Monday 6pm: Max 20th Century – 1980 (Part I)

January 1
Cliff Richard is appointed an MBE by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.
The Zorros audition drummer Greg Pedley.
January 5 – Donna Summer Brings her 3 double album in a 14-month period, to the top of the Billboard Albums charts; when Greatest Hits: On the Radio; Vol 1 & 2; reaches the top spot.
January 7 – At the age of 44, songwriter Larry Williams is found dead in his Los Angeles, California, home of a gunshot wound to the head. Investigators are never able to determine whether his death was a murder or suicide.
January 13 – The Beach Boys, Grateful Dead, and Jefferson Starship perform at a benefit concert at Oakland Coliseum for the people of Kampuchea.
January 14 – Rush release Permanent Waves, which eventually becomes the band’s fifth platinum album.
January 16 – Paul McCartney is arrested in Tokyo for possession of a half pound of marijuana. The remaining part of McCartney’s and Wings’ tour was then canceled.
January 19 – The first UK Indie Chart is published in Record Week, with Spizzenergi’s “Where’s Captain Kirk” topping the singles chart, and Adam and the Ants’ Dirk Wears White Sox topping the album chart.
January 25 – Paul McCartney is released from a Japanese jail and ejected from the country by Japanese authorities.
February 7 – Pink Floyd’s The Wall Tour opens at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena.
February 8 – David Bowie and his wife of nearly 10 years, Angie, file for divorce. Bowie gets custody of their 9-year-old son, Zowie.
February 14 – Lou Reed marries Sylvia Morales in New York City’s Greenwich Village.
February 19 – Bon Scott, lead singer of AC/DC, dies in London. Although common folklore cites pulmonary aspiration of vomit as the cause of his death, the official cause is listed as “Acute alcohol poisoning” and “Death by Misadventure”.
February 23 – Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones and his wife are arrested for cocaine possession on the Caribbean island of Saint Martin. They are set free after spending five days in custody due to the inability of authorities to prove the cocaine in the apartment belonged to either of them.
February 29 – Buddy Holly’s trademark glasses and the Big Bopper’s wristwatch are “rediscovered” in old police files by the Mason City, Iowa, sheriff (both were killed in a plane crash on February 3, 1959, along with singer Ritchie Valens).
March 1 – Patti Smith marries former MC5 member Fred “Sonic” Smith.
March 3 – Sotheby’s auction house in London auctions off a Rivera Hotel, Las Vegas, napkin signed by Elvis Presley for ₤500. Other items auctioned included four American dollar bills autographed by the Beatles, for £220 and a collection of personal letters belonging to the Rolling Stones, also for £220.
March 8–16 – Tbilisi Rock Festival (1980): the first state-sanctioned rock music festival in the Soviet Union.
March 14 – Record producer Quincy Jones receives a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
March 19 – Elvis Presley’s autopsy was subpoenaed during the trial of Dr. George Nichopoulous, who would later be found guilty of over-prescribing drugs to Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and other clients.
March 20 – Radio Caroline shuts down in the UK after radio ship Mi Amigo sinks in a storm.
April–June
April 1 – Brian Johnson is made the new lead singer of AC/DC replacing the late Bon Scott.
April 13 – The Broadway musical Grease closes its run of 3,388 performances, making it the longest running show on Broadway up until that time.
April 14
A member of the New Jersey State assembly introduces a resolution to make Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” the official state song.
Iron Maiden release their self-titled debut album.
April 17 – As the “official guests of State”, Bob Marley and the Wailers perform at Zimbabwe’s Independence festival. Marley calls the event the “greatest honor of my life.”
April 19 – Johnny Logan wins the 25th Eurovision Song Contest for Ireland, with the song “What’s Another Year”.
April 25 – Black Sabbath release Heaven and Hell, their first album to feature Ronnie James Dio on vocals.
April 30 – The Roger Daltrey film, McVicar, opens in London.
May 4 – America’s Top 10, the television version of radio’s American Top 40 and hosted by Casey Kasem, debuts this week in syndication.
May 18 – Ian Curtis, vocalist of pioneering post-punk group Joy Division, hangs himself in his Macclesfield home, just one day before Joy Division are scheduled to begin their first U.S. tour.
June 25
Rock and Roll pioneer Bill Haley performs for the last time during a tour of South Africa. After this tour, his health deteriorates and he dies in February 1981. July 1980 marks the 25th anniversary of Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” reaching No. 1 on the American singles charts.
The Sony Walkman goes on sale in the United States.
Kiss plays its first show with new drummer Eric Carr at the New York Palladium.
June 27 – John Lydon and Keith Levene of Public Image Ltd make an appearance on The Tomorrow Show with host Tom Snyder. In a famously uncomfortable interview, Lydon gives curt and vague responses to most of Snyder’s questions.

