The Midnight Special - Flashback to 1973
Music
In Collection
#358
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USA / English
DVD  Region 1

Track List: Sly & The Family Stone (Everybody Is A Star), Curtis Mayfield (Future Shock), Jim Croce (I Got A Name), Wilson Pickett (Get Me Back On Time, Engine #9), Natural Four (Can This Be Real?), The Bee Gees (Lonely Days), Anne Murray (Snowbird), Don McLean (Vincent), The Association (Along Comes Mary), Badfinger (No Matter What), Marty Robbins (Don't Worry), Tammy Wynette & George Jones (We're Gonna Hold On), Tanya Tucker (Blood Red & Goin' Down), Tammy Wynette (Stand By Your Man), Don Gibson (Oh, Lonesome Me)

This DVD is a serious downhill slide from the preceding two 1973 DVDs. It has a different format than the predecessors, as this one actually has snippets of the hosts, namely Curtis Mayfield, Anne Murray, and Loretta Lynn & Marty Robbins and is divided into 3 parts, more or less, as each of those 3 shows. The sound is muddy and the video quality poor in some cases. Once again, why did they bother to mix it into Dolby 5.1?

The first show, hosted by Curtis Mayfield, has it's best moment, the Curtis Mayfield peformance of "Future Shock". It's not as good as "Superfly" from the "More 1973" DVD, but still isn't bad. Once again, Jim Croce performs good and died in a plane crash not long later this year after this show. Sly Stone is obviously f-ed up, as usual, and it appears to be after Larry Graham left the band. I was not too impressed. The other peformances, well, guess it depends on your taste.

The second show, hosted by Anne Murray has its high point, a rare TV Badfinger peformance of "No Matter What", by the original lineup and it rocks. Unfortunately, the sound and video quality are awful. Why? R.I.P. Pete Ham and Tom Evans. The Association is good, but are much better and inspired on the Complete 1967 Monterey Pop Festival outtake performance DVD set. Now THAT was good, when they still had their original bass player before drugs and criminal behavior short circuited him.

The third show, hosted by Loretta Lynn & Marty Robbins, well, it's just OK. Tanya Tucker is mighty young, still in her teens here. I guess even though I do like these country performers, I am personally not a mainstream country music fan (especially Nashville Top 40), so I may be too biased to give a fair review of them. I will say, though, that at times these performances seem a bit contrived and I'm not convinced they are all truly "live". That would seem to re-enforce my personal view that country music in general was too contrived for its own good during the 1970's. Look what Willie Nelson had to do. He left Nashville for good, and fled to Austin, working outside the Nashville scene. Once the outlaw country movement took hold in Austin, country music in general was redeemed. That's my 2 cents...

No comedy segments appear on this DVD.
Edition Details
No. of Discs/Tapes 1
Personal Details
Location Case #1