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Lyrics: Spotlights!
When the lights go down Oh no Get It: Pick up your copy of Triumph’s Never Surrender at Amazon. All these years later, it still stands up to any rock and roll record ever made: And because the Thunder Seven tour was my first concert, I’d feel remiss if I didn’t point you to the album itself. It’s big. It’s muscular. And it will have you standing on your roof with a fist held high in the air. Triumph’s Just a Game contains its first two radio hits, Hold On and Lay It On the Line, and it’s available for a great price at Amazon:
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In 1985, I was a gangly, rail-thin high school junior. And I was going rogue. You see, I wasn’t allowed to go to rock concerts. My parents weren’t prudes, but they were pretty strict—particularly my mom—and rock and roll concerts that were awash in a haze of fragrant bluish smoke weren’t on the list of approved activities for this maladroit rocker. So, I did what any self-respecting teenage hooligan would do: I lied to my parents. I don’t remember the line we used, but somehow, my friend and co-conspirator (name withheld to protect the guilty…I don’t want to get him into trouble with his mom) probably pulled the ol’ “I’m staying overnight at his house, he’s staying overnight at mine and pray that our parents don’t compare notes” game so that I could go see my then-favorite band, Triumph, on its massive Thunder Seven tour. (Triumph was known to put on the biggest rock show in the world, and at the time, they boasted that hauling its stage and sound equipment required a dozen or more semitrailers. At the time, Triumph was the proverbial hard rock band stepchild on American radio. American audiences liked Triumph, but despite their massive stage shows, energetic music, and hardcore guitar chops, the band never became the household name it should’ve been. Of course, none that stopped the future founder of Dances with Bass Radio. If anything, Triumph’s underdog status made me love them even more…enough to risk the wrath of my mother by sneaking off to see them without permission. (If you knew my mother in the 1980s, one didn’t simply disobey her, especially if one liked the one’s tuckus to remain in its pristine, factory setting condition. But I digress.)  Triumph got its start in Canada in 1975, scoring its first radio hit in 1979 with Hold On, and then tapping the charts a second time later that same year with Lay It On the Line. However, it wasn’t until about 1984 when a close friend and neighbor loaned his copy of Never Surrender (on vinyl even) to me and said I had to check out the acoustic opening and closing solos in When the Lights Go Down. Now, you must remember that in 1984, I didn’t do acoustic solos; I did loud, melt your face off heavy metal. My record collection was full of Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, and other hardcore metal bands. Why in seven hells would I listen to an acoustic solo? Trust me, my friend promised. He wasn’t one to steer me wrong, and the album cover was purely mesmerizing, so I trotted home with it. I still remember sitting on the floor of my cramped bedroom in front of my massive stereo speakers and dropping the needle on When the Lights Go Down. It was loud and fierce rock and roll, and the acoustic solo left me drop-jawed. Later, I would learn that Emmett is a classically trained guitarist, and often made “best of” lists citing the world’s best guitar players, though he still never attained household name status like guitar gods of the era, Eddie Van Halen, Randy Rhoads, and Ritchie Blackmore. Triumph released 9 records in 11 years before internal disputes caused Emmett to split from the trio in 1988. The band wouldn’t play together again for 20 years, but in 2008, it reunited for two shows, which inexplicably were in Sweden and Oklahoma. That same year, the band was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. On a personal note, I always found Triumph’s music to be very uplifting. At the time I first heard Never Surrender, I was a shy, dorky kid who was bullied a lot because I was different (and some kids are just assholes). Triumph’s soaring melodies, positive lyrics, and never-say-die attitude was the musical backdrop for my eventual coming of age. I like to think that knowing all that, my mom would be okay with me having pulled a fast one on her some 33 years ago. But if you get to the afterlife before me, I’d appreciate it if you kept that under your hat if you speak to her. Video: Here is the official video for When the Lights Go Down. It isn’t every day that you see a drummer singing the lead vocal. Gil Moore and guitar god Rik Emmett split vocal duties, each taking lead on their own tracks (and providing backing vocals when not on lead):
And here we have guitarist Rik Emmett at the mic performing Never Surrender:
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