I was there.

I grew up in State College PA. There was a guy that went by the name of “Buttonman” who was a local hippie entrepreneur. He wheeled a cart along the sidewalk selling buttons, stickers, yo-yos, and such. He began buying blocks of tickets to Spectrum shows and hired a coach and then sold a package of show ticket and round-trip transportation for about $20. Such a deal! That is how I happened to be there.

Creedence Clearwater Revival was also on the bill for this show. The bands each played one short set. Because this was during the early days of arena rock the venues were still experimenting with ways of presenting the acts. Rather than placing the stage at one end of the arena as most venues do nowadays, the Spectrum featured a round stage in the center of the floor. It was motorized and rotated slowly as the band played.

In another Buttonman promotion earlier that same year I saw Cream play at the Spectrum on their final US tour. The revolving stage was used for that show too, so it was a fairly long-lived experiment. But it wasn’t used at a Rolling Stones show there a year or so later. I imagine the maintenance on the thing must have been horrendous and the Spectrum probably got resistance from some bands.

I met Goldy McJohn, Steppenwolf keyboard player a couple of years ago, and he remembered the revolving stage well. He said he’d never seen anything like it. We joked that it was like attempting to turn the entire band into a Leslie speaker.