Wednesday 6pm: Max 20th Century (Part V)

We feature the Top 50 Hits of 1979.

Encore on RadioMax Classic Countdown Channel at 10pm

September 1 – INXS perform in public for the first time, at the Oceanview Hotel in Umina, New South Wales.
September 2 – U2 enters the studio for the first time to record a locally released single.
September 13 – ABBA begins ABBA: The Tour in Edmonton, Alberta, leading off a month of dates in North America.
September 17 – Ontario Court of Appeals rejects a government appeal against the previous year’s sentencing of Keith Richards, which allowed him to avoid jail time for his 1977 arrest in Toronto for heroin possession.
September 19–23 – Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE) stages a series of five No Nukes concerts at Madison Square Garden. Jackson Browne, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Bonnie Raitt, Tom Petty, James Taylor and Carly Simon are among the participants.
September 22 – The NewMusic, a Canadian weekly music and culture program, makes its début on Citytv.
September 27 – Elton John collapses on stage at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles County, California while performing “Better Off Dead”. He refuses to stop the show and resumes playing fifteen minutes later.
October 10 – Joe Perry officially leaves Aerosmith.
November 3 – Donna Summer becomes the first female artist to have 5 top 10 hits in the same year.
November 16 – Infinity Records is shut down and absorbed into parent company MCA.
November 17 – Donna Summer, for a second time, has two songs (“Dim All the Lights”, #2, & “No More Tears (Enough is Enough)” with Barbra Streisand, #3) in the Top 3 of the Billboard Hot 100, and the first female to have 5 top 5 hits in the same year.
November 24 – With “No More Tears (Enough is Enough)” hitting the top spot, Donna Summer becomes the first female artist to score 3 #1 singles in a calendar year on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.
November 26 – Bill Haley & His Comets perform at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, in a command performance for Queen Elizabeth II. This was Haley’s final recorded performance of “Rock Around the Clock”.
November 30 – Pink Floyd releases The Wall. It is rock’s most well-known concept albums and one of the best-selling albums of all time. It is also the last album recorded with the line up of David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Nick Mason and Richard Wright.
December 3 – In Cincinnati, a stampede for seats at Riverfront Coliseum during a Who concert kills 11 fans and injures 26 others. Band members were not informed of the deaths until after the show.
December 26 – Iron Maiden drummer Doug Sampson is replaced by ex-Samson drummer Clive Burr.
December 26-29 – The Concerts for the People of Kampuchea are held over four nights at the Hammersmith Odeon in London to raise funds for victims of war in Cambodia. Queen, The Who, The Clash, Wings, Elvis Costello and members of Led Zeppelin all take part.
December 31 – The eighth annual New Year’s Rockin’ Eve special airs on ABC, with appearances by The Oak Ridge Boys, Village People, Chic, Blondie and Barry Manilow.

Also in 1979
The Welsh Philharmonia becomes the Orchestra of Welsh National Opera.
Michael Schenker leaves Scorpions during their tour in France and was replaced by Matthias Jabs.
Stevie Wonder uses digital audio recording technology in recording his album Journey through the Secret Life of Plants.

EMI’s first non-classical digital recording, of UK jazz-funk duo Morrissey–Mullen covering the Rose Royce hit “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore”, is recorded at Abbey Road Studios and later released as a limited edition vinyl EP.

