January 20, 1969
Wheaton, MD US
Wheaton Youth Center
Setlist:
Notes:
This date is officially unconfirmed and no proof has yet surfaced.
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Press: Lore has it that only 55 people showed up for the Wheaton Youth Center show, quite possibly the smallest audience to see Led Zeppelin outside of Jimmy Page's living room. Local filmmaker Jeff Krulik is confident it actually took place, having made contact with the man who organized the concert: Barry Richards, who at the time was a DJ on Gaithersburg radio station WHMC and now lives on the West Coast. "It's unbelievable," said Jeff. "And the fact that it was a Monday night, January 20th, the night of Richard Nixon's inauguration."
"There's people who grew up in Wheaton, across the street, who went to every show, who don't remember it". Jeff, who with John Heyn made the cult classic "Heavy Metal Parking Lot" (the documentary consists of fans outside the Capital Centre before a 1986 Judas Priest concert), has become obsessed with Zep's first concert in the Washington area. It's an outgrowth of a project on the area teen center scene in the late '60s and early '70s.
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Led Zep at the Wheaton Youth Center?
I was working as a store clerk for Joe Goldberg's Variety Records at nearby Wheaton Plaza. I can't prove it, but I have a vague recollection of this event happening. I went to the WYC at some point after work one night to see The Small Faces featuring...Rod Stewart! I may have been at the Led Zep show, but I wouldn't swear to it. The only other guy who could vouch for this show happening at all was a guy I worked with at the store named Karol Lopatkiewicz (low-PAT-ka-witz), with whom I've been out of touch for years...I have no idea where to even begin looking for him. Mike Oberman, who used to write for the Washington Evening Star, might know. You can find Mike on Facebook.