The Who Live at The Spectrum - I Can't Explain 12-4-1973

Hey everybody, welcome to the concert room inside the Philly Concert Experience. I'm your host Bob Hill. The concert room is a podcast session dedicated to the performances, performers, bands, and artists who played on the stage at the legendary Philadelphia Spectrum Arena. Okay, and then now we'll do a uh little season recap of season one. This will be the last show until we move on to season two. And uh did want to thank you for downloading and clicking on the shows and uh listening. I hope my podcast sessions brought back some great memories of uh bands and performances and uh the tours and great live shows that you either saw at the uh Spectrum or in your hometown venue growing up.

For me, the spectrum will always be dear to me and hold such wonderful memories that I shared with my friends. Uh Philadelphia had such a great music scene in the 70s and 80s, and still actually to this day. Uh back then we uh we had such a wide variety of music genres with our local bands, who uh by the way actually went on to play on the spectrum stage, in which I will feature and talk about in season two. So, in season two, in addition to some of the great performances that I've been featuring in season one uh from the national acts on the spectrum stage and also uh with interviews.

In season two, I am going to also feature some local bands that went on to play on the spectrum stage. So I look forward to that. And uh now as far as the spectrum, bands and performers always were on top of their game when they rolled into the arena because the uh spectrum was really an intimate room for a hockey arena. And we were on top of the band, we're in their face, we're up close, we're loud, uh, which made the arena seem like a really big club. And the acoustics were great, and that's why so many bands chose to record there, either for prosperity or for official record release of a live album.

Um you know, there was some there obviously were bigger arenas like Madison Square Garden and the Forum, uh Kobo Hall in Detroit, but nothing as intimate or live-sounding as the Spectrum, and I hope a lot of these performances and some of the interviews that we did in season one uh kind of brought that out to life. Um, so you can really get an idea of how great the spectrum was as far as concerts. So as we move on to season two with more interviews and featured performances of both local and national acts, I'm closing out season one here uh with this session, and I'm finally getting around to one of my favorite bands of all time, The Who.

Now The Who performed at the Spectrum on December 4th, 1973, during their quadruphenia tour, and the show was recorded live and broadcast by the syndicated USFM radio program, the King Biscuit Flower Hour. So this is really a great recording. And I believe uh actually Leonard Skinner opened, so what a great night of tunes. They played the Spectrum a total five times, starting in 1970. Their last show was in December of 1979. Of course, they toured uh after the tragic death of Keith Moon and came back and played various venues here in Philly, uh, but they just never returned to the spectrum.

So we're lucky to have this uh great quality recording of Early Who at the Spectrum. Now, again, it's another sp sold-out crowd at the Spectrum, but this concert featured a mix of new songs from Quadrifinia and also the classic hits. And the again the recording quality is considered exceptional. Um the performance here has been released on various formats, including vinyl, and it is available on music platforms. I will uh include a link to the full show. As far as this performance, uh during the middle of the concert that night, the who introduced the quadruphenia section of the concert, and they proceeded to play uh songs from that album.

And again, I'll include the link to the entire show so you can pull it up and enjoy it. They really sounded great, and as I mentioned, because it's recorded uh that night and the Spectrum Cow crowd had a lot to do with their uh fierce and tight performance. So I queued up the uh opener of the show with the intro of the King Biscuit Flower Hour, and when you heard this on your local rock radio station back then, uh you knew the concert was going to be on fire. So here's the who on the spectrum stage the night of December 4th, 1973, with the opener I Can't Explain.

And now here's the Who on the King Biscuit Flower Hour.

Went on to just kill it at that night. Um again, pull up the link and listen to this whole show in its entirety. It's absolutely on fire. Hopefully, you were able to see the Who back then, but uh also don't forget they're still touring, which is actually incredible. In fact, they just recently played here in Philadelphia. Um recently, at the time of my uh recording session here. So that is a wrap on season one, and again I appreciate you tuning in, listening, downloading the shows. I look forward to season two.

Please feel free to leave a comment, and of course, subscribe and tell a friend. And again, I'll see you soon in the concert room.

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