Disco reigned supreme in 1979, with several number-one hits from The Bee Gees and Donna Summer. Several artists who were not regarded as disco acts, scored major successes by releasing disco-oriented singles or albums, including new wave band Blondie with their first US number-one single “Heart of Glass”, Rod Stewart with “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?”, and symphonic rock band Electric Light Orchestra with their UK No. 1 LP Discovery.

Elton John reunites with lyricist Bernie Taupin after a three-year break. Their first compositions since then would eventually be recorded that August, to be released a year later as 21 at 33.

December – Iron Maiden is signed by EMI. They hire Dennis Stratton as a second guitarist.

Monday 6pm: Max 20th Century – 1979 (Part IV)

March 2–4 – Weather Report, The CBS Jazz All-Stars, the Trio of Doom, Fania All-Stars, Stephen Stills, Billy Swan, Bonnie Bramlett, Mike Finnegan, Kris Kristofferson, Rita Coolidge and Billy Joel, plus Cuban acts Irakere, Pacho Alonso, Elena Burke, Los Papines, Tata Güines and Orquesta Aragón play at the historic three-day Havana Jam festival at the Karl Marx Theater, in Havana, Cuba.
March 5 – MCA Records dissolves ABC Records.
March 10 – James Brown performs at the Grand Ole Opry.
March 15 – Elvis Costello gets into a heated argument with members of Stephen Stills’ touring entourage at a Holiday Inn in Columbus, Ohio. After Costello makes disparaging remarks about America, he is punched by Bonnie Bramlett. Costello suffers a wave of negative press coverage after the incident is made public.
March 21 – The Pretenders sign a contract with Sire Records.
March 27 – Eric Clapton marries Patti Boyd, ex-wife of Clapton’s friend George Harrison.
March 31 – The Eurovision Song Contest, the biggest music festival in the world, takes place for the first time in a country outside Europe – Israel. The show is broadcast live from Jerusalem to Europe and a few countries in Asia. The big winner of this night is Israel for the second time in a row. The winning song is “Hallelujah” sung by Gali Atari and the backing group Milk and Honey. A few months after winning the song had been translated into more than 82 languages, and broke a new record by entering the Guinness Book of Records as the most translated song in the world.
April 2 – Kate Bush begins her first, and for 35 years, only tour. She becomes the first artist to use a wireless microphone, enabling her to sing and dance at the same time.
April 6 – Rod Stewart marries Alana Hamilton.
April 7 – 110,000 people attend the California Music Festival at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum. Performers include Aerosmith, The Boomtown Rats, Cheap Trick, Ted Nugent and Van Halen.
April 12 – Mickey Thomas replaces Marty Balin as the lead singer of Jefferson Starship.
April 13 – During a concert by Van Halen in Spokane, Washington, David Lee Roth collapses from exhaustion. A local doctor treats him for a stomach virus and advises him to “calm down”.
April 22 – The New Barbarians and The Rolling Stones perform two concerts in Oshawa, Ontario to benefit the CNIB, as part of Keith Richards’ 1978 sentence for heroin possession.
April 24 – The New Barbarians open their US tour at Ann Arbor, Michigan.
April 27 – Ozzy Osbourne is fired as lead singer of Black Sabbath. He is replaced in May by Ronnie James Dio.
May 1 – Elton John becomes the first pop music star to perform in Israel.
May 2 – The Who play their first concert following the death of drummer Keith Moon. The band performs with new drummer Kenney Jones at London’s Rainbow Theatre.
May 8 – Iron Maiden, Samson, and Angel Witch share a bill at the Music Machine in Camden, London. Critic Geoff Barton coins the term “New Wave of British Heavy Metal” in a review of the show for Sounds magazine.
May 12 – Disco occupied eight of the top ten spots of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, for two weeks. The charts were led by Peaches and Herb’s R&B ballad single “Reunited”.
May 19 – Three of the four ex-Beatles perform on the same stage, as Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr jam with Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, Mick Jagger and others at a wedding reception for Clapton at his Surrey home.
May 21 – Elton John plays the first of eight concerts in the Soviet Union, making him the first western solo pop artist to tour there.
June 1 – Alternative Tentacles record label established by Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra.
June 8 – Marianne Faithfull marries Ben Brierly of The Vibrators.
June 9 – The Bee Gees tied Bing Crosby, Elvis Presley, and The Beatles with a record six consecutive number-one singles in the U.S. in less than a single calendar year with “Love You Inside Out”.
June 16 – Donna Summer becomes the first female to have the #1 single Hot Stuff and album Bad Girls for a second time.
June 28 – Bill Haley made his final studio recordings at Muscle Shoals, Alabama.
June 30 – Donna Summer becomes the first female artist to have 2 songs in the top 3 songs, Hot Stuff at #1 & Bad Girls at #3, on the billboard Hot 100 chart. They will stay in the top 3 together for 4 weeks.
July 1 – The Sony Walkman goes on sale in Japan.
July 7 – The Bee Gees play to a sold-out crowd at Los Angeles’ Dodger Stadium as part of their Spirits Having Flown tour.
July 10 – Chuck Berry is sentenced to four months in prison for tax evasion by a Los Angeles judge.
July 12 – “Disco Demolition Night”, an anti-disco promotional event held by a Chicago rock station at Comiskey Park involving exploding disco records with a bomb, causes a near-riot between games during a baseball major league doubleheader, forcing the cancellation of the second game.
July 14 – Donna Summer, for a third time in an eight-month period, scores a #1 single with “Bad Girls”, (staying atop the charts for five weeks); and #1 album of the same name, which also tops the Billboard 200 for six weeks.
July 21 – With Bad Girls (both single and album), Donna Summer’s success continues as she becomes the first female artist to sit on top of 3 major Billboard charts: the Billboard Hot 100, the Hot Soul Singles chart, and the Billboard 200.
July 21 – Disco dominated the Billboard Hot 100 chart, with the first six spots (beginning with Donna Summer’s “Bad Girls), and seven of the chart’s top ten songs ending that week.
July 28 – Aerosmith and Ted Nugent headline the World Series of Rock at Municipal Stadium in Cleveland, Ohio. Also on the bill are Journey, Thin Lizzy, AC/DC and the Scorpions. Following the concert, Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry quits the group after an argument with bandmates.
July 31 – 250,000 turn out in Central Park for a free concert by James Taylor in a campaign to restore Sheep Meadow.
August 18 – Nick Lowe and Carlene Carter are married at Carter’s Los Angeles home.
August 25 – “My Sharona” by The Knack hits #1 on the Billboard charts. This is the first time in over a year that a song hits #1 that is not either a disco song or a ballad, signalling the potential resurgence of rock.

