Super Seventies RockSite's Seventies Daily Music Chronicle

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April 1977

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Top of the charts: Daryl Hall & John Oates's "Rich Girl" (pop single); Fleetwood Mac's Rumours (pop album). Rumours will spend a total of 31 weeks (non-consecutive) at #1, a longer period than any other Seventies album.

"Love's Grown Deep," Kenny Nolan's followup to his #3 smash "I Like Dreamin'," charts and will reach #20. Previously known only as a composer, he has two #1's ("Lady Marmalade," by Labelle and "My Eyes Adored You," by Frankie Valli) within two months of each other in late 1974 and early 1975.

Kiss plays Budokan Hall in Japan, with some songs becoming the basis for their Alive II LP.

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British CBS releases the Clash's eponymous first album, a fourteen-song aural firebomb that contains such punk battle cries as "White Riot," "Police and Thieves" and "London's Burning." Claiming that the album is too harsh and non-commercial for American ears, American CBS will refuse to release it until 1979, and even then will delete some of the more virulent songs from the selection. In the meantime, Americans with tough ears will buy an astounding 100,000 imported copies of The Clash, making it one of the biggest-selling import records of all time.
5
At a three-day rally billed Japan Celebrates the Whale and Dolphin in Tokyo, Jackson Browne, Richie Havens, John Sebastian, Country Joe McDonald and J.D. Souther help to raise $150,000 for the effort to save the whales and dolphins from the nets of the international fishing industry.

U.S. ambassador to the UN Andrew Young accuses Britain of institutionalizing racism more than any other country. Over the next few months, he further upsets diplomatic waters by naming the Soviet Union the most racist country, by alleging that Sweden treats blacks as badly as they are treated in Queens, N.Y., and by saying, in a Playboy interview, that former presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford have "no understanding of colored people anywhere."

6
Former Beatles and Rolling Stones manager Allen Klein is indicted for tax evasion.

Led Zeppelin breaks the record for single-act concert attendance in Pontiac, Michigan, 76,229.

7
Rolling Stone reports that the upcoming tour of Todd Rundgren's Utopia will raise the ante for onstage high-tech theatrics: At a cost of nearly $200,000, it features a 25-foot pyramid, an 18-foot sphinx, fire jets, water fountains and lasers synchronized with digital recording devices.
8
The Damned's performance at New York City's CBGB marks the first appearance of a British punk group in America.

According to Customs officials, up to 30 marijuana-laden aircraft enter the U.S. from Mexico each day.

9
The Top Five
1. "Dancing Queen" - Abba
2. "Don't Give Up On Us" - David Soul
3. "Don't Leave Me This Way" - Thelma Houston
4. "Rich Girl" - Hall & Oates
5. "Southern Nights" - Glen Campbell

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After performing for an audience of 40,000 in Sydney, Australia (the largest concert crowd in the country's history to date), Alice Cooper is placed under house arrest at his hotel until he posts a bond for $59,632 -- the sum which a local promoter, H.G.M. Attractions, claims to have paid Cooper for a 1975 Australian tour he never made. Cooper and H.G.M. will arrive at a court settlement that divides the money between the two parties when it is found that H.G.M. did not fulfill its part of the 1975 agreement either.
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D-day for the ERA: As the Florida Senate rejects the amandment, the tally of states that have ratified the ERA stands at 35 of the necesary 38, stalling the long and hard-fought battle for constitutional recognition of women's rights. The struggle will continue, unsuccessfully, until June 30, 1982.
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Ronnie Van Zant and Gary Rossington of Lynyrd Skynyrd present a gold disc awarded them for One More from the Road to Mayor Maynard Jackson of Atlanta, Georgia, in appreciation of their Atlanta fans. Another gold disc is awarded to representatives of Atlanta's Fox Theater, where the album was recorded live. In the afternoon, members of Lynyrd Skynyrd, along with James Brown and other prominent Georgians, are honored at a ceremony before the Atlanta Braves' opening home baseball game.
16
Stevie Wonder enters the soul chart with what will become another of his many Number One smash hits, "Sir Duke," a rollicking tribute to Duke Ellington that will top the chart in May.

The Top Five
1. "Don't Give Up On Us" - David Soul
2. "Don't Leave Me This Way" - Thelma Houston
3. "Southern Nights" - Glen Campbell
4. "Hotel California" - Eagles
5. "The Things We Do For Love" - 10 cc

Boasting 16K of memory, the Apple II computer is introduced at the West Coast Computer Faire. Shipping to customers on May 10 with a price tag of $1,195, it becomes one of the most popular computers and starts the boom in personal computer sales in the late 1970.

