Super Seventies RockSite's Seventies Daily Music Chronicle

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June 1976

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The eponymous debut album by New York City punk pioneers the Ramones enters the album chart. Like all their albums, it will be a bigger success with critics than record-buyers. Their British tour later this year will be a key catalyst of British punk rock.
6
Billionaire oil magnate J. Paul Getty dies.

The Boston Celtics eclipse the Phoenix Suns, 87-80, to to win their 13th NBA title.

7
Capitol Records does its best to revive Beatlemania by issuing some of the Fab Four's rockers in a package named Rock 'N' Roll Music (timed to fit in after the Wings U.S. tour and the expiration of all agreements between Capitol and Apple Records earlier in the year). Despite a dubious selection process and jacket art so garish and misleading that it draws public condemnation from Ringo Starr, the album reaches #2.

Funk band the
Ohio Players twelfth album, Contradiction, goes gold. It includes their most recent hits, "Fopp" (#30, a month ago) and "Rattlesnake" (#90, two months ago).
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10
Karen Ann Quinlan's respirator is turned off.
11
San Francisco Latin-rock-fusion band Santana's ninth album, Amigos, which includes their current, albeit minor, hit "Let It Shine" (which peaked at #77 on the pop chart a few weeks ago), goes gold.
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Some six years after their breakup, the Beatles garner another gold album for the Rock 'N' Roll Music anthology.

The Supreme Court refuses to review cases about the desegregation of Boston schools and lets stand lower court rulings upholding busing as a legitimate means of integrating public schools.

The Gong Show premieres on NBC-TV. Hosted by Chuck Barris, the winner of this bizarre variety show of undiscovered talent gets a trophy and a check for $516.32

15
Oakland A's owner Charles Finley sells three stars, Vida Blue, Joe Rudi and Rollie Fingers, to two other teams; three days later baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn will nullify the sale, fearing the precedent it might set.
16
In protest of a law requiring Afrikaans language classes in black schools, the worst rioting and violence in recent South African history erupts in the black Soweto township. After a week of clashes, 176 are reported dead and 1,139 wounded, many of them schoolchildren. On July 6, the South African government revokes the contested law, but rioting will continue, and protest leaders, including Winnie Mandela, wife of imprisoned African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, will be arrested.
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After thirteen years of watching many of his contemporaries prosper, Phil May, last original member left in the Pretty Things, quits the band. Despite starting out alongside the Rolling Stones and gaining a reputation in the earlier days for their raw energy and later for conceiving the first rock opera, S.F. Sorrow, he and the Things had never made it in the States.

Six years after its release, the album
Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus, by Calfornia rock band Spirit, goes gold.

Olé ELO, a greatest-hits collection by British chamber-pop band Electric Light Orchestra -- who mate pop-rock to the cello-driven Beatles sound of tunes like "I Am the Walrus" and "Eleanor Rigby" -- goes gold. Up to this time, the band has had six Top 100 hits, the biggest being "Can't Get It Out of My Head" (#9, 1975), "Evil Woman" (#10, early 1976), "Strange Magic" (#14, this month) and their version of Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven" (#42, 1973). The group is led by ex-Move singer/guitarist Jeff Lynne.
19
Reggae stars Bob Marley and the Wailers enter the pop chart with what will become their first U.S. hit, "Roots Rock Reggae," which will peak at #37.

REO Speedwagon's sixth album, R.E.O., enters the album chart. Though it will barely scrape the bottom of the chart in its brief time there, it marks the return of original vocalist Kevin Cronin, who will help lead the working-class pop-rock band to their first gold record with their next release. Live: You Get What You Play for. But it will be four more years until the band's most successful LP, Hi-Infidelity, becomes the biggest-selling album of 1980, taking the anonymous, hard-working band to the platinum echelon.

Heavy-metal band
Blue Oyster Cult enters the album chart with what will become its commercial breakthrough LP, Agents of Fortune, which will reach #29 on the LP chart and go gold on October 26, 1976, largely due to its hit single -- the band's only chart entry so far -- "(Don't Fear) the Reaper," which will reach #12 later in the year.
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Horn-dominated rock band Chicago, formerly known as the Chicago Transit Authority, earn another gold record for the album Chicago X, which contain their two latest hits, "If You Leave Me Now" (their biggest hit, it will reach Number One in October and will be on the pop chart for a total of twenty weeks) and "Another Rainy Day in New York City" (which will peak at #32 later this year).
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After first breaking out for five days in December 1970, food price riots erupt once again in Poland and last for six days.
25
Famed composer and two-time Academy Award winner Johnny Mercer dies.

Following in the footsteps of The Exorcist, the horror blockbuster The Omen premieres.

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Four members of the Liberation of Palestine Red Army Faction hijack Air France flight AF-139 at Entebbe, Uganda, that results in an Independence Day rescue of 103 hostages by an Israeli commando squad exactly one week later. The rescue is remembered as a high point of counter-terror warfare in general, and of the Israeli contribution to that field in particular. Two made-for-TV movies about this heroic event, ABC's Victory at Entebbe and NBC's Raid on Entebbe, air on Dec. 13, 1976 and Jan. 9, 1977, respectively.
28
A baseball announcer calls Detroit Tigers rookie pitcher Mark "The Bird" Fidrych, who is known for talking to himself and the baseball between pitches, grooming the mound on his hands and knees, and shaking the hands of infielders after good plays, "the most interesting player since Dizzy Dean." Soon "The Bird" is the word from coast to coast, and he's voted the American League Rookie of the Year, shares a cover of Sports Illustrated with Sesame Street's Big Bird, and becomes the first athelete to grace the cover of Rolling Stone ("America's Hottest Baseball Card"). Unfortunately this Bird flies off too quickly, as a torn rotator cuff and wildness will end his too-brief career in 1980.
29
Disco diva Donna Summer, whose biggest hit to date was "Love to Love You Baby" (#2, earlier this year), earns a gold album for Love Trilogy.
30
Police, supposedly responding to a report of burglars on the premises of Neil Diamond's Holmby Hills, California, estate, enter the singer's house with a search warrant. A three-hour inspection yields a grand total of less than one ounce of marijuana; so low-key is the bust that Diamond gives several officers copies of his latest LP, Beautiful Noise. Diamond's debut the following evening at the new Alladin Theater for the Performing Arts in Las Vegas goes on as scheduled.
 

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