Sunday
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Friday
Saturday
1
Space 1999
premieres as a syndicated series. Bearing a slight resemblance to Star Trek,
Space 1999
revolves around the moon and moonbase Alpha which loses orbit and flies off into outer space.
2
The summer ends on a less-than-peaceful note in Syracuse, New York. A so-called Great American Music Fair featuring the
Jefferson Starship, Doobie Brothers, New Riders of the Purple Sage
and others is marred when a crowd of five hundred attempts to storm the gate, an effort to make the fest a free show. Police and state troopers retaliate, and sixty are arrested in the melee that follows.
3
4
The Montefuscos
debuts on NBC-TV and becomes the laughingstock of the TV industry when it's canceled after only six weeks. The sitcom centers around a boisterous, middle-class Italian named Tony Montefusco ( Joe Sirola
) who has his entire family over for dinner every Sunday night.
In Geneva, Egypt and Israel reach an agreement for troop disengagement from the Sinai, with the installation of U.S. observers. The accord is approved by Oct. 10, and Israeli troops begin leaving the peninsula for the first time since the 1973 war.
5 Jaws
becomes the top-grossing film of all time.
Former Manson Family
member Lynette Alice "Squeaky" Fromme
tries to shoot President Ford
in Sacramento, as the president is on his way to address the California legislature about starting a national effort to curb violent crimes, including stricter gun control. Fromme is immedately arrested. On Sept. 22, Sara Jane Moore
also makes an unsuccessful attempt on the president in San Francisco, and is likewise arrested.
7
8
Time
magazine publishes a cover story on the USAF's Leonard Matlovich
, the first U.S. military personnel member to out himself as homosexual (six months earlier).
9 NASA's unmanned probe Viking 2 takes off for Mars.
The first episode of Welcome Back, Kotter
airs on ABC-TV. Comic Gabe Kaplan
stars as Gabe Kotter, a fledgling New York City high school teacher saddled with classroom terrors who are much like he was when he attended the same school 10 years before. Marcia Strassman
plays his wife Julie. In this opening episode, Gabe's academic misfits are challenged to a formal debate on the topic "Resolved: humans are basically aggressive." (The show is the national debut of John Travolta
, who plays student Vinnie Barbarino.
10 A special about legendary Columbia Records executive
John Hammond
is taped in Chicago for NET (National Educational Television)
Marion Wilson, Benny Goodman, Sonny Terry
and
John Hammond Jr.
all perform for the man who signed up
Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Count Basie
and
Bruce Springsteen
. But it's the man once dubbed "Hammond's Folly" who ends the proceedings.
Bob Dylan
, playing with what becomes the
Rolling Thunder Revue
's rhythm section -- bassist
Rob Stoner
and drummer
Howie Wyeth
-- and the tour's violinist,
Scarlet Rivera
, run through "Oh Sister," "Simple Twist of Fate" and two blistering versions of "Hurricane," his as-yet unreleased, stirring defense of former boxer and convicted (some say unjustly) murderer
Rubin "Hurricane" Carter
.
ABC's new cop show Starsky & Hutch
debuts, and it isn't your typical TV cop show. Stars Paul Michael Glaser
and David Soul
have hot wheels (a fire-red Ford Torino, even though a green-and-white Chevy Camaro was the producers' first choice) and the coolest of informants in the sartorially challenged Huggy Bear ( Antonio Fargas
). Facing lots of primetime cop competition, the show will last a respectable four seasons. Soul even goes pop as his recording of "Don't Give Up On Us"
will hit No. 1 in April 1977.
Kiss
releases its first concert album, Alive!
, which becomes the breakthrough for the band; Chattanooga's Soldiers and Sailors Auditorium has their first headliner show with Slade
as opener.
11 Folk-pop singer/songwrier
Janis Ian
earns her first gold record for the album
Between the Lines.
The album contains her single, "At Seventeen,"
which is climing the pop chart, where it will peak at #3.
Between the Lines
will eventually go platinum. "At Seventeen" is Ian's first hit since 1967's controversial "Society's Child," a protest-love song about an interracial relationship that reached #14 on the pop chart.
12
Hard rock band
Slade
's attempt at rock moviemaking,
Flame,
opens in St. Louis. The band, as popular in its native U.K. as it is overlooked in the U.S., stars as a prepackaged Sixties band. But despite the concurrent release of
Flame,
the book, and
Flame,
the sountrack, the the venture falls far short of capturing the American interest.
13 Less than three months after their "Love Will Keep Us Together"
hits #1, Captain & Tennille
rerecords the song in Spanish as "Por Amor Viviremos." It reaches #49.
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16
The delicate balance among Lebanon's religious groups begins to teeter out of control. Fighting erupts between Christian and Muslim factions, beginning a drawn-out civil war that will kill thousands and reduce Beirut to ruin.
