The Record Player - 1977 February 12, 2011

We have outgrown our current venue and are off to the retro-wondrousness of The Bloomsbury Lanes!!

The Record Player has a simple premise: each month we pick an influential year in musical history and host a night where we only play tracks released in those 12 months. It's a club night devoted to the sheer thrill of music you might not have been old enough to enjoy the first time round…

In addition to our usual journey through the sounds of a seminal year in music we will be adding a cinema screening films of the year, plus karaoke booths queued up with The Record Player top 20 so you can try belting the songs out for yourself.

And the chosen year for this launch? Some years in music are very cool, some gave birth to some great songs, but some are monumental- 1977; the year a sneer and a snazzy white suit changed things forever....

Punk explodes. The Sex Pistols piss all over the Queens' Silver Jubilee celebrations as Never Mind the Bollocks goes to No1.. The Clash release their self-titled classic and head out on the White Riot tour. Pop mu sic is The Stranglers, Iggy Pop, The Jam, The Ramones, The Skids, Stiff Little Fingers, Blondie, Ian Dury, The Buzzcocks, Talking Heads.... SHIT WHY COULDN’T I HAVE BEEN A TEENAGER IN 1977?!!

Meanwhile as the first Concorde flight takes off, D.I.S.C.O. steps out of cool gay NYC and into every nightclub in the world as Saturday Night Fever and 4 Swedes go global. The 8 minutes of synthesised perfection that is Donna Summer's 'I Feel Love' paves the way for electronic music.

From a galaxy far far away 'Star Wars' takes over the cinema, and a little computer company called 'Apple Macintosh' is launched. Meanwhile the world mourns the death of 'the King' and Mark Bolan's flame burns out way too early.

And for the films? We’ll be showing three 1977 classics...Star Wars, Annie Hall and of course Saturday Night Fever – we expect a dance-along session for this one please.

1977. Possibly the most pivotal year ever in music, so let's celebrate it.

The Record Player - we solemnly swear to never knowingly play the same record twice (unless it was a re-release in a different year and its just that good!)

We pick the year, you pick the songs and the rest is history