#bruh most reviews i read from this concert were written by cynical know-it-all journalists who didn't even give the band a chance

[kulturegroupie]

Led Zeppelin performing at the Spectrum, Philadelphia, PA, March 31, 1970.

Enter Robert Plant, lead singer. He looked like Rapunzel with a comb out. Wearing a body shirt and spray-on blue bells, he gave every straight chick and gay guy the treat of their day. Throughout the first number he seemed more involved in displaying his pelvic virtuosity than his vocal skill. While prancing in his wooden shoes, he thrust out his groin and shimmied his fanny in a delightfully outrageous manner. Finishing his first song with a sexual assualt on the microphone, Plant stood sweating amid the moderate applause of the crowd.

Seeing that his technique only had minimal success on the hip Philadelphia audience, he decided to let them hear what they came for, the LED ZEPPELIN. The rest of Plant’s numbers showed that he was a better singer than eroticist. He squeezed everything he could out of the “Lemon Song,” “Good Times, Bad Times,” “Dazed and Confused”, “How Many More Times” and “Whole Lotta Love”.

The rest of the group, to my amazement, were fantastic. Some of the guitar work by Jimmy Page was even better than the record, which is saying a lot. His use of a violin bow in playing an electric guitar produces some devastating variations which have become the ZEPPELINS trademark. Page assualts, rapes, stomps, beats, and loves his guitar into submission. The instrument seems to say, “you know I can’t do this but if you insist, I’ll try”, every time Page produces another new sound on his versatile music machine. In his solo “Black Mountainside” Page displayed incredible skill and gaged by their reaction the audience realized it.

The LED ZEPPELIN’s drummer Richard Bonham got it on in a thirty minute solo. His speed on the drums seemed to rival Ginger Baker and his rhythm seemed more practiced and accurate than the sometimes sloppy “Toad”: Bonham used drumsticks for the first fifteen minutes and then abandoned them to play only with his hands. It gave the impression of a modern revolutionary beating the war drums but whatever the impression the huge Spectrum crowd dug it, and gave him a standing, clapping, shouting, whistling ovation at the end of his half hour ordeal.

LED ZEPPELIN’s organ was prominent in their first album and a solo base guitar by John Paul Jones showed why. This number showed that the group indeed has depth and that each member can hold court to several thousand critical Philadelphians. By the encore, however, his bass was dragging, as could be seen in “Whole Lotta Love”.

At 11:30 P.M. an exhausted LED ZEPPELIN left the Spectrum stage from the last encore. They were happy. The crowd was happy (Plant made sure of that by asking them several times during the performance. The last time he asked, the notorious Spectrum roof blew off from the audiences responses.) And I was happy. Even with the Spectrum’s inferior acoustics nothing could stop them. The LED ZEPPELIN had renewed my faith in electric rock concerts with a fine performance.

— By Clark Deleon