Monday 6pm: Max 20th Century – 1979 (Part 1)

January 1
Bill Graham closes San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom following a New Year’s Eve performance by the Blues Brothers and the Grateful Dead.
During a New Year’s Eve concert in Cleveland, Ohio, Bruce Springsteen is injured when a firecracker is thrown onstage from the audience.
January 4 – The Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany, known for its connections to the early days of the Beatles, reopened.
January 6 – ABC’s American Bandstand featured the debut of the “Y.M.C.A. dance” using the hand gestures forming the letters YMCA during a broadcast with the Village People.
January 9 – The Music for UNICEF Concert in held in New York City at the United Nations, starring the Bee Gees. Highlights are aired the following evening on NBC.
January 13 – Singer Donny Hathaway dies after falling 15 stories from his hotel room in New York City. According to Hathaway’s record company, Atlantic, the singer had been having some psychological problems.
January 15 – MCA Records purchases ABC Records for a reported $20 million.
February 2 – Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious is found dead from an overdose, a day after being released on bail from Rikers Island prison.
February 7
The Clash kicked off their first concert of their first American tour at the Berkeley Community Theatre outside San Francisco. Bo Diddley opened the show.
Stephen Stills becomes the first major rock artist to record digitally, laying down four songs at The Record Plant in Los Angeles.
February 10 – Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” hit No. 1 on the Billboard magazine charts, and stayed there for 4 weeks.
February 11 – 43 million viewers watch “Elvis!” on ABC, a made-for-TV movie starring Kurt Russell as Elvis.
February 15 – Minnie Riperton appears on the Grammys as a presenter with Stephen Bishop. The Bee Gees collect 4 Grammys for Saturday Night Fever.
February 23 – Dire Straits begin their first U.S. tour in Boston.
February 24
Friedrich Cerha’s completion of Alban Berg’s opera Lulu is premiered at the Opera Garnier in Paris.
Singer Johnnie Wilder, Jr. of Heatwave is paralyzed from the neck down in a car accident in his hometown of Dayton, Ohio.
February 26 – B.B. King becomes the first blues artist to tour the Soviet Union, kicking off a one-month tour there.

