Focus performed on The Midnight Special October 5th 1973 Follow us on Social Media: / themidnightspecialtvshow / themidnightspecialtvshow / themidnightspecialtvshow / tmstvshow
I watched this on tv the night after my 8th birthday, after watching wrasslin' with my dad. It blew my mind. Still haven't found all the pieces yet, 50 years later. Keep the bits I have found in a jar by the door ...
If you don’t know the story behind this legendary recording: Focus are a Dutch prog-rock band, and around ‘72/‘73 “Hocus Pocus” had become their well-known radio hit … which, notably, on the album is played at a much slower tempo, clocking in around 7 minutes in length. As the recording of the _Midnight Special_ drew to a close, the producers warned Focus that only five minutes of showtime remained, so could they please play another, shorter song … to which the Dutch group replied “No, it is not a problem, we will simply play our intended song much faster!” And so they did! Amazing band.
Did not know that. Thanks for sharing. I was just a couple of weeks shy of my 14th birthday when this show aired. I was blown away! Stunned.... shell shocked! SO good!
This has an extra verse early on that doesn't appear on the version on RU-vid. There's an ascending bit before the whistling and before that, 1st verse has Jan Ackerman pretty much playing chords only which is also cut in the edited RU-vid version.
The Midnight Special live performance was faster than usual and might have been trimmed simply due to 6 mins of original length was too long for the NBC program…..but i loved it. The insanity in singer’s face and expression was invigorating back then and still is today!
I think we should all recognize how amazing Jan Akkerman is on guitar. Holy shit. Sweep picking in 1973? He's probably one of the greatest guitarists no one has ever heard of. He totally gets overshadowed by the yodeling (and some poor camera angle choices during his solos).
No kidding! I'm like where is the camera guy when he's soloing!?!? That Gibson Les Paul he's playing is pretty interesting too. The fretboard is at a slant by the neck pickup. Never seen that before. What a smoking guitarist!
@John Inama wow! I never knew that! Cool! It looks like a Les Paul Recording but with normal Les Paul controls. I knew it was a Gibson because I saw the Gibson logo. Thanks for the info!
That drummer is so much fun to watch, i could watch this over and over again! Now when i think of it i might of sean this back in the day 50 years is a long time!
I can't remember seeing one either, but I only got to see this whenever we visited relatives in Leamington, Chatham, and Ridgetown area. Picked it up from the Detroit and Windsor stations. Where I lived 50 years ago, we were lucky to pick up CTV from Kitchener, and CBC from London, with CHCH, and TVO getting through when the cloud cover was just right, Oh, yeah, and party lines, too. Not pay to chat lines, no. Party line meant multiple houses using the same phone line. Ponder that.
I was literally going to write this EXACT same comment until I scrolled through and found this one. I was thinking the exact same thing. I can't remember a single instance of seeing a standing ovation at a Midnight Special performance outside of this one.
Friday nights broadcast with Billy Preston (2006) host with Buddy Miles(2008)they did My Sweet Lord...audience reaction was nothing I've ever seen on Midnight Special was amazing and well deserved ..this is also amazing 👏 love it sped up lol
Benefits of living across from Detroit at the time lol I remember barley getting channels..having to actually get up off our ass to change the channels but picked up ABC NBC, CBS😆 Midnight Special, Don Kirshners best thing on tv at the time and the rainbow still screen after 1am with the loud buzzing..woke up a few times 😖🥴
I'm 65 yo now and remember this song when I was a teen...it freaked me slap out...the guitar, the vocals...it punched you in the gut, and I loved it...still do to this day.
"This content is culturally significant. Posting it on RU-vid will ensure that future generations will have access to it and appreciate it. Thank you for sharing it."
I'm amazed how few of my friends appreciate this video. But my 10-year-old son LOVED it when I showed it to him, and has watched it several times since. I even occasionally hear him singing / humming it.
My brother absolutely loved this song when it was first released. He died as a result of a car crash in 1976, aged 16. RIP brother - you may be gone but, youll never be forgotten.
