SAVATAGE: Earliest Known Live Footage Posted Online

An ultra-rare video clip of SAVATAGE performing the song "Holocaust" under teh band's original moniker AVATAR at an outdoor concert sponsored by a Tampa radio station — held in a strip mall parking lot in Clearwater, Florida sometime around 1982 — has been posted online at YouTube.com. This is the earliest (known) footage of SAVATAGE that exists. The group's lineup for the performance was as follows:

Vocals - Jon Oliva
Guitar - Criss Oliva
Bass - Keith Collins
Drums - Steve Wacholz

In a recent interview with Rock My Monkey, Jon Oliva had the following to say regarding the possibility of future recording/touring activity from SAVATAGE: "Well, it's over but it's not over, you know what I mean? It's over right now because no one's doing anything. We haven't disbanded or anything. We have plans to do something in the future. We're just... It's like every time we talk about it, and every time I say we're going to do something, something happens to fuck it up. (laughs) So in my opinion right now, nothing is going on until everybody says, 'Okay, let's go do something.' Then we'll probably do something. We want to do something for the 25th anniversary of the band, but it's just a time thing, and a schedule thing with everybody so busy with TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA. Is like a runaway freight train right now. It's just getting everybody together. They all play in the orchestra, so that makes it even more difficult. The demands on the guys for that has become ten times what it was four or five years ago. That's one of the things that is been holding up there being a SAVATAGE thing. Another thing I think is the fact we've been together for twenty some odd years, and I think everybody just needed to get away from it for awhile. We never really had any break from 1983 all the way up until 2001. The most time we ever had off was when Criss [Oliva] died, and even then, I was recording 'Handful of Rain' four months after he passed away. I mean, it was just, I think after the 2001 tour, and being stuck in the middle of 9/11, and being three thousand miles from home, and not being able to get home, I think that was the emotional thing that snapped everybody. We just got to put this down for a while. It wasn't fun anymore. We loved the band so much, I didn't want the band to end that way. I don't want the band to end that way. When everybody can give it the time and dedication it deserves, then we'll get together and we'll do something. Until then I'm going to continue doing what I'm doing now. We'll see what happens. You never know."