82. The Black Sorrows, Hold on to Me 1989 was a good time to embrace American roots music and get some airplay on college radio. It lends authenticity, you see, even if–actually, maybe especially if–the band absolutely requires an airplane … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, 82 and 81
84. Tom Petty, Full Moon Fever It seems odd to consider Full Moon Fever Tom Petty’s solo debut. His name is front and center on all of those records with the Heartbreakers after all. He’s hardly a guy stepping out … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, 84 and 83
86. Love and Rockets, Love and Rockets The band Love and Rockets waited until their fourth full-length outing before going the self-titled route when it came to naming their album, which led to a few DJs up on the commercial … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, 86 and 85
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
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
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
And now…on with the countdown… 10. Matthew Sweet, “Girlfriend” A sensational single can change everything, lifting an artist from complete obscurity (even within the obscurity-embracing culture of college radio) to critical acclaim, healthy airplay, and even the less prestigious showcases in late night television. The whole Girlfriend album is terrific, but that title cut is the sort of grabber that artists spend their entire careers fruitlessly longing for. In Sweet’s original pass at this song, it was entitled “Good Friend,” but everyone he played it for thought he was saying “girlfriend” so he went ahead and made the minor but … Continue reading College Countdown: Winter 1991, 10-6
And now…on with the countdown… 15. They Might Be Giants, “Hey Mr. DJ, I Thought We Had a Deal” This is the band that we would sometimes refer to as “the Two Johns,” since it was entirely populated by John Flansburgh and John Linnell. They were perhaps the oddest band that I had a working knowledge of before arriving at the radio station, built largely because MTV couldn’t resist the intoxicatingly goofy video for their first single. They were then a major part of my college radio experience. Their second album, the outstanding Lincoln, was plopped into Heavy Rotation at … Continue reading College Countdown: Winter 1991, 15-11
And now…on with the countdown… 20. Erasure, “Love to Hate You” Erasure was one of those acts that I had an instinctual aversion to, beginning from a place that favored grinding guitars over drum machine beats. It was so pronounced … Continue reading College Countdown: Winter 1991, 20-16
Coffee for Two 