MovieChat Forums > The Midnight Special (1972) Discussion > "The Midnight Special" DVD review

"The Midnight Special" DVD review

posted 10 years ago by upcomingguy
2 replies | jump to latest

This is an amazing show and a milestone in both television and music history. The bad news is the presentation. It appears from first glance that the discs contain episodes of the show. This illusion is further completed by the cover art and booklet that list show numbers and airdates. There are zero complete episodes on the discs. Yes, there are over 400 episodes. Of course, they could not release them all, at least not in an affordable package.

Let’s get back to the good news, shall we? You get a remarkable collection of performances here, to be sure. You also get some very good extras. There’s plenty of interview material from the likes of Alice Cooper, Peter Frampton, Helen Reddy, Loggins & Messina, Christopher Cross, Eddie Money, Todd Rundgren and Frankie Valli. There’s a wonderful tribute to the late great Wolfman Jack, who really was the consistent face of the series and offered so many wonderful moments.

Click through for our full review.

http://upcomingdiscs.com/2014/09/30/the-midnight-special/

[–] WarpedRecord 8 years ago

I'm thoroughly confused by the various "Midnight Special" compilations, and I wonder if you can enlighten me? That is the six-disc DVD you are reviewing. I have a three-disc set, which has excellent performances but a bit too much nostalgic chatter for my tastes; I'd rather just see the show.
https://jet.com/product/detail/4d630f90a7f24134b383a9204d3f07b4?jcmp=pla:ggl:cwin_media_a3:music_sound_recording_a3_other:na:na:na:na:na:2&code=PLA15&k_clickid=868f445d-7125-47cc-91c7-42d141f6b159&gclid=CPfZosndmsoCFZRcfgodOQMP-A

If I already have the three-disc set, will the six-disc set be redundant if I purchase that? And what about all the individual "Midnight Special" discs on the market; are these merely cannibalized versions of the six-disc set?

Really, I would love to just buy a complete set including all the shows, but I doubt even Shout Factory is willing to pick up that torch. I'm sure copyright issues are a major stumbling block. Barring that, I would settle for DVDs with complete episodes rather than these informercial-style discs.

[–] mobocracy 8 years ago

The ideal outlet for this is streaming. As physical media it's an insane quantity of discs.

I would pay $25 a month (at least for a few months) for streaming access to all Midnight Special and American Bandstand complete episodes.

I wonder how complex the rights issues really are. I would think once NBC took over and it became a true network program that few artists would have had the power or foresight to dictate home video terms. Plus the record labels wouldn't have much influence. These are recordings of live performances. Unless the label is also the music publisher, they probably wouldn't have rights to independently recorded television performance.

It's probably the legal overhead of reviewing each performers original contract to determine what the specific terms were, although I imagine NBC got a lot of promotion hungry artists to sign a network-favorable boilerplate contract. Just looking at 5-600 contracts would be tedious.

It's too bad when history like this gets locked up in senseless legal squabbles. I hope they have at least done the digitizing and preservation work on the original tapes.