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1
Patty Hearst
and her former guard Bernard Shaw
are wed two months after her release from prison.
After having been broadcast locally for a few years in Columbus, Ohio, cable network Nickelodeon goes national. Used as a noncommercial goodwill tool to win cable franchises and subscribers, its only original series is Pinwheel,
which interspersed puppets and actors with acquired cartoons.
2
Rolling Stone
reports that Kmart -- the nation's second-largest retailer -- has pulled Steve Martin
's hit album A Wild and Crazy Guy
off the shelves in its 1,396 stores, citing customer complaints about profanity.
3 Van Halen
's
Van Halen II
goes gold just five days before the band takes off on a triumphant ten-month tour. The long trip is the antithesis of the way Van Halen record: for their second LP, they took a mere six days in the studio, one-third the time required for their first album.
Jane Byrne
is elected mayor of Chicago, the largest city in the United States to have had a female mayor. After defeating current mayor Michael Bilandic
in the Democratic primary (due to what many perceived to be his ineffective handling of a series of major snowstorms that paralyzed the city in January), she wins the general election in the heavily Democratic city with 72 percent of the vote -- at the time, the largest margin ever recorded in a mayoral election. Byrne, who used special events, such as ChicagoFest, to revitalize Navy Pier and the downtown Chicago Theatre, serves until April 29, 1983.
4
5
6 The punk-cum-new wave group
Blondie
has its first major U.S. hit with "Heart of Glass,"
a disco number the band originally called "The Disco Song." Naturally, they're hit with cries of "sellout." In any case, "Heart of Glass" goes platinum on this date, two months after it made Number One.
Rod Stewart
marries actor
George Hamilton
's wife
Alana Hamilton
in Beverly Hills.
7
The two-day California Music Festival at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum opens. It will draw 110,000 people and make $1.2 million, but will still be a financial loss for the promoters. Among the acts featured there are
Ted Nugent, Aerosmith, Cheap Trick, Van Halen
and the
Boomtown Rats
.
8 Van Halen
commence their second world tour. It will last ten months. The group carries twenty-two tons of sound equipment and ten tons of lights.
All In the Family
airs its final show. In the fall season, its spinoff Archie Bunker's Place
premieres, running until 1983.
9 Vietnam finally seems to be a subject Hollywood can handle, as The Deer Hunter
wins five Oscars (including Best Picture and Director) while Coming Home
nabs three: Best Actor and Actress (for Jon Voight
and Jane Fonda
) and Best Screenplay.
10
A Boogie 'N' Blues Concert at New York City's Carnegie Hall features performances by such giants of those forms as
John Lee Hooker, Lightin' Hopkins, Clifton Chenier
and
Honeyboy Edwards
.
Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton
makes an unannounced special appearance.
11
The long and bloody rule of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin
comes to an end as a combined force of Tanzanian troops and Ugandan exiles enters Kampala after six months of civil war. Plans for the dethroned dictator to wrestle a Japanese sumo star, with Muhammad Ali
refereeing, are also ended.
12 Mickey Thomas
, former vocalist with
Elvin Bishop
, replaces
Marty Balin
as lead singer with
Jefferson Starship
.
After so many years of being the Next Big Thing, only to watch other country-rock outfits enjoy much greater success,
Poco
receive a gold record for
Legend,
their twelfth LP. The only original member left by this point is pedal steel guitarist
Rusty Young
, who, fittingly, wrote and sang the LP's first hit, "Crazy Love."
13
Five days into
Van Halen
's latest tour,
David Lee Roth
collapses from exhaustion onstage in Spokane, Washington.
14 The Doobie Brothers
' "What a Fool Believes"
tops the charts, as fans enthusiastically dig the band's new funkier, R&B sound with the addition of Michael McDonald
, ex- Steely Dan
backup vocalist and keyboard player. The song, cowritten by McDonald and Kenny Loggins
, later helps them win a slew of Grammy Awards (four) including Record of the Year. Their only previous No. 1 had been "Black Water."
