I double dog dare you to find me a better decade for music (and music fashion) than the 70’s. I know people point to the bright colors, off-the-shoulder styles and all that synth pop stuff that sailed out at us from MTV’s 24 hour barrage, but before there was the 80’s and MTV, iHeartRadio concerts or YouTube streaming, there was rock on TV….and non-lip synced rock at that! And it all had its real first big mainstream network start on Burt Sugarman’s The Midnight Special.

Grabbing a spot after Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show back in 1972, when the pilot premiered (Sugarman sold the show with John Denver as the first host promising a call to American youth to get out and vote) TMS ran from 1973 into the 80’s featuring live performances from some of the very best artists at the time. In this new DVD collection of six DVD’s, we get the full range of country stars like Charlie Rich and, soul artists War, Aretha Franklin & Ray Charles, Earth, Wind and Fire and rock of course with notables like Aerosmith, Sammy Hagar, The Kinks, and softer acoustic acts like Jim Croce, Harry Chapin and Orleans. It is quite the collection but as Sugarman says, his tastes ran very eclectic and if a band agreed to come on and play and sing live (some didn’t so they didn’t make the show) then he’d have them on.

This is a chock-full set, an update to the one that was released years ago with lots of bonus materials like exclusive interviews and featurettes. If you want to see what live popular music was all about back in the day when live popular performances actually meant something, have a thing for fashion and want to own a piece of history-or simply want to be entertained-you need to get your hands on Burt Sugarman’s The Midnight Special DVD set.