Michael Anthony’s review noted that at least 1,500 fans jammed the Depot for the first set, with what seemed like another 1,500 waiting outside in the rain for the second. He called the first set mundane, with no real surprises, but only when comparing it to Winter’s past performances. Anthony noted that former McCoy’s guitar player Rick Derringer had joined Winter the previous year, and that while his guitar playing delivered “layer upon layer of 32nd note riff lines in unison and alteration, his singing left something to be desired.

Marshall Fine noted that this was Winter’s fifth appearance in the Twin Cities, but that the group was getting “too obvious.”

Winter used to project a stage image of a white ghost, dancing some secret ballet with his guitar. There were high points and low points, climaxes and crescendos. He built his songs and then methodically, carefully took them apart.

His present band simply overpowers its audience. There are no real ups and downs in the songs because they all start on far too high an energy level. It’s simply power music, the genre that Grand Funk Railroad has made popular. The difference is that Johnny Winter knows what he is doing and consequently never becomes repetitious or dull.

The J. Geils Band was a relatively unknown group from Boston, which Fine found musically more interesting than Winter, akin to the Allman Brothers Band in their “hard-drinking approach to blues and the same smoothness and fluidity in their instrumental work.” Fine awarded kudos to the group’s harmonica player, Magic Dick, who “plays the most delicious harp since Paul Butterfield.”