Pip's Invitation
Footballguy
Tonight's episode of The Midnight Special that I'm watching (1/11/74) has a high proportion of acts I've heard of -- Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show (host), The Spinners, Canned Heat, Jo Jo Gunne, Leo Sayer, Livingston Taylor and El Chicano.
I'm not sure it's possible to be any more stoned than the Dr. Hook guys were and remain standing. Co-frontman Dennis Locorriere: "If you bought this last 30 minutes, you'll buy anything, man." Wiki says they partied their way into bankruptcy around this time, and you can tell.
This was Leo Sayer's first US appearance -- they mention he is about to embark on his first US tour -- and he's dressed a mime for some reason*. He's also singing more gruffly than what we heard from him on his mid- and late-70s hits (where he sounds like an Elton John imitator).
El Chicano was an LA band consisting mostly of guys of Mexican descent. Here on their first song they played forthright funk rock, not too different from Rare Earth and that ilk, and on their second they played an instrumental with more of a Santana vibe. Wikipedia says they released a cover of "Brown-Eyed Girl" as a single, but that was not performed here.
Speaking of covers, Livingston Taylor, James' similarly-voiced brother, plays his version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," in a jazz/folk kind of arrangement.
Also speaking of covers, Canned Heat perform a Fats Domino medley.
Jo Jo Gunne is what Jay Ferguson did after Spirit and before "Thunder Island," and it sounds nothing like the psychedelia of the former or the yacht rock of the latter. It's hard-charging, energetic boogie rock.
It's mentioned that the Spinners' self-titled first album for Atlantic, released about 9 months before this broadcast, had produced six (!) hit singles. The two biggest ones (I'll Be Around and Could It Be I'm Falling in Love) aren't performed here, but the two that were -- Ghetto Child and How Could I Let You Get Away -- are sublime. On the latter, Philippe Wynne uses the coda to do his Sam Cooke, Otis Redding and Al Green impressions.
* - Wiki says his career in the UK took off after he appeared this way on British TV.
Ep 50 - The Midnight Special | January 11, 1974
Hosted by Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show with special guest appearance by Canned Heat, El Chicano, Jo Jo Gunne, Leo Sayer, The Spinners, Livingston Taylor, an...
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I'm not sure it's possible to be any more stoned than the Dr. Hook guys were and remain standing. Co-frontman Dennis Locorriere: "If you bought this last 30 minutes, you'll buy anything, man." Wiki says they partied their way into bankruptcy around this time, and you can tell.
This was Leo Sayer's first US appearance -- they mention he is about to embark on his first US tour -- and he's dressed a mime for some reason*. He's also singing more gruffly than what we heard from him on his mid- and late-70s hits (where he sounds like an Elton John imitator).
El Chicano was an LA band consisting mostly of guys of Mexican descent. Here on their first song they played forthright funk rock, not too different from Rare Earth and that ilk, and on their second they played an instrumental with more of a Santana vibe. Wikipedia says they released a cover of "Brown-Eyed Girl" as a single, but that was not performed here.
Speaking of covers, Livingston Taylor, James' similarly-voiced brother, plays his version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," in a jazz/folk kind of arrangement.
Also speaking of covers, Canned Heat perform a Fats Domino medley.
Jo Jo Gunne is what Jay Ferguson did after Spirit and before "Thunder Island," and it sounds nothing like the psychedelia of the former or the yacht rock of the latter. It's hard-charging, energetic boogie rock.
It's mentioned that the Spinners' self-titled first album for Atlantic, released about 9 months before this broadcast, had produced six (!) hit singles. The two biggest ones (I'll Be Around and Could It Be I'm Falling in Love) aren't performed here, but the two that were -- Ghetto Child and How Could I Let You Get Away -- are sublime. On the latter, Philippe Wynne uses the coda to do his Sam Cooke, Otis Redding and Al Green impressions.
* - Wiki says his career in the UK took off after he appeared this way on British TV.