The Who
1979-12-10
The Spectrum, Philadelphia
Source: Audience
Lineage: Master Cassette>Nakamichi 670 azimuth-adjusted playback deck>Nakamichi outboard Dolby B>Wavelab 96/24 1ch mono>
Taping Gear: Teac M-100>Sony 153SD (mono, Dobly B on)
Taped and transferred by JEMS

01. Substitute
02. I Can't Explain
03. Baba O'Riley
04. The Punk And The Godfather
05. My Wife
06. Sister Disco
07. Behind Blue Eyes
08. Music Must Change
09. Drowned
10. Who Are You
11. 5:15
12. Pinball Wizard >
13. See Me Feel Me
14. Long Live Rock
15. My Generation
16. I Can See For Miles
17. Sparks
18. Won't Get Fooled Again
encore:
19. Trick Of The Light
20. Summertime Blues
21. Take A Fool
22. How Can You Do It Alone?

Pete Townshend Vocals, Guitar, Bass
Roger Daltrey Harmonica, Vocals
John Entwistle Vocals, Bass, 8 string Bass
Kenney Jones Drums
John Bundrick Piano, Keyboards
Howie Casey - saxophone
Reg Brooks - trombone
Dave Caswell - trumpet

The 8th show of the winter '79 tour was the first of two nights at the Spectrum in Philadelphia.
We left Chicago early on a very cold morning after the show there. A very needed day off on the tour, which we used to drive across Interstate 80/90 from Chicago to Philadelphia. We were in a AMC Pacer I borrowed from my brother after my Datsun B210 had ground to a halt in Detroit, two shows earlier. Not only didn't the pacer have much heat, it also had a hole in the floorboard behind the gas peddle, occasionally letting snow flurries into the car! The miles of turnpikes were accompanied by a 'Best of Elvis' set of 8-track tapes my brother had in the car (the radio got very sparse for most of the trip). As I recall, somewhere on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, north of Pittsburgh, we were at Howard Johnson's rest stop and we came across Donnie Iris and his band...ahh, life on the road...
We arrived in the evening in Philadelphia, and checked into our hotel, which was most famous for being the home of the Legionnaires disease. The Who were staying there also, and at some point in the next 2 days we were able to do a interview with John Entwistle, who couldn't have been nicer!
The first night's show featured a surprise appearance of John's 'terrible' 8-string bass for the only version of 'Trick Of The Light' on this leg of the tour, and I think the last time it was played until the 1989 tour. Pete switched to 4-string bass for this song using one of John's older Alembic basses. Also the encore featured a Pete improvasation called 'Take A Fool' before ending with 'How Can You Do It Alone?". All in all another great performance.

Images for all shows as well as full size images for this show.

Images for this show: