I really looked forward to Fridays after Johnny Carson to watch The Midnight Special.There were always great music & comedy acts.The first three years were the best.There was a different host every week,with great music,comedy,& no boring chit chat.Then Burt Sugarman pulled a big boner by bringing in a permanent host,(I liked the idea of rotating hosts).Of all the people he could have gotten,it had to be one of the most obnoxious,least talented of the era,Helen Reddy.That was it for me.I rarely watched anymore after that.I could not stand that droning nasal "singing" of hers,or her far left political leanings.Evidently there were others who felt the same,Reddy was dropped after about a year,but the show never seemed as good or was as popular as before,it went off after two more seasons.

With the recent retirement of Casey Kasem from his countdown shows, I've been listening to reruns of his '70s radio shows which has led me to watch many live performances of many of the Top 40 hits during that time as performed on "The Midnight Special" which has clips all over YouTube. Of the many acts I saw there that I loved: The Four Tops-"Ain't No Woman Like the One I Got", Minnie Riperton-"Loving You", Wild Cherry-"Play That Funky Music", Dolly Parton-"I Will Always Love You", Todd Rundgren-"Hello, It's Me" (Dig those eyebrows he wears there!), Golden Earrings-"Radar Love", Jim Croce-"Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown" (R.I.P), America-"Sister Golden Hair", Christopher Cross-"Sailing", Dave Mason-"We Just Disagree", Badfinger-"No Matter What", and Olivia Newton-John-"Magic" (I actually saw this performance when she hosted the show in 1980 and, boy, did I truly discover puberty at age 12 watching that!). Like I said, those were mainly live performances though I suspect that of Newton-John's and another of ABBA's "Dancing Queen" were actually lip-synced since their performances sounded exactly like the recordings. No matter since all the ones I cited were great and brought back such memories of listening to AM radio as a kid and enjoying just about everything that came out then. So on that note, I thank YouTube for providing such a site where I can relive the '70s once more!

It's not really fair just reviewing the Andy Kaufman episode just because it's the only one ever released on video. The show was much more than an Andy Kaufman episode. It showcased the best that the music world had to offer in the 1970s and it's archives house some of the best performances of all time. It's really a shame that the owner, Paul Brownstein, does nothing with the tapes but just sell "clips" to corporations that sell disco albums on TV at hundreds of bucks a clip. Too bad the real fans won't ever be able to see the show again like it was presented. The same thing has happened to Don Kirshner's Rock Concert. It's only offered as "clips". I'm glad I have my own library of original tapings of the shows to watch over and over.

In September 1973 I had just returned from two years in Indonesia as a missionary for the LDS Church. The first week end I was back in the US I went out to a movie, and when I came home I flipped on the TV. It was the Midnight Special, a program that had started in my absence. I was familiar with the host Wolfman Jack from his days on radio station XERB. Not so with the first act of the evening. Out comes David Bowie, whom I had never seen, and while attired in a dress he started singing the song with the lyrics "something tells me she the devil's daughter". All the while he started shedding the dress. After two years of an intense "non-worldly" existence as a missionary, it was startling. "My, things must have changed in my absence!"