'Till my body flows with energy

Timeslip moment time, again.

With the current hot weather [the hottest since 1911, apparently] that is unexpectedly crossing the UK, inevitably it is to the final throes of the Long Hot Summer of '76 we turn once more [possibly for the last time this year - at least not with thoughts of cracking pavements in mind!]. In many ways it was a year of change, as Harold Wilson resigned and the doomed Prime Minister-ship of Jim Callaghan began, with Maggie Thatcher just waiting in the wings; music veered from the familiar era of MOR, Glam Rock and Funk towards the much more ground-breaking Disco and Punk "movements" that were to follow; and technology appeared to be providing us all a view of a Brave New World, with the arrival of super-computers, re-usable space vehicles and photographs of Mars...

In the news in September 1976: the UK's great drought continued, and housewives in Surrey forced a nearby golf club to turn off its water sprinklers by keeping a constant vigil and harassing the groundsmen; a British Airways Trident and a Yugoslav DC-9 collided near Zagreb, killing all 176 aboard; the Argentine dictatorship began its hideous programme of human rights abuses, repression and "disappeared" opponents; in the ascendant were Egyptian president Anwar Sadat (who was re-elected), the first Space Shuttle "Enterprise", and Punk (with tickets on sale for the legendary "100 Club Punk Special", which launched the Sex Pistols, the Clash, The Damned and Siouxsie Sioux on an unsuspecting world), but Portsmouth FC were on the brink of filing for bankruptcy; and Patty Hearst was sentenced to seven years in prison for her part in that notorious bank robbery after she had allegedly been kidnapped. In our cinemas: Taxi Driver, All the President's Men and Gator. On telly: George and Mildred ; The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin; and The Muppet Show arrived - thanks to British ATV impresario Lew Grade, who commissioned it (and nothing was quite the same again).

As for the UK charts this week forty years ago: at the top was Abba's almighty Dancing Queen (of course), and also jostling for position in the line-up were Rod Stewart, Wings, Georghe Zamfir, Bee Gees, Stylistics, Lou Rawls and Billie Jo Spears... but zooming their way into the upper echelons were the rather fab Chi-Lites and You Don't Have to Go [complete with oddly-matched accompanying vintage cartoon]:

Chi-Lites – You Don't Have to Go

Well, you don't have to go
You just wanna see me
Go through changes
Oh don't you baby?

'Cos you bring out
What's deep in me
'Till my body flows with energy
Now well, well

My mind gets so weak
You make me pout
Just like a child
Oh don't you baby?

The height of my masculinity
Begins to get the best of me

Indeed.