On this day in 1983, Van Halen headlined the US Festival, a music festival held from 5/28/83 through 5/30/83 at Glen Helen Regional Park in San Bernardino, CA. Van Halen performed on “Heavy Metal Day” (5/29/83) as headliners for the record-setting fee of $1.5 million. The 1984 Guinness Book of World Records created a new category based upon the price of this performance.

For lots of cool facts about the US Festival, see our Part 2 of our Full Blast & Top Down article.

US Festival Video Upgrade! On the 30th anniversary of this historic rock ‘n’ roll event, the Van Halen News Desk is debuting the is highest quality footage ever to be seen of Van Halen’s performance at the US Festival. In the video clip above, Van Halen performs “Runnin’ With The Devil”. Thursday and Friday we will debut high quality performance videos of “(Oh) Pretty Woman” and “You Really Got Me”/”Happy Trails”, respectively, right inside this article.

These three videos make up the full Van Halen segment that aired in a special Showtime presentation back in 1983. Bootleg enthusiasts know that footage of Van Halen’s entire two-hour performance at the US Festival has been in circulation since the ’80s, but is blurry. These three videos are much clearer than the two-hour version and are the highest quality footage from the ’82-’83 time period. (Note that, because this footage was edited for Showtime, the band touched up the lead vocals and background vocals.)

These three videos mark the first additions to our new YouTube channel, the Van Halen Vault. We will be using this channel to premiere some of the greatest Van Halen video and audio to our subscribers. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel to be the first to see these awesome videos.

Read more: http://www.vhnd.com/2013/05/29/30th-anniversary-of-the-1983-us-festival-highest-quality-footage-unearthed/#ixzz2UiuLegs3

I remember those 3 being played on the radio in 83 and around 84. i got the impression those were the 3 cuts they featured like the oakland 81 FW vids they released. This show was a big deal back then . I remember them playing a scorps tune or 2 from the us festival on the radio as well. What a classic date in VH history, I looked at it all day and it didn’t dawn on me. Thanks for the memories!

I don’t think it gets better than this – the band at their performance peak. What a huge crowd, too. Too bad they fixed the vocals, though, I liked the drunken mess. Ha, at 3:51 Dave makes the same face he makes at shows today – big open mouthed smile.

That looks real nice. I can remember listening to the radio broadcast that weekend and hearing the 3 VH tunes. Recorded them to cassette.

I downloaded this video in the 720p format using RealPlayer. It’s an MP4 Video file, and I can’t get any player to play the video. I tried Windows Media Player, VLC, and QuickTime. None will play this file. It won’t even play in RealPlayer.

Anyone else having this issue?

I’ve got the audio on a Westwood One CD when they tacked the 3 songs on to the end of the ’86 New Haven show.

Dave:
I’ve got the audio on a Westwood One CD when they tacked the 3 songs on to the end of the ’86 New Haven show.

It would be cool to have these tracks in officially-released quality. Any chance you could share them on Dropbox or something?

jroundy:
I downloaded this video in the 720p format using RealPlayer.It’s an MP4 Video file, and I can’t get any player to play the video.I tried Windows Media Player, VLC, and QuickTime.None will play this file.It won’t even play in RealPlayer.

Anyone else having this issue?

Plays fine for me on a Mac, using every video player I have.

JasonA: It would be cool to have these tracks in officially-released quality. Any chance you could share them on Dropbox or something?

I would love a copy as well.

The 720p mp4 file I downloaded plays just fine in VLC.

I still have the Beta tape of the US Fest I recorded off Showtime way back in the day. Anyone got a working Beta VCR anymore?

jroundy:
I downloaded this video in the 720p format using RealPlayer.It’s an MP4 Video file, and I can’t get any player to play the video.I tried Windows Media Player, VLC, and QuickTime.None will play this file.It won’t even play in RealPlayer.

Anyone else having this issue?

Discovered the problem was using RealPlayer to download the video. RealPlayer has worked for years downloading videos from YouTube, but recently something has changed. I used another program to download the video, and now everything works.

Too bad the video isn’t sync’d up as well as it should be, but it’s great to see either way.. The overdubs are a nice touch. I’m assuming they only touched up the 3 songs from the Showtime special so we’ll never see this released commercially.

Dave:
I’ve got the audio on a Westwood One CD when they tacked the 3 songs on to the end of the ’86 New Haven show.

Yeah I have the 3 studio remakes, I mean “live” wink wink, tracks from westwood somewhere too, not sure if I have then on cassette off the radio or on a big black or small silver disc though….

JasonA: It would be cool to have these tracks in officially-released quality. Any chance you could share them on Dropbox or something?

Jason,
For one of the titles I’m currently offering, I downloaded the audio directly from the Historical Films website.

http://www.historicfilms.com

They’re the ones who have the licensing rights to the US Festival. I even remastered/”EQed” it a bit because it was very “boomy” (lots of low frequencies and hum). Compare the two and you can hear the difference.

Here’s my version:

Which one one would everyone like to see on disc? Mine or VHND’s? Currently mine is included in one of my new titles but the quality of the new stuff is pretty damn good.

Let me know, guys!