88. The Wonder Stuff, Hup Popping out albums at the same rapid tempo as much of the music that fills those releases, the U.K. band The Wonder Stuff unleashed their second effort on American audiences in the fall of 1989. … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, 88 and 87
I’ve known a couple great people named Jane, but I never got around to making the mix that provided a song by song tribute to their name. I’ve long felt like there were an abundance of songs about women named Jane (not to mention a few fine offerings by women named Jane), but maybe its just that there are enough absolutely great songs about Janes that it skews my perception. Even though I never actually sat down to assemble the mix, I was always certain that “Understanding Jane” by The Icicle Works would have a spotlight position. It bold and … Continue reading One for Friday: The Icicle Works, “Understanding Jane”
90. Big Audio Dynamite, Megatop Phoenix Mick Jones almost died. Some time after the release of his band Big Audio Dynamite’s third album, Tighten Up, Vol. 88 (its title a play on the old Trojan Records series), Jones picked up … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, 90 and 89
In the summer of 1989, I had a goofy idea. It was the end of June, half the year gone. I was in my office at the campus radio station, having just called CMJ to report our weekly Top 35 list of albums receiving the most airplay. I retrieved the file folder that had all the charts from previous weeks and prepared to add this latest sheet to its contents. Instead, I emptied the folder onto my desk and started playing around. When I was a kid, I loved countdown shows, whether on the radio or on television, and I … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, An Introduction
Usually a song appears in this space because I have some cause or desire to expound upon it at length. More accurately, I suppose, I have an old, nostalgic story to tell, a dusty nugget from the corners of my shady memory that may provide some amusing insight into my affection for the song or may simply be a bunch of words that people have to scroll past looking for the hyperlink that will take them to the uploaded MP3. I’m guessing it’s usually the latter. Regardless, I don’t really have any stories about Dramarama’s “Last Cigarette.” I know that … Continue reading One for Friday: Dramarama, “Last Cigarette”
Right around 1990, it seemed like every band in Manchester, England got to make a record. It was like they were going door-to-door and offering recording contracts. “Thank you for buying the Encyclopedia Britannica, here’s your studio time.” There were no complaint about this from college radio. The airwaves that beamed out to the left side of radio dials were filled with trippy, loping pop gems. For a time, it almost seemed that no other style could penetrate, at least until Nirvana and Pearl Jam ushered in the grunge era and we really discovered how monotonous and homogeneous “alternative” could … Continue reading One for Friday: The Mock Turtles, “And Then She Smiles”
In case you’re wondering, the culture is proceeding apace… …and every blissfully goofy idea will someday have a home on the Interweb. There’s more where that came from. (Due credit: This was brought to my attention by someone else.) Continue reading Come let’s mix where Rockefellers walk with sticks
While I try to not to be stuck in the past about such things, I’m always pleased to rediscover one of the songs or artists that was a major part of my youthful college radio days. It’s especially nice if the process is triggered in a unique way. Not just stumbling on a forgotten disc while scanning they collection or hearing the song on the radio (although with most of the music that has slipped to the back of my memory, hearing it on a radio station these days would beyond unexpected to staggering), but instead a route that never … Continue reading One for Friday: Lloyd Cole, “She’s a Girl and I’m a Man”
And now…on with the countdown… 5. Pixies, “Head On” My true confession for today is that, despite the cultural imperative associated with involvement in college radio during a span of time when the eighties gave way to the nineties, I was never all that excited by The Pixies. They were the cool band of the era, the one you could cite to prove that you had genuine taste and proper passion for the music played on college radio. I played them plenty, and I like several songs, but they didn’t really click for me. I like them far more now … Continue reading College Countdown: Winter 1991, 5-1
I greatly appreciate the way that this series of tubes that we call the Internet has completely changed our access to art, especially music. There was a time when getting exposed to something new often meant plowing through the architecture dances of music reviews in various publications and trying to imagine what the album sounded like from the collection of sonic descriptors. Unless the material was embraced by radio or got exposure on some television showcase, the only way to actually hear it involved plunking down hard-earned dollars, something that was in short supply in my youth. Now, even those … Continue reading One for Friday: Debbie Harry and Kermit the Frog, “The Rainbow Connection”
Coffee for Two 