I think New Year’s Eve is a dandy night to be on the radio. Perhaps influenced by one of my cohorts at the college radio, a seasoned drinker, who referred to the last night of the calendar year as “amateur night,” I was always inclined to stay as far away as possible from bars and other public establishments crammed with woozy, boozy revelers. In recent days, I had cause to be motored around New York City by various Lyft drivers, many of whom filled their small talk quota by asking if we planned to be in Times Square to see the ball drop. I can imagine few scenarios more hellish.

But to be in a quiet radio studio, playing the best music of the year coming to its conclusion with confidence that I’m providing the soundtrack for spirited celebrations, that is where joy and satisfaction lie. Across most of my undergraduate college radio career, I willingly sat behind the studio board as one year gave way to the next. It was grand.

At our station, at that time, we spent the entirety of December 31st counting down our top 90 albums of the year. I’ve shared the surviving charts in this space, and I long to recapture the others. I’m afraid their lost to the winds of time, though. I have a few suspicions and foggy memories about which albums from the respective years made the final tallies. One of the few about which I’m complete confident is the top title on the 90FM’s Top 90 of 1991: Doubt, from Jesus Jones.

The main reason I recall that particular chart-topper is I remember the track I played from it to help listeners cross into 1992. With significant preamble cluck-clucking about retrospection and resolution (both of which the countdown celebration, of course, blatantly trafficked in), I extolled the virtue of enjoying the moment one is in, and then pressed play on the album’s big hit single, “Right Here, Right Now.”

Then I handed the radio station over to a hearty soul coming in to handle the overnight, went back to the party raging at my apartment, and found myself doused in champagne by fellow station staffers who’d been listening all night long. It was a fine New Year’s Eve.

Listen or download —> Jesus Jones, “Right Here, Right Now”

(Disclaimer: Usually I offer a labored justification in this space, noting my belief — sometimes based on willful ignorance — that the track shared is not available for purchase as a new item in a physical format. I haven’t researched it, but I imagine this song is readily available in a form that will provide compensation to both the original artist and the proprietor of your favorite local, independently-owned record store. In this instance, the sharing of this file should be viewed as encouragement to make such a purchase. The entirety of Doubt is terrific, as ideal a time capsule of early-nineties college rock as Nirvana’s Nevermind, released the same year. Realistically, it’s probably better. It changed quickly, but in 1991 more of college radio sounded like Doubt than Nevermind. I do believe that sharing this song in this space in this manner constitutes fair use, but I know the rules. I will gladly and promptly remove the file in question if asked to do so by any individual or entity with due authority to make such a request.)