The Top Five
1. "What a Fool Believes"
- Doobie Brothers
2. "I Will Survive"
- Gloria Gaynor
3. "Knock on Wood"
- Amii Stewart
4. "Sultans of Swing" - Dire Straits
5. "Music Box Dancer" - Frank Mills
15
16 Gloria Gaynor
is awarded a platinum 45 for "I Will Survive,"
the biggest hit of her career and a Number One record for three weeks in March.
17
18
A Los Angeles judge orders macho leading man Lee Marvin
to pay $104,000 "for rehabilitation purposes" to his companion of six years, Michelle Triola Marvin
. The money compensates her for time lost from her singing career, but his $3.6 million estate - of which she wanted half -- is off limits. Both sides claim victory. "I am proud to have paved the way for unmarried women," she says, having also paved the way for her attorney Marvin Mitchelson
's new (and booming) "palimony" business. But one lawyer warns, "This may open up the floodgates for future litigation."
19
It is reported that Georgia has adopted Ray Charles
's rendition of the Hoagy Carmichael
classic "Georgia on My Mind" as its official state song.
20
Inaugurating England's influential ska revival, the indie label Two Tone releases its first record, "Gangsters," by the Specials
, who run the label. Two Tone will release music by other second-generation ska combos the English Beat
, the Selecter
and the Bodysnatchers
. By November, debut albums by the Specials and ska- cum
-music- hall revivalists Madness
will make the U.K. charts.
22
As part of his sentence for his 1977 Canadian drug arrest,
Rolling Stone Keith Richards
performs a benefit concert in Ottawa for the Canadian National Institute for the Blind. Richards' band, making its debut, is the
New Barbarians
, consisting of Richards, Rolling Stone guitarist
Ron Wood
, funk-fusion bassist
Stanley Clarke
, ex-
Faces
keyboardist
Ian McLagan
and ex-
Meters
drummer
Ziggy Modeliste
. The New Barbarians will shortly embark on a brief U.S. tour, but will never record.
The New York Times
reports that famine is threatening Cambodia as a result of the ongoing war. The rock industry will respond with various benefit concerts, culminating in a four-concert year-end series in London.
23
24
25 The film
Rock n' Roll High School
, directed by Alan Arkush and starring
P.J. Soles, Mary Woronov, Vince Van Patten, Paul Bartel
and the
Ramones
, premieres in Los Angeles. A satire of Fifties teen-rock films set in Vince Lombardi High School, the film's soundtrack features the Ramones performing the title song, as well as Devo ("Come Back Jonee"),
Chuck Berry
("School Days"), the
Velvet Underground
("Rock and Roll"),
Wings
("Did We Meet Somewhere Before") and
Bobby Freeman
("Do You Wanna Dance?"). The movie does well both at the box office and with critics.
Blues giant
B.B. King
concludes a month-long, thirty-date tour of the U.S.S.R. "It reminded me of the many reformatories we've played," says King of the experience. "We go in, we play and we leave. It's sad, because we know the audience can't leave with us."
26
27 Stevie Wonder
makes a surprise appearance at a
Duke Ellington
tribute concert at UCLA's Royce Hall. He performs "Sir Duke"
and Ellington's "C-Jam Blues."
29 Cheap Trick
releases a live version of "I Want You to Want Me," taken from their new album Cheap Trick at Budokan,
which finally nets the band from Rockford, Illinois, that elusive prize: a Top 10 hit in the United States. The raucous rockers' first three albums had gone gold in Japan, but until now they've barely caused a ripple in America. Cheap Trick at Budokan
captures their hot pop performance and fan hysteria in the Land of the Rising Sun which is reminiscent of Beatlemania (in fact, the Beatles
played the same venue in Budokan in the summer of 1966).
30
In Addington v. Texas, the United States Supreme Court rules that a "clear and convincing" standard of proof is required by the Fourteenth Amendment in a civil proceeding brought under state law to commit an individual involuntarily for an indefinite period to a state psychiatric facility.