Burt Sugarman's the Midnight Special: Legendary Performances 1977 (1977)

The Midnight Special DVD "Live On Stage In 1977". Digitally remastered in Cinema Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound. Includes live performances by Heart, Andy Gibb, Bread, Dave Mason, Manfred Mann's Earth Band and many more. See photo's for complete list of groups, songs and other special bonus features. Brand new and factory sealed Official release! Product Description

LIVE performances from some of the best.

I think you guys (in the 2 star review and comments) are missing the point: This show existed for the exact reasons that you find distasteful. It was an arena for artists to perform their music LIVE, not MTV style. This was the 1970s and when bands performed live, this is what it sounded like. This is meant to be intimate, stripped down reality. They didn't have computer synths and what not...every other show at the time and later (like American Bandstand) simply had the artists syncing to the recording. If that is what you prefer, stick with AM BS, MTV and the like. However, if REAL live music is your bag, and what you appreciate is the stripped down rawness of that, then Midnight Special is the way to go. I love it for all the same reasons you folks don't, and i happen to adore the Heart performance. I can't help but wonder if you are all under the age of 30. If so, that would explain the expectations.
September 30, 2008

I'm disappointed with these performances....

The problem with the performances is the backing music accompanying the singers. The backing music sounds nothing like the backing music in the hit records I enjoyed listening to on the radio. If you combine backing music that contains none of the hooks in the original with live, off key singing, you have what makes for unenjoyable performances. For instance, the music accompanying Thelma Houston's Don't Leave Me This Way on the record has beautiful, haunting strings, but the strings are missing from the live music accompanying Thelma on the dvd. So the performance is unsatisfying. Likewise, the music accompanying the Emotions' Best of My Love sounds nothing at all like the background music in the hit record, so again, I can't enjoy the dvd performance. Ditto for Heart's Crazy On You. I knew there was something wrong as soon as I started watching the dvd. I thought "how come these great songs don't sound that great on this dvd"? Then I realized it's because of the poorly recreated backing music. The music accompanying each singer sounds like it was performed by some anonymous bar band. It would have been much better either to have the artists lip sych to their records or else at least have them sing live to pre-recorded backing music taken from the hit record.

One really annoying thing about the format of this dvd is that EACH track begins with the title "Burt Sugarman's The Midnight Special". I mean, come on! We got the idea the first time! No need to keep repeating that at the beginning of each and every performance! October 11, 2007

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