At Laurel Racetrack, a Real Variety Show

The 1969 Laurel Pop Festival at Laurel Racetrack -- July 11 with Al Kooper, Buddy Guy, the Edwin Hawkins Singers, Johnny Winter, Jethro Tull and Led Zeppelin, and July 12 with Sly & the Family Stone, Ten Years After, the Mothers of Invention, Jeff Beck Group, the Guess Who and Savoy Brown -- is the summer concert choice for Bill Holland, musician and longtime Washington bureau chief for Billboard magazine. "I remember Al Kooper and Sly both wore fringe!"

Holland, who was there on one of his first dates with future wife Marianne LaRoche, says fondly, "Just the variety of music and seeing all these artists who were fresh then made it memorable." Not for The Post, which dismissed Led Zeppelin as not having "demonstrated talent in anything but making raucus [sic], unmodulated, unoriginal noise" and suggested the various British groups' soul-inspired vocalists were "engaged in a latter-day version of blackface." The critic? Carl Bernstein.

As it happened, Holland reviewed the festival for his then-employer, the Washington Star. Holland's take then? "White blues singer Johnny Winter stole the show [and] not only brought the kids to their feet, he brought them crashing through or around the snowfence restraints to come up close to dig his unbelievable performance." As for Zep, Holland wrote that the band "does rely on sex appeal but beyond their musical talents, of which there are plenty, there is also a phony sexuality that they use to get their message across, or, I might say, their albums sold. But Led Zeppelin was what the kids really came to hear."