Gary Wright – Love Is Alive (Midnight Special, 1976)
This video captures a great vintage synth performance by keyboardist and songwriter Gary Wright performing Love Is Alive on the Midnight Special TV show, 1976
His band features a young Steve Porcaro {keyboards for TOTO, Herb Alpert, Pablo Cruise, Brothers Johnson, etc.} on synthesizers along with a rockin’ lady cowbell player, dual keytars and some synth bass.
Wright’s best known for his synth-heavy track Dream Weaver.
Very cool. I always liked this song better than Dreamweaver (which may be just because that’s so overplayed); this is the era in which I came first came of age musically. I especially like seeing a performance where the synths aren’t all synced up and running to DAT or something. This doesn’t looked mimed, right? As near as I can tell from the video there all locked into that mighty groove. Plus cowbell!
At first, I thought this was one of those 70’s lip sync videos, but – after watching it through – it looks like it’s just a tight performance, with a lot of keyboardists.
this takes me back to having to fight real hard to stay awake to actually watch Kirshner (it came on after Sat Nite Live)…
…great post
midnight special had some really great performers and performances. i think most of it is on DVD now. been meaning to pick it up myself
Huh, Nice. I wonder why this track popped up here? (other than the obvious)
A lot of these vintage performances I was too young to appreciate, but now I see them and understand that the 70’s synth performers really changed the music industry.
It’s worth revisiting these now and then and seeing what they did, without presets or sequencers.
Here’s a question: I’m trying to make a karaoke version of the track, but I’m not sure on the instruments (using Reason). Got the bassline, but still looking for A. that synth string patch (think Bernie Worrell in the opening track to “Clones of Dr. Funkenstein) and that guitar sound doubling the bass line.