Rewind: 1977 - Punk, Disco, and the Death of the King
By Brighid Mooney

From an entertainment perspective, 1977 is one of those standout years, a peak in the up and down wave of popular culture. It was a year in which so many notable things were released, including both record albums and films that still frequently make best-of lists to this day. 1977 is also a year that, depending on where your interests lie, is synonymous with a number of things. To some, it is the year punk rock broke in the UK and the US. To others, it is the peak of the feverish and short-lived disco era. For fans of Elvis Presley, it is the year we unexpectedly and prematurely lost a truly great and innovative singer at the age of just 42, after a depressing period of swirling decline. To many others it was Woody Allen's capstone year. 1977 was also the year of the infamous New York City blackout; the year Roots made history as the most successful TV mini-series ever broadcast; the year southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd lost three of its members in a fiery plane crash. Many things to many people, 1977 was a true turning point in popular culture in a number of different ways.

There were three movies released that year which can probably be said to really define 1977 on a cinematic level. The first of this great movie trilogy was Woody Allen's magnum opus, Annie Hall, which won Academy Awards for Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actress (for Diane Keaton's title role) and Best Picture. An exploration of love and relationships from the point of view of Allen's trademark neurotic New Yorker, Alvy Singer, the film touched upon many of Allen's most prevalent themes, including his obsessions with love, death and the island of Manhattan. A nearly perfect bittersweet romantic comedy, Annie Hall placed at number 31 on AFI's list of the 100 best movies of all time.

When Annie Hall won the Oscar for Best Picture, one of the films it beat was the cinematic monstrosity of Star Wars, which set an all-time box office record of $127 million when it came out, and started a multi-product franchise still earning millions to this day. George Lucas' visionary intergalactic saga was also a big winner on Oscar day, taking home awards for art direction, costume design and visual effects, among others. The third of 1977's big three was also focused on outer space. Close Encounters of the Third Kind, director Steven Spielberg's sci-fi masterpiece about mankind's encounter with alien beings, probably would have also cleaned up on Oscar night had it not had the misfortune of being released in the same year as the epic Star Wars. Nevertheless, the film's star, Richard Dreyfuss, still managed to take home an award for Best Actor, although it was for his performance in another major movie that year, The Goodbye Girl.

Burt Reynolds was another of 1977's brightest stars, appearing in the trucker adventures of Smokey and the Bandit. And cinema viewers that year were also treated to the release of another installment of the 007 spy series with The Spy Who Loved Me, starring Roger Moore as the ever suave and debonair James Bond. And in what was one of the year's most memorable movies, John Travolta brought disco dancing to the silver screen in Saturday Night Fever.

Although Saturday Night Fever was a huge movie, sending the already-famous Travolta off into the stratosphere, the film's soundtrack proved to be even more important. Strongly featuring the disco falsetto of the Bee Gees, as well as tracks by Kool and the Gang, KC and the Sunshine Band and the Trammps, the film's soundtrack sold over 20 million copies, and was the top selling album in history until Michael Jackson's Thriller in 1982. In fact, though the rumblings of disco had been heard for several years, disco fever hit its peak in 1977, with Saturday Night Fever, its soundtrack and the opening of the infamous Studio 54 in New York City. Other notable albums to come out of the glittery, coke-fueled disco genre that year included the self-titled debut from the mighty Chic and the Trammps' third album, Trammps III.

Punk rock was a direct reaction against what were considered the superficialities of things like disco and the grandiose bands of prog and arena rock that had overtaken popular music by the mid-1970s. With a back-to-basics approach and a do-it-yourself ethos, punk was the primal scream of a rock ‘n’ roll too long bogged down by style over substance. That's not to say that punk didn't eventually lose something to its more superficial obsessions with safety pins and spiked hair, but in 1977 when it really came bursting full-throttle onto the scene, full of attitude and energy and three basic chords, it was poised to overthrow the establishment, one piercing at a time.

Starting in the small, sweaty dives of New York City, like CBGBs and the Bottom Line, and then spilling over into the British music scene where it was refined and turned out for mass public consumption, punk's heyday was both extreme and short-lived. Indeed, punk's seminal driving force, the Sex Pistols, imploded and fell apart within the first 14 days of their first US tour and by the end of the decade, punk rock's candle was flickering out. But 1977 alone saw the release of groundbreaking debut albums from not just the Sex Pistols, but also Ian Dury and the Blockheads (New Boots and Panties!!), Richard Hell and the Voidoids (Blank Generation), the Damned (Damned, Damned, Damned), The Clash (The Clash), Television (Marquee Moon), the Talking Heads (Talking Heads '77), the Jam (In the City), The Dead Boys (Young, Loud and Snotty) and Elvis Costello (My Aim Is True). Many of these, including The Clash, Talking Heads and Elvis Costello, went on to long outlast the genre in which they got their start.

Of course, 1977 wasn't just about disco and punk. While these polar opposites were battling for the world's attention, Fleetwood Mac released Rumours, one of the best-selling albums of all time, and musical veteran David Bowie released two albums, Low, the first of his "Berlin Trilogy," and Heroes. 1977 was also the year of Steely Dan's jazz-rock masterpiece, Aja, as well as critically acclaimed follow-up albums like Peter Frampton's I'm in You and Animals from Pink Floyd.

In the 12 short months of 1977, the king of rock ‘n’ roll had expired and his punk rock namesake had emerged, Woody Allen made the most celebrated movie of his career and disco-suited youths across the country struggled to "stay alive" just a little bit longer. Soon, punk would give way to new wave, disco would face an intimidating backlash of purest musical hate and Woody Allen would make Interiors, but 1977 will always stand as the year that gave us "Anarchy in the UK," Bobby C. and the ever immortal Chewbacca.