April 7th

Hot shot debuts this week include a new track by Neil Diamond ("Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon") which premiers at #66, "I Got Rhythm" by The Happenings, debuting at #71 (talk about your old song revivals!), "When I Was Young" by Eric Burdon and the Animals (or NEW Animals if you read all of our other interesting 1967 tidbits), which premiers at #75, "Somebody To Love", the first chart hit by The Jefferson Airplane (#81) and "Here Comes My Baby" by The Tremeloes (the group that Decca Records signed instead of The Beatles back in 1962 … making their first US chart appearance with a song written by Cat Stevens.)  

Tom Donahue of KMPX-FM in San Francisco starts playing album tracks on the air … forever changing the future of The Top 40 Radio Format.  

Speaking of albums, The Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" was mixed for stereo today.  None of The Beatles were present … as they considered the mono mix to be the one of "paramount importance", so were always around for these … but were "generally content" to leave the stereo mixes to George Martin and Geoff Emerick.  To this day there are many fans (myself included) who prefer the mono mix of "Sgt. Pepper" to the stereo one.  

While here in America, Paul McCartney is inspired to plan out a Beatles television special built around the idea of a mystery tour where all of the participants are carted around the city and countryside in a psychedelically painted bus.  He jots down a few notes for future reference.  

The Young Rascals appear on The Mike Douglas Show.  

The movie "Good Times" starring Sonny and Cher, opens in Chicago.  

And, speaking of movies … in Chicago … Roger Ebert's very first movie review appears today in The Chicago Sun Times.  

And, speaking of Chicago, here are this week's charts from Chicago's two AM powerhouse super stations WLS and WCFL …

You'll find THREE of our Local Heroes in The Top 20 this week on WLS ... "Mr. Unreliable" by The Cryan' Shames sits in the #9 position, The Buckinghams are right behind them at #13 with their latest, "Don't You Care" and The New Colony Six move up to #19 with "You're Gonna Be Mine".

You'll also find Michael and the Messengers (actually a Wisconsin band) at #23 this week with their version of "In The Midnight Hour".