8. “Wild Wild West” by The Escape Club Well, yuck. The divide between the Billboard chart and my memories of the fall of 1988 is no vaster than it is right here. Maybe it’s some sort of protective blackout in my brain, but I don’t remember the title cut from the goony British quartet’s sophomore release crossing our airwaves at all. It was surely everywhere else, though, going to very top of the Billboard Hot 100 charts, a pretty damning indictment of the state of Top 40 radio that fall, especially when the chart-toppers from before and after its one … Continue reading College Countdown: First Billboard Top 20 Modern Rock Tracks, Fall 1988, 8 and 7

10. “What’s On Your Mind (Pure Energy)” by Information Society I’ll admit to having my own preferences that decisively inform my perspectives on different music eras in different regions. For example, Minneapolis in the nineteen-eighties is strictly the punk-influenced rock ‘n’ roll of Hüsker Dü and The Replacements for me. This is despite the fact that the biggest-selling artist to hail from the city during that decade had a very different sound indeed. So maybe it shouldn’t be that hard for me to wrap my head around the notion that Information Society and their dippy, skippy pop music started in … Continue reading College Countdown: First Billboard Top 20 Modern Rock Tracks, Fall 1988, 10 and 9

14. “Liar, Liar” by Debbie Harry As the blonde in Blondie, few performers seemed more perfectly positioned for solo career success than Debbie Harry. She was no empty frontwoman, claiming a respectable number of songwriting credits on every one of the band’s albums, including contributions to every original track but one on the band’s 1982 swan song (at least for their original run), The Hunter. She was the face, voice and, for many, the total persona of the band. Striking out on her own didn’t exactly work out, though, and by the time the fall of 1988 rolled around, her … Continue reading College Countdown: First Billboard Top 20 Modern Rock Tracks, Fall 1988, 14 and 13

16. “Dumb Things” by Paul Kelly & the Messengers Paul Kelly had been plying his trade for several years in Australia before he got a chance to take a crack at American audiences. He started performing in the mid-seventies and release the first album with his original backing band the Dots in 1981. He had greater success in his homeland when he assembled a new group to play with him. Called the Coloured Girls, after those that go “Doo doo doo doo doo-doo” in a certain Lou Reed song, they caused a little snag when A&M records came calling with … Continue reading College Countdown: First Billboard Top 20 Modern Rock Tracks, Fall 1988, 16 and 15

20. “All I Wanted” by In Tua Nua I have only the vaguest recollections of this song being played at my college radio station in the fall of 1988, and believe me when I maintain that an awful lot of my recreational time that fall was spent with a fellow who would have been especially partial to a band led by a pretty Irish singer. The song is certainly lodged deep in my brain, though, so it was probably getting some spins from us back then. Even at the time, In Tua Nua was probably best known for their tangential … Continue reading College Countdown: First Billboard Top 20 Modern Rock Tracks, Fall 1988, 20 and 19

By the fall of 1988, the influence of college radio was at an early peak, which meant that the music that had stirred its rebellious, off-the-beaten-track spirit was in the process of being finally and fully co-opted. MTV’s Sunday night excursion into left of the dial fare, 120 Minutes, was popular enough to produce a nightly spin-off called PostModern MTV and major labels were scouring playlists of humble, student-run broadcasters in the hopes of discovering the next U2 or R.E.M., a band that had breakout potential. In September, the ultimate marker of the accepted institutionalization of the sound was printed … Continue reading College Countdown: First Billboard Top 20 Modern Rock Tracks, Fall 1988, An Introduction