This day in history: S-R critic calls ZZ Top performance at Coliseum ‘assault on the ears’; Silent film star’s menagerie officially heads to San Diego Zoo

From 1975: A Spokesman-Review’s critic was not impressed with the ZZ Top concert at the Spokane Coliseum.

“Perhaps the kindest thing to say about the three-man contingent’s assault on the ears of the approximately 3,500 young listeners was that the music was loud,” critic Joan Applegate wrote. “More accurately, ZZ Top was more an insult to the Spokane audience. They hardly worked up a sweat. Apparently, and they are not alone, they felt they could slip into town and pick up a few dollars in what they felt was a city starved for live acts. No one was fooled.”

In their sequined suits and 10-gallon hats, she called them “just duded up cowboys.”

She liked the opening act, REO Speedwagon, far better.

From 1925: The animals in silent film star Nell Shipman’s former wildlife menagerie were successfully rescued and on their way to a new permanent home at the San Diego Zoo.

The zoo had earlier expressed its willingness to take on the 40-plus animals that had been abandoned at Shipman’s Priest Lake compound. They were crated up, “freighted down to Priest River” and loaded on trains.

“This ends the activities and the interest of the Nell Shipman Moving Picture Company in the Northwest,” the Chronicle wrote.

Also on this day

(From onthisday.com)

1779: Spain declares war on Great Britain in support of France and the United States, starting the Great Siege of Gibraltar, which goes on to last more than three and a half years.