This series of posts covers my long, beloved history interacting with the medium of radio, including the music that flowed through the airwaves.

As we close in on the end of the very large College Countdown project that I started nearly six years ago, I’m feeling a little melancholy about all the albums from my own era as an undergraduate radio programmers that I don’t get to write about. Of course, I make my own rules around here, so I can occasionally find a way to traipse through my own memories, courtesy of the online scans of old issues of CMJ, the trade publication that served college radio back in the day. The bevy of charts that can be rummaged through include the weekly Top 35 lists of my alma mater radio station WWSP-90FM. Here I present what I and my cohorts and I were playing around this time some thirty-three years ago, according to the issue cover dated November 9, 1990.

1. Vaughan Brothers, Family Style

There was probably a little home state guilt at play in the aggressive amount of airtime afforded this team up of sibling bluesmen Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Family Style was released about a month after Stevie Ray Vaughan died in a helicopter crash in transit from Wisconsin concert venue Alpine Valley Music Theatre, and we were all mournful about the loss that occurred way too close to our literal home. Realistically, though, the album was packed with a brand of straightforward blues rock that aligned nicely with our collective taste.

2. Dave Stewart and the Spiritual Cowboys, Dave Stewart and the Spiritual Cowboys

The high placement of this debut album is representative of our deejays’ general deferral to the established stars of alternative rock. Dave Stewart’s first outing after leaving Eurythmics wasn’t particular well-regarded, and most other college stations ignored it. On the main CMJ chart this same week, it had already begun its descent from an unimpressive peak of #115.

3. Pylon, Chain

Chain was the first new album in seven years by the Athens, Georgia band. Much was made of the fact that they returned to the studio at the urging of their local scene cohorts R.E.M. If an album came with an unequivocal R.E.M. endorsement, we were sure to play it.

4. Pogues, Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah (EP)

The individual station reporting charts in CMJ show only the artists. When I saw the Pogues this high up in the chart in late fall of 1990, I thought sure the release in question was Hell’s Ditch, their fifth studio album that was produced by Joe Strummer. But it seems that hadn’t hit the mailbox quite yet (there’s an ad for Hell’s Ditch in the issue, which suggests it was on the verge of being released.) Instead, it seems we were giving sample spins to an EP that essentially served as the rerelease of the 1988 single “Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah.” That strikes me as a lot of airplay for an EP that really has only three songs (of the four tracks, two are versions of Yeahx5, as I used to write it on my playlist), but we did love us some Pogues there.

5. Jane’s Addiction, Ritual de lo Habitual

Jane’s Addiction’s second studio album had occupied the top spot on the CMJ chart for six straight weeks at this point. We definitely pumped those barking dogs through our transmitter plenty while the album worked it way through rotation.

6. The Darling Buds, Crawdaddy

I was a fan of this British band’s debut, Pop Said…, which sort of got lost in a crush of major college radio releases in the late winter and early spring of 1989. I suspect I was a driver of this equally strong follow-up getting a lot of play at our station.

7. Crickle, Around & Around

This self-released LP from a Chicago act did extremely well at our station. It’s a good record, but the more salient detail is that the band played a show at a bar on the outskirts of town, a rare instance of a band in our rotation appearing in a local gig, and then stayed for the night at a house where five of the six roommates were members of the 90FM executive staff. That situation basically made Crickle into a full friends-of-the-station band, and their music was played with almost familial pride from then on in. The domicile that became Crickle’s crash pad for the evening was nicknamed, ludicrously enough, the Terrordome, and it was mentioned as an object worthy of adoration in the liner notes of their sophomore album, Love.

8. Cocteau Twins, Heaven or Las Vegas

I rarely think of Cocteau Twins as a big band for us. Their ethereal pop was a good distance from the blaring guitars that were more likely to pique our interest. I think Heaven or Las Vegas performed well for us, though, maybe because it was a touch spikier than earlier efforts.

9. Tackhead, Strange Things

This is another album that outperformed expectations. Having a lead single with a naughty title probably helped.

10. Boom Crash Opera, These Here Are Crazy Times

It is beyond the capabilities of rhetoric to overstate how enormous this album’s single “Onion Skin” was on our station’s airwaves. These Here Are Crazy Times stayed on our charts for ages, almost entirely on the strength of that one cut.

11. Jellyfish, Bellybutton

In direct contrast, Bellybutton was an album where it felt like just about every cut got a turn as the station favorite. Especially on this debut, Jellyfish dished retro pop done right.

12. Dee-Lite, World Clique

This was right around the time that “Groove Is in the Heart” was reaching its peak in the Top 5 the Billboard chart. I’m not sure of the exact point when we eliminated the station’s policy of not playing a song once it crossed in the Top 40. Luckily, there were plenty of other dandy songs on the record.

13. The Waterboys, Room to Roam

In my recollection, this album was a disappointment to us, especially as a follow-up to the utterly magnificent Fisherman’s Blues. Even so, it was the surest of sure bets that new music from the Waterboys was going to get some adoring attention at the station.

