UPDATE: We have a winner! Congrats to Brett M. of Sunnyvale, CA.  Thanks to all who played! – RS


Well, lookee here at what I got—a whompin’ 11-DVD box set, containing a metric ton of performances from the old Seventies TV music standby The Midnight Special.

You remember The Midnight Special, right, kiddies? Sometimes I forget that some of you are young uns and don’t even remember when MTV played music videos, so lemme hip you to this. From 1973 to 1981, The Midnight Special was prolly the finest late-night music program ever to hit US teevee airwaves. It was pretty much the first such show of its kind, and though there were imitators that grew out of the fertile soil The Midnight Special tilled, seeded and fed, none of em did it better.

Looking at the list of artistes who plied their craft on the show is like watching Seventies music take shape and take over. You had Blondie, Tom Petty, Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, the Bee Gees, Fleetwood Mac, The Doobie Brothers, Jim Croce, Earth, Wind and Fire, KC & the Sunshine Band, Heart, WAR, Barry White, Nugent, Peter-by-God-Frampton, and even Helen Reddy and Neil Sedaka (cuz they count, too. Yes, they do). Plus, you had Wolfman Jack—greatest AM radio disc-spinner this side of American Graffitti—announcing and occasionally hosting. For a while, it was where the cool kids got their fix of music and related visual accompaniment.

So StarVista Entertainment/Time Life has put together a couple different video configurations celebrating The Midnight Special—there’s the single-DVD set (16 performances—cool), the six-DVD set (96 performances and bonus features—cooler), and the 11-DVD Collector’s Edition box set, with 130 performances and a truckload of bonus features—16 hours of viewin’ pleasure. You’ll need a weekend and a couple pizzas to get through it all. All of  ’em drop September 9.

We at Popdose have managed to grab a copy of the big poppa—the 11-DVD Collector’s Edition—and we’re offering it up to one lucky reader, free n’ clear, $99.95 value.

Here’s what you gotta do:

Shoot me an email with the subject line “I’m Special!” Include your name and mailing address in the body of the email. I will pick one entry at random from the emails I receive by 5:00pm Eastern Time Friday, September 12, and that person will win the box set. Also, since I and my colleagues here would rather listen for backward Satanic messages in Neil Sedaka’s “Bad Blood” than share your information with others, I will personally delete all received emails after the winner is selected.

If you’re not feeling lucky, you can pre-order the set here.

You’ll be seeing more about this from me soon, but don’t wait for the review—putcher name in the kitty today.

That is all.

Oh, wait—that’s not all. Here’s a trailer:

About the Author

Rob Smith

Rob Smith is a writer, teacher, wage earner, and all-around evil genius who spends most of his time holed up in his cluttered compound in central PA. His favorite color is ultramarine blue. His imaginary band The Dukes of Rexmont tours every summer.

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