A rare colour video of Led Zeppelin miming to Good Times Bad Times, the opening track on their 1969 debut album, has been found in the University of Georgia's digital archive.
The footage was originally captured in February 1969 at Thee Image Club on Collins Avenue in Miami Beach, Florida. A low-quality, black-and-white film of the band performing Communication Breakdown at the club has been circulating for years, but the Good Times Bad Times clip is in colour and has not been seen for over half a century.
Both videos were reportedly filmed for The Rick Shaw Show, an MTV-type show in Miami featuring the latest rock'n' roll songs being lip-synched by local performers and touring musicians. Hall would later become a VeeJay on The Now Explosion, a show in Atlanta, GA, that featured dancers performing to popular songs, with wild video effects employed to make the clips more psychedelic.
Footage from The Now Explosion has been archived by the University of Georgia's Walter J. Brown Media Archive & Peabody Awards Collection, where the Good Times, Bad Times clip was discovered by a Led Zeppelin fan, alongside film of Three Dog Night performing Try A Little Tenderness and James Brown miming I Got You.
"I requested digitisation of about a dozen items that had Zeppelin song titles in the description," says the fan, who goes by the name of Zep Head. "There was Whole Lotta Love, Communication Breakdown, Good Times Bad Times, What Is and What Should Never Be and Living Loving Maid all set to kids dancing. Immigrant Song was set to stock footage of a downhill ski race!
"Then there was this. I was floored! Surely we've all seen the black-and-white Communication Breakdown promo video shot in Miami in Feb 69. That grainy video. Turns out they mimed two songs that day. And Good Times Bad Times was shot in colour!"
The video, which features perhaps the clearest available colour footage of Jimmy Page's iconic Dragon Telecaster, is embedded below.