17 British progressive-rock band
Pink Floyd
earn their third gold record, for the album
Wish You Were Here,
a thinly veiled tribute to
Syd Barrett
, the band's original guiding light in its early psychedelic days. One of their previous gold citations was for
The Dark Side of the Moon,
which also went platinum.
18 Veteran Detroit soul vocal group the
Spinners
earn another of their many gold records, for the album
Pick of the Litter,
which contains their current hit, "They Just Can't Stop It (the Games People Play)," which is on its way to #5 on the pop chart. Among their other gold singles are "I'll Be Around"
(1972), "Could It Be I'm Falling in Love"
(1973) and the 1974 Number One hit with
Dionne Warwick
, "Then Came You."
They will go on to earn another gold record in 1976 for the #2 pop hit "The Rubberband Man
."
Patty Hearst
is arrested in her San Francisco hideout along with other surviving SLA members after evading arrest for over nineteen months. Eighteen days later, Rolling Stone
magazine makes headlines with its investigative account of the early days of Hearst's abduction and subsequent undeground flight.
19
Dickie Goodman
, master of the novelty "break-in" record -- where excerpts from current hits are used to flesh out what, in Goodman's case, is inevitably some sort of parody of current events or fads -- earns his only gold record, for "Mr. Jaws," currently on its way to #4 on the pop chart. Goodman had many other such hits, including "The Touchables" (1961), "Ben Crazy" (1962), "Batman and His Grandmother" (1966), "On Campus" and "Luna Trip" (1969), "Watergate" (1973), "Energy Crisis '74" (1974) and "Mr. President" (1974). Before going solo, Goodman had scored several other "break-in" novelty hits ashalf of a duo with
Bill Buchanan
. The first of their duo hits, 1956's "Flying Saucer," was also the first "break-in" record and sparked controversy among the composers and publishers whose songs had been excerpted; Buchanan and Goodman capitalized on this publicity in their follow-up hit, "Buchanan and Goodman on Trial," and had mone more hit in 1957 with "Santa and the Satellite."
20 The
Bay City Rollers
appear live on
Howard Cosell
's Saturday night ABC variety show in an obvious attempt to break the band (and Cosell's soon-to- be-canceled program) in the manner of the
Beatles
' appearance on
The Ed Sullivan Show
eleven years earlier.
David Bowie
's "Fame"
hits #1 on the Billboard
pop chart, his first to reach the top.
The Top Five
1. "Fame"
- David Bowie
2. "Rhinestone Cowboy"
- Glen Campbell
3. "At Seventeen"
- Janis Ian
4. "I'm Sorry"
- John Denver
5. "Fight the Power Pt. 1" - Isley Brothers
21
22
Sarah Jane Moore
attempts to assassinate President Ford
.
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24
25 Soul singer
Jackie Wilson
("Higher and Higher") suffers a heart attack while performing at the Latin Casino in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. He suffers brain damage and lapses into a coma. Ironically, Wilson was in the middle of singing one of his biggest hits, "Lonely Teardrops," and was two words into the line "My heart is crying" when he collapsed. Wilson, 41, will remain immobile and mute until his death in 1984.
America's post-Watergate political anxiety is reflected on the big screen with the premiere of Three Days of the Condor,
adapted from a James Grady
novel entitled Six Days of the Condor.
It's a rousing espionage adventure with a dynamic Robert Redford-Faye Dunaway
pairing: he as an on-the-run intelligence desk man since his entire office is wiped out in the film's opening minutes, she as the feisty foil who reluctantly takes him in as the bad guys ( Max von Sydow, Cliff Robertson
) close in. Director Sydney Pollack
keeps the topical tale spinning along, delivering "a neat switch [ending] that mingles liberal humanism with a smidgen of skepticism and a dash of doubt," says David Sterritt
of The Christian Science Monitor.
26 The film The Rocky Horror Picture Show
premieres at the United Artists Westwood Theater in Los Angeles. Featuring Meat Loaf
and Susan Sarandon
, this offbeat musical contains transvestitism, gore, and comedy.
ABC airs the TV movie Death Scream,
based on the 1964 Kitty Genovese murder in New York City.
27 Captain & Tennille
's second hit, "The Way I Want to Touch You," charts and will reach #4 in October. It had been previously released three times in 1974 on three different labels and bombed each time, but being the follow-up to their #1 hit, "Love Will Keep Us Together,"
gives it new attention.
The Top Five
1. "I'm Sorry"/"Calypso"
- John Denver
2. "Fame"
- David Bowie
3. "Rhinestone Cowboy"
- Glen Campbell
4. "Fight the Power Pt. 1" - Isley Brothers
5. "Run Joey Run" - David Goddes
28
Fifty thousand people watch the
Jefferson Starship
and
Jerry Garcia and Friends
for free in San Francisco's Lindley Park. Garcia's "friends" turn out to be the reunited
Grateful Dead
making their first public appearance in over a year.
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30
Home Box Office begins programming across the U.S.