The Midnight Special episode I am watching tonight (Jan. 25, 1974) also has a high rate of acts I've heard of: The Steve Miller Band (host), Genesis, Tim Buckley (Jeff's dad, who also died young), the post-Joe Walsh James Gang, Brownsville Station and The James Cotton Blues Band.
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The show kicks off with The Joker because of course it does. Less predictable is that Miller is holding an open umbrella for some of his host segments. This was not an outdoor show.
The post-Walsh James Gang plays the "boogie rock" that was all the rage in '74. Their lead guitarist during this period was Tommy Bolin, who was nearly as revered as Walsh in certain circles.
Brownsville Station perform their original version of Smokin' in the Boys Room -- I was a little surprised that the Motley Crüe cover didn't appear in this thread. (There's that ü again.)
Miller introduced Cotton with an anecdote about how Cotton's band had blown his band off the stage at a gig they shared about two years prior. I can see how that would happen, their brand of blues is very high-energy. Though
@krista4 might not enjoy all the sax solos. There are also a lot of harmonica solos, dunno how she feels about those.
Buckley performs a mesmerizing cover of Fred Neil's Dolphins. When he sings "in the se-e-ea," you can tell where Jeff got his voice from.
Miller's Joker album included a funky number called Shu Ba Da Du Ma Ma Ma; this version shows off the talents of bassist Gerald Johnson (I don't think I knew that he was left-handed).
Genesis was the last act to appear but would become by far the biggest of any of them, especially if you take solo careers into account. At this point they were a cult band at most in the US. Miller introduces them as "theater rock." Peter Gabriel is in his shaved-forehead period and is wearing some sort of bat costume. During the first half of Watcher of the Skies, he is the only member whose face we see -- everyone else gets close-ups of their hands playing their instruments. During the instrumental break toward the end, we finally see the others and Gabriel hides his face behind a tambourine. I'm sure the "boogie rock" fans who tuned in to see The James Gang and Brownsville Station had no idea what to make of this. (Or the blues fans who tuned in for Miller and Cotton.) Mike Rutherford sports a pretty sweet double-neck half-bass/half-guitar.
Miller sits in with Cotton for a cover of Jimmy Reed's Big Boss Man.
I have seen before this performance of Fly Like an Eagle, more than two years before its official release. It begins with a tease of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" and is much more spacey (all due to Miller's guitar; there were no synths in this version of the band) and psychedelic than the shape it took by 1976. The lyrics and vocals are structured differently as well. The "time keeps on slipping into the future" part isn't there and on the verses, most of the lines begin with "what about the...". The chorus is pretty much the same, though.
Wolfman Jack presented Miller with a gold record for The Joker LP, which had just passed 500,000 in sales.
The Musical Box was wikkid's favorite Genesis song. I wonder if he was watching this performance, which had to be the US TV debut of it. It's almost all there -- a little over 8 minutes of a song that runs 10:32. For this song, the camera work was more conventional and at first Gabriel didn't have a costume other than face paint. He left the stage during the keyboard and guitar solos in the middle and returned wearing an old-man mask. Which actually makes sense given the song's (very demented) storyline. He collapses and "dies" at the end.
Buckley's original Honey Man isn't anything special as a song -- people at the time might have called it "jive" -- but his vocal is.
Miller closes things out with Sugar Babe, the first track on the Joker album. Here we can see where the sound of "Rock 'N Me" and "Jet Airliner" came from. (His label should have made this the second single from the album, but they didn't.)
I can't even post some of the things I've heard.
Dying.
Another memory of those years is them playing Gordon Lightfoot's If You Could Read My Mind LP (aka Sit Down Young Stranger) and singing along to his cover of Me and Bobby McGee. She was a huge fan of Dylan and we were equally ecstatic about his career renaissance starting with Oh Mercy -- though before then they would play the Infidels cassette in the car often. She was also a big fan of the less noisy side of Neil Young, and "Harvest Moon" was one of their favorite songs; they really identified with it. They took me to my first concert, Neil Diamond at MSG in 1985. 
May the King of the Underground RIP 