The ultimate ! Musicians are brilliant, the organist, flutist, singer, piper is more than brilliant !!! I can watch this performance a thousand times and always get goosebumps ! This is pure musical talent and brillance. That is god given !
51 years after I first watched this live and it puts a huge smile on my face just as it did the first time I heard it! Probably the most original rock song ever written and performed live on American television!
As a 12 year old, I remember being captivated by the rock instrumentals that ,weirdly, were pretty big hits. "Outta Space" by Billy Preston,"Frankenstein" Edgar Winter, and "Hocus Pocus". Had the 45's. Great time to be a kid.
I actually watched this performance the very night it aired on The Midnight Special back in 1973 with my older brother. I was only 12 years old then. I was so excited reading the TV Guide Magazine and seeing that Focus was scheduled to be on that night in October 73'. Remember back then, the only way you could see your favorite band was either live in concert or on The Midnight Special or Don Kirshner's Rock Concert. My relationship with music went through the stratosphere when I first heard Hocus Pocus and it still blows me away. I love all of Focus' music, I have never stopped listening to Focus. The band line-up here is Thijs Van Leer, Jan Akkerman, Bert Ruiter and Pierre Van der Linden. Truly, a virtuoso performance.
From the days where you could see Progressive Rock on network TV! Out of all the performances I've seen of this song on video this has got to be the most energetic. Thanks for posting this!
The only problem with this is that it's SO MUCH BETTER than the album version that once you've heard this live version you simply can't listen to the original ever again without wishing it was this one instead. The increased tempo alone is a major improvement over the original. Frankly, I think every single aspect of this live version is better than the original. Tempo, vocals, guitar...everything.
Talking about Deep Purple: first time I heard Highway Star it was a cover by Metal Church. Only then did I listen to the original. And to this day I still think Metal Church's cover is much better.
@@PeterBrown-mz4nv Pierre van de Linden started with Brainbox. The numbers----Downman and Summertime are great to hear to. Stil love to hear the singer of that band Caz Lux
Yeah this was a surprise to me, there are cuts in this video that weren't on the "original" one floating around RU-vid for years. All I saw before this was Gladys Knight introducing them and a 4-minute version that obviously left out a couple stanzas.
It's an edit of the original to extend it for some reason. Compare: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-g4ouPGGLI6Q.htmlsi=48NsvOZjTpOEhuiR
@@JoshuaCromarty So your explanation for the extra part in this one is that this has been edited, not that the other version has been cut down? That doesn't make sense.
@@bonvoyageauLSD You're right, it doesn't. Why would anyone make a performance seem longer, when the cool thing about it was the band playing faster to fit it into a tighter schedule? But there it is. Listen to the original version I posted side-by-side and you'll hear it yourself - they match to a point and then this version repeats not only the audio but the video.
@@JoshuaCromarty You don't get my point...There is an extra round in this version, and it's not repeated and it's clearly from this performance. The obvious answer is that nothing was added, instead something was cut from the other TV version.
They did tons of effects back then, they might not have talked about it like now, and they might not have had the same variety, but they still had stuff, I think Link Wray's Rumble was the record to use distortion. In 1958. Rock and Roll was a term dating back to 1922, in the aptly named "My Man Rocks me (with One Steady Roll) by Trixie Smith.
@@Potato-pn8sg I was speaking in terms of by comparison to today where we manufacture far too many no-talent pop stars over-utilizing digital processing as crutch lack of talent -- should have been more clear, as no stranger to effects and a good thing when not overused.
@@RolandAyala Sometimes overuse is good. There's a recording here of Van der Graaf Generator playing at Bataclan around '72 where Hugh Banton is running his Hammond through a Copycat tape echo, and he reaches up and manipulates the arm holding the tape heads to get some absolutely ungodly howling noises. It's ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-uPGb5iYtyjo.html starting at around 4:25.
I just heard this song for the first time yesterday on a classic rock radio station (shout out to 101.5 WPDH!!!). Words cannot hope to express how cheated I feel that I, a *MASSIVE* fan of 70s rock music since I was like 16, haven’t been exposed to this insane masterpiece till just now at 32 years old.