Monday 6pm: Max 20th Century – 1978 (Part IV)

Country Music Events 1978
March 4 — The Public Broadcasting System (PBS) telecasts the first complete Grand Ole Opry show from the new Grand Ole Opry House as it happened from 6–9 pm. The show featured Del Reeves, The Willis Brothers, Billy Grammer, Lonzo and Oscar, Bill Monroe, Porter Wagoner, Roy Acuff, The Crook Brothers, The Fruit Jar Drinkers, Ronnie Milsap, Grandpa Jones, George Hamilton IV and others. The show would run over about 18 minutes the first night. The telecast would repeat from 1979 to 1981.
March 25 — “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson becomes the last song for 12 years to spend four weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart. There wouldn’t be another four-week No. 1 until “Hard Rock Bottom of Your Heart” by Randy Travis in April 1990. The trend of fewer (and shorter) multi-week runs at No. 1 on Billboard, even for the year’s biggest hits, is the result of changes in radio programming and the magazine’s reporting methods.
May 6 — Bob Kingsley takes over hosting duties of “American Country Countdown,” a stint that will last 27 years. He had been a producer of the radio countdown show since 1974.
May 24 — The United States Postal Service issues a 13-cent commemorative stamp honoring Jimmie Rodgers, one of the genre’s pioneers. The Rodgers stamp, designed by artist Jim Sharpe, is the first in the Postal Service’s long-running Performing Arts Series.
September — The Donna Fargo Show premieres in syndication. The new show’s debut comes around the same time Fargo was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She receives successful medical treatment and with her husband’s help, makes it back to excellent health
October 4 — One of Nashville’s most mysterious crimes involves the reported abduction and beating of Tammy Wynette. Media reports said that Wynette had been abducted by a masked man at a shopping center before the beating. No suspects were ever named or arrested. While Wynette would insist the story was true, her daughter raised doubts, claiming the incident was fabricated to cover physical abuse from her newlywed husband, songwriter/producer George Richey
October 21 — Fans of Mel Street are saddened when the honky tonk-styled singer, who had long battled clinical depression and alcoholism, committed suicide on his 43rd birthday. He had signed a recording contract with Mercury Records earlier in the year.

Wednesday 6pm: Max 20th Century – 1978 (Part II)

