DVD Review: The Midnight Special

STUDIO: Time Life | DIRECTOR: Various
RELEASE DATE:
9/9/14 | PRICE: DVD $59.95
BONUSES: Wolfman Jack featurette, “The History of the Midnight Special,” new interviews with Alice Cooper, Loggins and Messina, and Helen Reddy, “Stage fashion” and “Live on TV” featurettes
SPECS: NR | 505 min. | Music | 1:85 widescreen| monaural

RATINGS (out of 5 dishes): Movie | Audio | Video | Overall

The inevitable feeling viewers “of a certain age” will get watching this collection of (some of) the best of The Midnight Special is “damn, I miss AM Top 40 radio!” This six-disc set merely scratches the surface of the show (which ran more than 350 episodes), but it offers a lot of enjoyment for those who remember the era or have a fondness for Seventies music, and the ridiculous fashions that accompanied it (which are explored in one very entertaining featurette).

Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles

The Midnight Special made its debut on NBC in 1973, after a pilot episode, excerpted here, aired in late ’72. The show stayed on in the late Friday night slot (after Carson’s Tonight Show) until 1981. It reflected the era, in that the Top 40 that was being played on AM radio was comprised of music from different genres: soft pop, hard rock, country, funk, soul and miscellaneous sub-genres (novelty records, spoken-word and the emerging disco sound).

The unique thing about the show, making it the anti-American Bandstand, is that every musical guest performed live (although one notices, in certain cases, that a few musicians sang live with their band against a backing track of strings or brass). Given the often eclectic range of the music on the show (especially in the year-end “Best of ‘75”-type episodes), producer Burt Sugarman decided to give the show a “festival” feel by having the audience sit on the floor of the studio.

Although the episodes are “telescoped” here — with some shows consisting simply of opening and closing credits and as few as two to three songs — the range of entertainers is the most impressive element of the set. There are indeed acts from the worlds of pop (The Bee Gees, Helen Reddy, ELO), hard rock (Alice Cooper, AC/DC), singer-songwriter “MOR” (Gordon Lightfoot, Janis Ian), country (Eddie Rabbitt), funk (Sly and the Family Stone, Rufus), soul (Barry White), and jazz (Chuck Mangione). This being a celebration of the Top 40 music of the period, we also have some “one-hit wonders” (Stories with “Brother Louie,” Andrew Gold with “Lonely Boy,” Billy Paul with “Me and Mrs. Jones”).

Nicest among the surprises are the variety show-like duets between stars: Mama Cass joins John Denver for “Leavin’ on a Jet Plane,” Gladys Knight sings “The Thrill Is Gone” with B.B. King, the Captain and Tennille and Neil Sedaka perform his “Love Will Keep Us Together” and, most wonderfully, Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles tackle the old chestnut “It Takes Two To Tango.”

Tom Petty

Also included are performers who left us too soon: Jim Croce, Minnie Riperton, Harry Chapin and Marvin Gaye. Gaye is represented by a fascinating chunk from an episode that hopefully will be issued in its entirety on disc at some point in the future. A 1974 docu made for the show contains footage of a concert he performed at a stadium in Atlanta, along with footage of Marvin with this mother, in his hotel with press and preparing for the concert.

This set is a commercial release of the first half of an 11-disc set being sold on the timelife.com website (https://timelife.com/products/the-midnight-special-collector-s-edition). In that set, Disc Nine (not included here) contains clips from the terrific roster of Seventies stand-up comedians who appeared on the show (Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Steve Martin, Freddie Prinze; a notorious episode hosted and programmed by Andy Kaufman is already out on DVD from Sony). One hopes that that disc — and the much-beloved (and much-bootlegged) “1980 Floor Show” episode starring David Bowie — will eventually be offered for retail sale.

As it stands, though, this is an excellent sampler of the musical performances from The Midnight Special, which do indeed bring with them AM Top 40 flashbacks. All without commercials!

 

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About Ed

Ed Grant has written about film for a wide range of periodicals, books and websites. He edited the reference book The Motion Picture Guide Annual and, since 1993, has produced and hosted the weekly cable program Media Funhouse, which Time magazine called “the most eclectic and useful movie show on TV.”