14. The Posies, Dear 23

I claimed or was assigned this album for review before it was added to our rotation, and I remember listening to it over and over again, mesmerized by its merging of Beatlesque psychedelia and vintage power pop. As the album at #11 attests, that sound went down well.

15. The Soup Dragons, Lovegod

This was another one on my stack in our team reviewing process and another one that I personally played to excess. The Soup Dragons were one of my go-to bands in the C Stacks, the portion of the station’s library where we filed the artists we felt most listeners didn’t really know, and I liked the band’s tilt towards house-based dance rock on this record.

16. Hothouse Flowers, Home

This Irish band hit our sweet spot so precisely that even a throwaway, placeholder EP could get enough spins to elbow onto one of our year-end charts. Their sophomore full-length, Home, was a playlist mainstay for months. As a bonus, this album included a track that served as the opening theme song for a movie review show I started co-hosting that fall.

17. The Water Walk, Thingamajig

I have no memory of this band or its music. Based on the single, they sounded like a gentle folk rock act from the nineteen-seventies that had gone through a mild nineties pop makeover. This album was on I.R.S. Records, which was probably enough to get deejays to give it a try.

18. Flaming Lips, In a Priest Driven Ambulance

I would have bet you that the Flaming Lips didn’t register at all on our charts until their 1993 album, Transmissions from the Satellite Heart. It seems I would have lost that bet.

19. Living Colour, Time’s Up

I was away from the radio station all summer, a mistake I wouldn’t make again during my time as an undergraduate. The highly anticipated sophomore release from Living Colour was put into heavy rotation as I plopped into the air chair to do a radio shift for the first time in three months. You better believe I played it and turned the studio speakers way up.

20. Indigo Girls, Nomads Indians Saints

Indigo Girls’ self-titled album, home of the eternal anthem “Closer to Fine,” did well enough at our station, but Nomads Indians Saints is what cemented the duo as one of our artists.

21. Soul Asylum, And the Horse They Rode In On

Soul Asylum was part of the triumvirate of Twin Cities bands that were always guaranteed to get a place on our playlists.

22. Too Much Joy, Son of Sam I Am

We played this Too Much Joy album plenty the first time around. Usually, we wouldn’t do much with an rerelease that came only one year later, in this case prompted by the band signing with a major label. Any excuse to play our semi-official house band, we were going to eagerly take.

23. The Replacements, All Shook Down

And here’s another part of the previously mentioned triumvirate, even if this is really a Paul Westerberg solo album in flimsy disguise.

24. Hindu Love Gods, Hindu Love Gods

Warren Zevon backed up by three-quarters of R.E.M.? Performing a bunch of covers, including a famous Prince song? Yeah, that was an easy sell for our crew.

25. Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Ragged Glory

Because Neil Young was coming off the strong, well-regarded album Freedom, this got a little bit of a boost. And it was good enough to linger on our charts for a while.

26. Galaxie 500, This Is Our Music

I’m a little surprised we were cool enough to play this, quite frankly.

27. Dharma Bums, Bliss

Although I haven’t thought of this band or this album in ages, I remember thinking it was good stuff. That checks out.

28. The Connells, One Simple Word

This Raleigh, North Carolina band deserved to be much bigger than they were. Both this album and its predecessor, Fun & Games, are first-rate rock records.

29. Youssou N’Dour, Set

We weren’t always great about expanding our sonic palette much beyond straightforward college rock at the station, but we tried. This album from Senegalese legend Youssou N’Dour was very much outside of our norm, and it only made modest inroads into our music mix. I’m still glad it’s here at all.

30. The Glove, Blue Sunshine

This is a reissue of the one studio album released by the early-eighties side project of the the Cure’s Robert Smith and Siouxsie and the Banshees’ Steve Severin. Curiously, one of the hottest albums on the main CMJ chart this week was Mixed Up, the first remix album by Smith’s main outfit, and we evidently weren’t playing that all. Our service from the Cure’s label, Elektra Records, was always spotty, so it’s possible we didn’t even have it in the station yet.

31. King Swamp, Wiseblood

Yup, this sounds like something we would have played.

32. James, Gold Mother

Much as I sometimes disparage our sense of adventure as music programmers, we were occasionally early adopters of truly great bands.

33. Harmony, Let There Be Harmony

Here’s another highly atypical selection for us. In part because we were broadcasting right the heart of a very white-bread state, we were awkwardly uncertain about most hip hop. That changed bit by bit as time went on (Neneh Cherry’s Homebrew, released a couple years later, was a solid performer for us). Listening to it now, it’s possible this was good enough that at least a few of us found it irresistible.

34. Los Lobos, The Neighborhood

Goddamn, this is a good band.

35. 10,000 Maniacs, Hope Chest

When this chart submitted, I was the program director and my roommate and bestest buddy Colin was the assistant program director. Under the station’s organizational structure at the time, we shared responsibility for managing the music library and compiling the chart. I have a strong suspicion that Colin, who went by Colin Merchant on the air, might have have some responsibility for this compilation of early recordings by the Jamestown, New York folk-rock darlings sneaking into the last position on our tally.