May 6 – The Knack is formed (first album released in 1979).
May 13 – Barry Gibb becomes the only songwriter in history to have written 4 consecutive #1 singles on Billboard’s Hot 100 Chart.
May 18 – The Buddy Holly Story, starring Gary Busey, is released. It would win the Academy Award for Best Music, Original Song Score and Its Adaptation or Best Adaptation Score, and earn a nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Busey) and Best Sound.
May 25 – In a performance used for The Kids Are Alright, The Who play their last show with Keith Moon.
June 10 – The Rolling Stones begin their 25-date US summer tour in Lakeland, Florida.
June 13 – The Cramps play a free concert for patients at the Napa State Mental Hospital.
June 16 – The film adaptation of the musical Grease, opens in theaters and is a box office hit.
June 20 – Grace Slick splits with Jefferson Starship the day after a disastrous concert in Hamburg, Germany, in which a heavily intoxicated Slick verbally abused the crowd and groped various fans and bandmates.
June 29 – Peter Frampton is nearly killed in a car accident in The Bahamas, suffering multiple broken bones, a concussion, and muscle damage.
July 1 – The first Texxas Jam is held over the July 4 long weekend at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. The first day features Ted Nugent, Aerosmith, Frank Marino and Mahogany Rush, Heart, Journey, Head East, Atlanta Rhythm Section, Eddie Money, Van Halen and Walter Egan. Sunday consists of Willie Nelson headlining his sixth annual Fourth of July picnic.
July 19 – Dead Kennedys play their first concert, at the Mabuhay Gardens in San Francisco, California.
July 21 – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a much-hyped musical film starring Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees performing the music of The Beatles, opens in theaters. The film is savaged by critics and proves a box office disappointment.
July 29 – Glenn Goins, one of the lead vocalists for the band Parliament-Funkadelic dies of Hodgkin’s lymphoma at age of 24.
July 30 – Thin Lizzy officially announces that Gary Moore has replaced Brian Robertson on guitar.
August–December
August 26 – 80,000 concertgoers attend Mosport Speedway in Ontario for the “Canada Jam Festival”, featuring sets by the Doobie Brothers, Commodores, Kansas, Village People, Dave Mason, the Atlanta Rhythm Section and Triumph.
August 28 – 67,000 Funk fans assembled at Soldier Field in Chicago, Illinois to attend the first annual Funk Festival, billed as “One Nation Under A Groove”, featuring A Taste of Honey (band), Parlet, Con Funk Shun, the Bar-Kays, and Parliament-Funkadelic.
September 7 – The Who drummer Keith Moon dies in a central London flat after a prescription drug overdose at the age of 32.
September 14–16 – The Grateful Dead perform three shows in Giza, Egypt, very close to the Sphinx and Great Pyramid.
October 12 – Nancy Spungen, the American girlfriend of Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious, is found dead in a New York hotel room of a stab wound. Sid is arrested and charged with her murder.
October 24 – Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards pleads guilty to a reduced charge of possessing heroin in Toronto in 1977. The more serious charge of drug trafficking is dropped and Richards is given a one-year suspended sentence as well as ordered to play a charity concert for the blind.
October 29 – Michael Schenker plays his final show with UFO in Stanford, California before leaving the group to rejoin Scorpions.
November 21 – French pop star Dalida performed a concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall.
November 25
A now sober Alice Cooper releases the album From the Inside, which tells of his stay in rehab for alcoholism.
Aerosmith cuts a concert short after Steven Tyler suffers cuts to his face from a bottle that shatters upon hitting a stage monitor.
Donna Summer becomes the first female artist of the modern rock era to have the number one single (Mac Arthur Park) and album (Live and More) on Billboard charts simultaneously.
November 27 – Def Leppard’s permanent drummer Rick Allen joins the band at the age of 15.
December 2 The seventh edition of the OTI Festival, the Latin American spin-off of the Eurovision Song Contest takes place in Santiago, Chile. The winning country is Brazil, represented by Denisse de Kalafe with her song “El amor…Cosa tan rara” (Love…Such a strange thing)
December 31
Matthias Jabs joins Scorpions, replacing Uli Jon Roth.
The seventh annual New Year’s Rockin’ Eve special airs on ABC, with performances by Barry Manilow, Village People, Chuck Mangione, Tanya Tucker and Rick James.
CBS airs New Year’s Eve with Guy Lombardo for the final time, nearly two years after the band leader’s death and ending a 22-year run that began in 1956.
The Winterland Ballroom venue in San Francisco closes with a New Year’s Eve performance by the Grateful Dead, New Riders of the Purple Sage and the Blues Brothers.
Iron Maiden records a demo, consisting of four songs, at Spaceward Studios in Cambridge which would eventually become The Soundhouse Tapes.
Also in 1978
Kenny Rogers continues his highly successful solo career with the single (and album) “The Gambler” and will go on to star in no less than five movies based around the song.
In the UK, singles sales are at their all-time high this year, boosted by the simultaneous peak of the disco and punk phenomena and the success of singles from the movie Grease.
Mozambique holds its first National Dance Festival, involving half a million people.
November – Iron Maiden hires lead singer Paul Di’Anno.
New Edition formed in 1978 in Massachusetts, USA.

