regard to the US
Festivals, which came along for a couple of years in the early eighties. None other than Apple icon Steve Wozniak funded the US Festivals out of his
own pocket, according to one talking head on this rather fascinating documentary spending over $20 million over the course of the two years.
There's an anecdote with one of the talent wranglers in this piece where he states that Wozniak just whipped out a checkbook and wrote a check for a
cool $2 million one day, saying "That ought to cover you for a while".
"Woz" himself is on hand here in a number of rather delightful interviews, where he talks about hearing some "Americana" music on the radio one day
and deciding what the world needed was a music festival devoted to such a genre. What the US Festivals turned out to be was considerably more
eclectic, part of which was due to promoter Bill Graham, and in fact even the musicians seemed to be aware of it, as evidenced by a brief archival
interview with Carlos Santana (with none other
than Herbie Hancock sitting there, listening) where Santana asks, "Who wants to hear three bands that sound like each other?", to which Hancock
nods approvingly. The US Festivals offered everyone from the B-52s to Dave Edmunds to The Police to The Talking Heads. If there's one thing to
complain about with regard to this documentary, it's that too few of these performances are seen in their entirety, though the raggedness of the
archival video that is included may hint that acceptable quality video for both concerts simply wasn't available.
The US Festival 1982: The US Generation is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of MVD Visual with an AVC encoded 720p transfer in 1.78:1 (with
the archival video of the concert hovering closer to Academy Ratio). I was frankly surprised to see the documentary is in 720p, since the included
supplemental interviews are presented in 1080p, but I wonder if perhaps the raggedness of the archival video was deemed problematic enough that a
"full" high definition upscale would offer even more issues than are already on display. As it stands, the archival video is certainly watchable, but it
suffers from a lot of aliasing, occasional ghosting and/or fringing, and at times pretty debilitating fuzziness and murkiness (especially for the acts
performing in darkness, as in some of the Fleetwood Mac material). That said, the contemporary interview sequences all look fine, if not exactly at
"wow" levels, with a natural appearing palette and good detail levels.
The US Festival 1982: The US Generation continues what I personally find to be the head scratching decision by some labels to release music-
centric product with lossy audio. In this case, insult is arguably added to injury by having only a Dolby Digital 2.0 track available. While there
are long "talking heads" sequences in this documentary, and "snippets" of performances where a lossy stereo track is perhaps not
that objectionable, there are also a number of longer segments documenting complete songs by various bands, and it's here that I kept
wishing the release had at least included a lossless stereo track. What's here sounds okay, but hardly inspiring, and at this point in the Blu-ray format,
I just can't see how a release of this type was not granted lossless audio, even if that revealed some sonic "warts" in the live performances.
One kind of funny thing that struck me during the closing credits of this piece was a long list of Kickstarter contributors. Is Wozniak's checkbook no
longer available? (That's a joke, of course.) This is a really interesting piece of history that should appeal to fans, but some may question why more
full performances weren't included, while also wondering why the documentary is presented in 720p and with lossy audio.
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The MVD Entertainment Group has officially announced its upcoming Blu-ray release of The Us Generation: The Making Of the 1982 Us Festival. The release will be available for purchase on August 10.
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