1979

1979 (MCMLXXIX) was a common year starting on Monday (dominical letter G) of the Gregorian calendar, the 1979th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 979th year of the 2nd millennium, the 79th year of the 20th century, and the 10th and last year of the 1970s decade.

Events

January

The Smashing Pumpkins

The Smashing Pumpkins (alternately known as simply Smashing Pumpkins) is an American alternative rock band from Chicago, Illinois, formed in 1988. Formed by frontman Billy Corgan (lead vocals, guitar) and James Iha (guitar), the band included D'arcy Wretzky (bass guitar) and Jimmy Chamberlin (drums) in its original incarnation. It has undergone many line-up changes over the course of its existence, with the current lineup including Corgan, rhythm guitarist Jeff Schroeder and Chamberlin.

Disavowing the punk rock roots of many of their alt-rock contemporaries, the Pumpkins have a diverse, densely layered, and guitar-heavy sound, containing elements of gothic rock, heavy metal,dream pop, psychedelic rock,progressive rock, shoegazing, and electronica in later recordings. Corgan is the group's primary songwriter—his grand musical ambitions and cathartic lyrics have shaped the band's albums and songs, which have been described as "anguished, bruised reports from Billy Corgan's nightmare-land".

Afterlife

In philosophy, religion, mythology, and fiction, the afterlife (also referred to as life after death or the Hereafter) is the concept of a realm, or the realm itself (whether physical or transcendental), in which an essential part of an individual's identity or consciousness continues to exist after the death of the body in the individual's lifetime. According to various ideas about the afterlife, the essential aspect of the individual that lives on after death may be some partial element, or the entire soul or spirit, of an individual, which carries with it and confers personal identity. Belief in an afterlife, which may be naturalistic or supernatural, is in contrast to the belief in oblivion after death.

In some popular views, this continued existence often takes place in a spiritual realm, and in other popular views, the individual may be reborn into this world and begin the life cycle over again, likely with no memory of what they have done in the past. In this latter view, such rebirths and deaths may take place over and over again continuously until the individual gains entry to a spiritual realm or Otherworld. Major views on the afterlife derive from religion, esotericism and metaphysics.

Control Arms Campaign

The Control Arms Coalition is a campaign jointly run by a coalition of over 100 organisations including Amnesty International, IANSA, Oxfam International and Saferworld.

The campaign has been active since 2003 in calling for an international Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). The campaign began due to the lack of regulation in the international trade in arms. Control Arms has argued that the lack of controls on the arms trade is fuelling armed conflict, poverty and human rights abuses worldwide. Even though existing treaties and pieces of international law exist that focus on the international arms trade, none of them, before the Arms Trade Treaty, were legally binding and fully international.

Since 2003 it has used a range of tactics to get its message across, including publicity stunts, mass public actions, petitions including the Million Faces campaign, worldwide public consultations, policy publications and the lobbying of politicians and diplomats across the world.

The process towards creating an international Arms Trade Treaty began in the United Nations in 2006. On April 2, 2013 the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to adopt an international Arms Trade Treaty.

Donna Summer

LaDonna Adrian Gaines (December 31, 1948 – May 17, 2012), known by her stage name Donna Summer, was an American singer, songwriter, and painter. She gained prominence during the disco era of the late-1970s. A five-time Grammy Award winner, she was the first artist to have three consecutive double albums reach No. 1 on the United States Billboard album chart and charted four number-one singles in the U.S. within a 12-month period. Summer has reportedly sold over 140 million records, making her one of the world's best-selling artists of all time.

While influenced by the counterculture of the 1960s, she became the front singer of a psychedelic rock band named Crow and moved to New York City. Joining a touring version of the musical Hair, she left New York and spent several years living, acting, and singing in Europe, where she met music producers, Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte.

Summer returned to the U.S., in 1975 with commercial success of the song 'Love to Love You Baby', followed by a string of other hits, such as "I Feel Love", "Last Dance", "MacArthur Park", "Heaven Knows", "Hot Stuff", "Bad Girls", "Dim All the Lights", "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)" (duet with Barbra Streisand), and "On the Radio". She became known as the "Queen of Disco", while her music gained a global following.