Monday 6pm: Max 20th Century – 1978 (Part I)

January 14 – The Sex Pistols play their final show (until a 1996 reunion) at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom.
January 16 – Elton John appears on this week’s People (magazine) without his trademark glasses. John will still wear glasses occasionally for the next ten years until wearing them permanently again.
January 21 – As Saturday Night Fever becomes a cultural phenomenon, the soundtrack hits #1 on the Billboard Charts, where it will stay until July.
January 23 – Terry Kath, guitarist and founding member of rock band Chicago, dies from an accidental gunshot wound to the head from a gun he thought was unloaded, in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles; he is 32 years old.
January 25
Electric Light Orchestra kick off their “Out of the Blue” world tour in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Bob Dylan makes his directorial debut in the surrealist film Renaldo and Clara, shot during his Rolling Thunder Revue tour.
January 26 – Workers at EMI’s record processing plant in England refuse to press copies of The Buzzcocks’s second single “What Do I Get?” because of its flipside, “Oh Shit”. The single is eventually pressed and goes on to become the band’s first hit.
January 28 – By request, Ted Nugent autographs his name into a fan’s arm with a bowie knife in Philadelphia.
February 4 – Elton John appears as the guest star on The Muppet Show.
February 10 – Van Halen debuts with a self-titled album; Eddie Van Halen introduces a powerful new sound and technique to world, while David Lee Roth is ushered in as the front man.
March 18 – California Jam II is held at the Ontario Motor Speedway in California. Over 300,000 fans come to see Ted Nugent, Aerosmith, Santana, Dave Mason, Foreigner, Heart and more.
April 22
In the Eurovision Song Contest in Paris, France, victory goes to Israel’s entry “A-Ba-Ni-Bi”, performed by Izhar Cohen & The Alphabeta.
The “One Love Peace Concert” is held in Kingston, Jamaica, headlined by Bob Marley, making his first concert appearance since December 1976.
Steve Martin performs the original “King Tut” on Saturday Night Live; also this night, The Blues Brothers make their first appearance on the show.
May 6 – The Knack is formed (first album released in 1979).
May 13 – Barry Gibb becomes the only songwriter in history to have written 4 consecutive #1 singles on Billboard’s Hot 100 Chart.
May 18 – The Buddy Holly Story, starring Gary Busey, is released. It would win the Academy Award for Best Music, Original Song Score and Its Adaptation or Best Adaptation Score, and earn a nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Busey) and Best Sound.
May 25 – In a performance used for The Kids Are Alright, The Who play their last show with Keith Moon.
June 10 – The Rolling Stones begin their 25-date US summer tour in Lakeland, Florida.
June 13 – The Cramps play a free concert for patients at the Napa State Mental Hospital.
June 16 – The film adaptation of the musical Grease, opens in theaters and is a box office hit.
June 20 – Grace Slick splits with Jefferson Starship the day after a disastrous concert in Hamburg, Germany, in which a heavily intoxicated Slick verbally abused the crowd and groped various fans and bandmates.
June 29 – Peter Frampton is nearly killed in a car accident in The Bahamas, suffering multiple broken bones, a concussion, and muscle damage.
July 1 – The first Texxas Jam is held over the July 4 long weekend at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. The first day features Ted Nugent, Aerosmith, Frank Marino and Mahogany Rush, Heart, Journey, Head East, Atlanta Rhythm Section, Eddie Money, Van Halen and Walter Egan. Sunday consists of Willie Nelson headlining his sixth annual Fourth of July picnic.
July 19 – Dead Kennedys play their first concert, at the Mabuhay Gardens in San Francisco, California.
July 21 – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a much-hyped musical film starring Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees performing the music of The Beatles, opens in theaters. The film is savaged by critics and proves a box office disappointment.
July 29 – Glenn Goins, one of the lead vocalists for the band Parliament-Funkadelic dies of Hodgkin’s lymphoma at age of 24.
July 30 – Thin Lizzy officially announces that Gary Moore has replaced Brian Robertson on guitar.