Next stop on my YouTube Vacation Tour
T. Rex live on Midnight Special, 1973, wherein the backup singers ruin the song but it’s still a great performance:
When I was a kid, I lurved Midnight Special. This was back in the ancient 70s, when there was no MTV, no music videos, no cable, no internet, no computers (except giant ones in remote air-conditioned locations running off punchcards and packing into one warehouse-size room all the computing power of my 2-inch solar calculator, but I digress). Those of you who grew up in the 90s can have no idea of how slow and disconnected everything was back then. And how quiet. Information wasn’t instantly available, and there wasn’t a constant barrage of 500-channel 24-hour stuff. I don’t know how we managed, actually. I used to make lists of things I wanted to know about, because back then you had to go on journeys (to libraries, to research universities, to national archives) if you wanted to know about certain things. It was a lifelong quest. Now people just look everything up on Google.
But goddamnit, I digress again.
So, okay: music. In the early 70s, of course, there was no MTV and people weren’t making videos. If you wanted to hear music, you listened to the radio. The TV situation was pretty limited, anyway: there were the three commercial networks, PBS, and usually a local UHF channel. The only music happened on shit shows like American Bandstand, which no self-respecting human watched, or — OR! — once a week on Midnight Special, which came on late Friday night after Johnny Carson. Midnight Special was an actual live performance show, with top-name acts. Never the Stones or the Who, but some pretty major bands. It was about as exciting as TV got in those days.
I remember watching The Guess Who on the show in 1974:
I post that clip not because I particularly care for The Guess Who, but because I actually remember watching it at the time. I was 11 years old, living in California with my family, reading every issue of Rolling Stone cover to cover (it was still on newsprint then), and listening to FM radio for hours every day. And now I can relive it all on YouTube.
11 Responses to “Next stop on my YouTube Vacation Tour”
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Violet says:
One other thing I forgot to mention: one reason Midnight Special (which actually came on at 1:00am ET and PT) was so special was that after about 1:00am, most television stations shut off. After the last program each station would broadcast a test pattern, usually preceded by some kind of sign-off. For example, one of our local stations in California signed off each night with a patriotic montage of scenes and a recorded voice-over of some dude reading “High Flight.” That’s why “the late show,” if a station had such a thing, was called that. Where we lived, sometimes the UHF station would run a late black-and-white movie at about 1:00am, but then they would shut down after that too.
Can you imagine? No television during the night. Just a test pattern. Christ, I feel like Ayla in Clan of the Cave Bear talking about my childhood.
April 11th, 2009 at 7:41 pm EST -
Lynnerkat says:
The test pattern- Sometimes I would watch that waiting for anything to come on. Midnight Special, the start of SNL- what memories. Although, I have to confess I did occasionally watch Bandstand, but Soul Train was much better. Ayla..LOL. Yeah, I feel really ancient too.
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Sis says:
Lovely. Thank you. Keep on.
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Sis says:
If you want to.
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Keri says:
This is nostalgic to me too- I was 8 in 1974, but remember those days too. My dad, a computer programmer had a near state of the art computer in the basement in 1974- a teletype computer where the “hard drive” was 5 feet high and three feet wide. computer games in those days were text based and programmed in Basic. I played tic-tac-toe on that computer. the computer printed out a blank grid. I hit the x in the box I wanted, then it printed out another grid with my choice and the computer’s choice, etc.. until the game ended. I remember learning to program in Basic on that computer by typing out a computer game program- from a book. It was a Star Trek game. Again all text based. Ala- “You are nearing the neutral zone. Do you wish to continue into the neutral zone. Yes or No.” Heh. Even when I was in college, there were still text based games- usually of the Dungeons and Dragons type. My uncle (also a computer programmer) got the first color monitor I recall seeing in the late 1970’s. I remember playing Pong on that, and the original version of Space Invaders. It was then that the beginnings of public internet was starting with “bulletin boards” My uncle had access to that but back then it was just something vaguely curious to me. Even when I was in college the internet was text based- usenet. It’s amazing to realize that the internet as we know it has only been around since the mid 1990’s. Even at work we were working with a text based connection to the internet until early 1999.
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sister of ye says:
You want to try to explain a really foreign concept, try explaining a phone booth. A box where you shut the door so you could have privacy for your phone conversation.
I was a wee one, but I remember my family feeling it a real luxury when we got a private and not a party line where you had to worry about your neighbors snooping on your business.
God, I miss the idea of private conversations.
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tinfoil hattie says:
Anyone remember “Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert”? It was pretty hit-or-miss, but I remember watching it because it was the last thing on.
I hated baby-sitting really late because TV often “ended” before the parents got home, and then I was BORED. On the plus(?) side, that is how I discovered the wonderful world of Harlequin Romance, where all women are “minxes” and all the men smoke cheroots and gaze at the women through slitted eyes before performing some act of sexual violence passing as romance.
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Violet says:
My uncle (also a computer programmer) got the first color monitor I recall seeing in the late 1970’s. I remember playing Pong on that, and the original version of Space Invaders.
PONG! Jesus Christ, pong. My Dad bought a Pong set that you could hook up to your TV, using the TV screen as the monitor. It was utterly thrilling at the time, even though it was just ghostly white images going back and forth on the screen. But man oh man, that was some cutting edge stuff right there.
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ea says:
Okay, I have found my age group on the internet. I watched all those shows sometimes and remember Pong also. I think MTV debuted in 1979 or 1980.
Do you all local Bozo the Clown shows?
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ea says:
Should be
Did you all have local Bozo the Clown shows?
And, for sister of ye,
I remember party lines. Relatives out in the country even had a telephone that looked like Granny’s phone on the Beverly Hillbillies. You weren’t supposed to answer the phone unless there was a certain number of rings that indicated it the call was for your house–or something like that. Remember when phone numbers used letters?
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Violet says:
Party lines and phone letters were very slightly before my time (I’m 46). But I do remember when zip codes were unveiled. I distinctly remember watching the animated commercial from the Post Office explaining how much better everything would be if we just added these 5 numbers to the end of every address. I think that was ‘68 or ‘69.