And it's doubtful you will, since all we're getting is rap, hip-hop, and auto-tuned canned music that is barely tweaked from song to song. I'll take the raw talent of a group of musicians like this over the uber-produced computer-aided cookie-cutter compositions we hear now.
This performance is 51 years old! It almost makes you weep at humanity that such originality and talent has all but gone. I cannot think of any current band or artist that comes remotely close to their creative musicianship.
Monster talent. Absolutely deserved standing "O" from a totally stoned audience. I had to check if my playback speed was at 1.5X. @Rick Beato needs to discuss this song.
The story goes that the producers asked them to cut this song from nine minutes to six, so instead of shortening it they played it at heavy metal speed.
Focus were/are one of my favourite bands. Their album Moving Waves was groundbreaking and took you to places you wanted to go. Very original tracks and a sound nobody has replicated with the driving rock and of course the yodelling. Keyboards/guitar/drums and vocals make this band stand out from other rock bands. Outstanding!
I have waited years of my life to see a quality transfer of this performance without watermarks on it. That day has finally come! So much thanks to everyone on the Midnight Special preservation team! P.S. If I could be a bit greedy for a moment, is there any way you all could upload/release a lossless FLAC/WAV audio recording of this performance? It would be an amazing thing to have in the collection, as this is by far the best live version of the song.
It's longer than the other YT video with 15M views too. I guess the extended yodeling part was cur from the live broadcast, but luckily it's preserved here. I've seen that other video so many times that I was taken by surprise to see this extra part (which I've seen Thijs do in other live performances, just didn't realize he did it here)!
Takes me back to Junior high school 1973. Hocus Pocus by Focus. Who could ever forget a title like that? Perhaps in the top 100 all-time rock songs ever.
WOWWW!!! I was 12 when I originally watched this. I almost passed it by but remembered there was something epic about it. IN MY FACE!!!! Music was exceptional, no voice dubbing, pre recorded rhythm, bands would break out and JAM. Most artists today are studio artists and an image. So much gratitude for you and others that post these nugs of gold for people who appreciate Music at its best. 🎶
This is absolutely and purely ICONIC AND EPIC, these guys were in a different " STRATOSPHERE" During this performance, they were way ahead and unbelievably innovative even by today's standard, Thank God For Rock n Roll, the worlds a better place with bands like this in fact almost invincible and what a legacy and inspiration to so many bands and shook the recording industry to its core👍
Oh my god!!! Absolutely incredible!!😳 What a vocal range!!👏 This was an awesome show, I was a grade schooler when The Midnight Special was on, nothing like this today!
@@robertfitzsimmons9428 Yeah I noticed that too, they absolutely are playing faster though, listen to this one then the album version, I don't buy the time allotment thing tho, I think they were just having a fun time.
@@robertfitzsimmons9428 I have no idea if that is true or not. But I see other people saying the same thing about the frenzied pace of the song due to time constraints. That sounds like a real story to me because television has to adhere to a very strict time schedule. But many bands play songs live faster than usual, either from drugs, raw energy and adrenaline, and sometimes because they have grown sick of playing a fan favorite for the millionth time, just get it over with so we can play our new material and boost interest for the sales. Don`t matter now anyway cuz there ain`t a new record to promote. It is just streamed now and everything is free. That`s why so many bands block their material. They break their asses to make an album, and nobody pays them a red cent to enjoy their music.
I've lived nearly 40 years without knowing this gem and I'm just speechless. I can't wrap my mind around the beauty, the perfection of this performance. It makes me melancolic of a timeframe I didn't had the chance to live. Thanks. A lot.
I was in 8th grade. The local "underground" FM station played this quite a bit. Initially, the DJ's introduced H.P. with a warning that it would be erh "different". Still is unique.
WOW! brings back memories. (I think)! Used to stick a lot of quarters in a jukebox listening to this at a restaurant to entertain my mom and sisters in the mid 70'S. I was 16 or 17. Used to watch Midnight Special. Just read about this song in the news today as being a weird old song. Glad I looked it up to see it again, put a grin on my face!
