Recently, I've discovered so much music worth posting that I'd never come across before that I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. Just last week, I found most of the episodes of the "Old Grey Whistle Test" BBC TV show (as I write this in late October 2025). And a couple of days ago, I found out that all the episodes of "The Midnight Special" TV show from 1973 to 1975 have been posted on YouTube, with more being released every month.
In 1972, there were no TV shows in the U.S. consisting of actual live performances. But producer Burt Sugarman had an idea. He knew that the three big TV networks at the time (ABC, NBC, and CBS) went off the air at 1:00 A.M. There was nothing but static for several hours after that. He suggested young people would stay up past one o'clock for a rock music show. None of the networks believed this idea would work. So Sugarman bought an hour and half of TV time from NBC, from 1:00 until 2:30, using his own money. He signed up a bunch of stars to perform on it, and got some sponsors to pay for the commercials. This pilot episode was shown in late 1972, and got enough viewers for NBC to make it a weekly show at that time slot in 1973.
The show was a big success for many years, running from 1973 to 1981. ABC quickly made their version, called "In Concert," which only lasted two years. But the CBS version, "Don Kirshner's Rock Concert," also went from 1973 to 1981. All three shows put on lots of good music. But most of the music seems to be lost, except for the occasional performances that stood out in some special way and were widely bootlegged. It's only starting in 2023 that episodes of "The Midnight Special" has started to get released on YouTube, and I only just discovered what a musical treasure trove that is.
Here's a link to the Wikipedia page for the "Midnight Special," if you want to know more:
The Midnight Special (TV series) - Wikipedia
Most episodes were hosted by DJ Wolfman Jack. But it seems he didn't actually say that much, and each episode was also hosted by one of the musical acts performing in that show. The host act would get to perform more songs than the other acts. This album comes from an episode hosted by Sly and the Family Stone. Also on the show were Little Feat, Roger McGuinn, Elvin Bishop, and Henry Gross.
Looking to the future, I want to post a lot of music from these Midnight Special episodes. But I don't want to just post whole episodes. A lot of the musical acts that happen to be on the same show don't make for good stylistic matches. So instead I'm going to try to gather up enough songs from one particular act, even getting them from multiple episodes of the show, and lump them together into a single album.
In this case, everything is from this one show. Sly and the Family Stone actually hosted another episode of the show, in 1973. But they played a smaller number of songs then, and all of them were the best known ones, like "Dance to the Music" and "I Want to Take You Higher." I find this 1974 episode much more interesting, because they played some different songs. There aren't a lot of live recordings from this band, and most of them contain the same few songs, generally from 1969 and 1970. The band had declined in popularity by 1974, but this performance showed they could still impress.
I don't know the name of the instrumental that starts the concert. If anyone knows the name, please let me know so I can fix that. Also, "Loose Booty" abruptly after less than two minutes, due to the show ending. The chorus was just starting when it was cut off. So I patched in the chorus from earlier, extending it by about half a minute. Then I added in some applause to give it a proper sounding ending. I also sometimes patched in applause between songs to smooth transitions. In reality, there were performances by other musical acts between nearly all of the songs here.
The music is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent.
As an aside, it turns out I had already posted two albums from "The Midnight Special," ones by Al Green and Marvin Gaye. I just added a label for the show to make it easier to find them as I post more.
This album is 29 minutes long.
01 Instrumental (Sly & the Family Stone)
02 Thank You [Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin] (Sly & the Family Stone)
03 Time for Livin' (Sly & the Family Stone)
04 Family Affair (Sly & the Family Stone)
05 Dance to the Music - Music Lover - I Want to Take You Higher (Sly & the Family Stone)
06 If You Want Me to Stay (Sly & the Family Stone)
07 Stand (Sly & the Family Stone)
08 Loose Booty [Edit] (Sly & the Family Stone)
https://pixeldrain.com/u/33DMJGwG
alternate:
https://bestfile.io/DC8HeURsd83rFpT/file
The cover image of Sly Stone is a screenshot I took from a video of this exact concert. Also, in the bottom left corner is a logo from the TV show that I plan to include for all the albums I post from the show.
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