17
Led Zeppelin's final tour of the U.S. is plagued by violent rioting over ticketing problems and postponed shows, beginning in Miami and spreading to Tampa, Houston, St. Louis and Cincinnati.
18
Heiress, kidnapping victim and SLA member Patty Hearst pleads no contest to armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon.
19
The Supreme Court rules on Ingraham v. Wright, upholding the right of school officials to spank unruly students "under certain circumstances."

Seven weeks after a near-fatal heart attack, Martin Sheen returns to the Philippines to resume filming Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola's troubled take on the Vietnam War. After crushing delays, nightmarish weather, and an overweight and recalcitrant Marlon Brando, Coppola later says, "We had too much money, too much equipment, and little by little we went insane." When the snake-bitten production finally opens in the summer of 1979, it gets rave attention and does boffo box office. "My film isn't about Vietnam," says Coppola, "it is Vietnam."

20
After a half dozen films Woody Allen releases Annie Hall, his best to date (and some say best ever). Mixing his trademark riffs on life, death, sex, romantic angst, and neuroses, it does big box-office business and wins four Oscars: best actress (Diane Keaton), director (Allen), original screenplay (Allen and Marshall Brickman), and the top prize, best picture, over favored sci-fi smash Star Wars. Yet Woody's an Oscar no-show; he's off playing clarinet at Michael's Pub with the New Orleans Funeral and Ragtime Orchestra, his usual Monday night gig. "I couldn't let down the guys," he says. The film also leads an antistyle fashion trend, inspired by the ditzy title character's kooky look mixing men's clothes, grandma's clothes, and floppy hats that could've belonged to either.
21
Rolling Stone reports the rampant rumor that new Capitol recording artist Klaatu is actually the Beatles reunited. Fanning the flames further, Klaatu's manager says, "They want to maintain a low profile and be known solely for their music... they are not the Beatles." Nevertheless Klaatu's debut album rises to No. 32 on the Billboard Hot 200 album chart.

Jesse Winchester, the American folksinger whose career was cut short when he fled to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War draft, performs his first concert on U.S. soil in ten years.

It's opening night for "Annie," a splendid transplant of the redheaded little orphan girl of funny pages fame to the Great White Way, despite naysayers dubbing it "'Oliver' in drag." With Andrea McArdle ("a petite Merman with pipes of steel") in the title role, it quickly becomes Broadway's hottest ticket. Awards, like its most famous song, come out tomorrow: seven Tony Awards including best musical, score, book, and choreography, and seven Drama Desk Awards. Even the original comic of "Little Orphan Annie," discontinued in 1974, is brought back in 1979 for good, thanks to the success of the stage show.

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The Top Five
1. "Don't Leave Me This Way" - Thelma Houston
2. "Southern Nights" - Glen Campbell
3. "Hotel California" - Eagles
4. "Don't Give Up On Us" - David Soul
5. "The Things We Do For Love" - 10 cc

24
Joan Baez and Santana, among others, perform a free concert for inmates of California's Soledad Prison. The concert was arranged and sponsored by Bread and Roses, a charitable foundation set up in 1974 by Baez' sister Mimi Fariña.
25
At a concert at the Saginaw, Michigan, Civic Center, Elvis Presley makes what will be the last recordings of his life. Three songs from the show will appear, in heavily overdubbed mixes, on the posthumously released Presley album Moody Blue.
26
Studio 54, destined to be the world's most famous disco during the height of the disco phenomenon, opens its carefully guarded doors for the first time. A converted television sudio on New York City's West 54th Street, the club is done up in the height of glittering chic: metallic-black walls, neon-light sculptures, spotlit dance floors for those who want to be seen, shadowy alcoves furnished with plump couches for those involved in more private pursuits. But the décor and even the nonstop dance music take second billing to the rich, the beautiful, the famous and the infamous who annoint Studio 54 as the place for celebrities to spend those feverish hours between midnight and dawn; it is they who attract the throngs outside who wait for hours, hoping that the doormen will like their looks or their promises enough to let them past the velvet ropes and into Studio 54. The venue will be the subject of a theatrical film, 54, in 1998.

The Federal Food & Drug Administration requires environmental- hazard warning labels on all containers using fluorocarbons.

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Aretha Franklin, enters the soul chart yet again, with "Break It to Me Gently," which in its fourteen weeks on the chart will peak at Number One for one week on June 18. It is her second soul Top Ten hit of the year -- the first was the #10 "Look Into Your Heart" -- and will later be followed by one more big hit, the #16 "When I Think about You."

Approximately 2,000 protesters invade the construction site of a nuclear power plant in Seabrook, N.H. The next day over 1,000 are arrested and held in makeshift jails.

The Top Five
1. "Southern Nights" - Glen Campbell
2. "Hotel California" - Eagles
3. "Don't Leave Me This Way" - Thelma Houston
4. "When I Need You" - Leo Sayer
5. "I've Got Love on my Mind" - Natalie Cole


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