A couple of weeks ago, in an entry titled The Soundtrack to My Personal Coming-Of-Age Film, I lamented that the Billboard Top 100 wasn’t representative of the sort of stuff I listened to. I was a regular listener of CFNY (better known these days as 102.1 The Edge) back then. I looked around for some CFNY charts, which led me to the Spirit of Radio site, which publishes CFNY’s old charts.
Here’s the chart from the year I graduated from high school — 1987 — with the ones I particularly liked in bold, and the ones I particularly disliked in strikeout text. Note how much this chart differs from the 1987 Billboard chart.
This was one of the instigators of that false notion a lot of late 80s musicians had: “slower” means “deeper”. This is similar to another false notion that got its start in the early 90s and still plagues indie rock today: “angry and bitter” means “honest and sincere”.
The Cure went all over the stylistic map with this one and made an album packed with gems. It brings me back to dancing with the death-bunnies at Montreal’s “Thunderdome” club.
My roommate Mark used to play this quite often, so hearing Learning to Fly always takes me back to hanging out in Crazy Go Nuts University’s Leonard Hall, room 313.
Before he became Fatboy Slim, Norman Cook was in this happy Britpop band.
“Don’t call me sweetheart, just call me Joe…” Before she went bonkers, she made some pretty good music.
Want a good 80s goth collection? Get Fad Gadget’s Collapsing New People, some Bauhaus, Tones on Tail, a little Alien Sex Fiend, the Batastrophe EP by Specimen and of course, this album, which features the original pre-Ofra Haza version of “This Corrosion”.
“Now and Again” was by far the better Grapes of Wrath album.
Another must-have if you’re trying to put together a definitive 80s alt-rock collection.
The Dead are forever associated in my mind with a lack of volition and hygiene.
I could never get into Simply Red, either.
One of the best eighties albums you never heard.
Much better than their previous attempt, Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti, but still no Argybargy.
A violin player rocks out and gets interesting results. Notable track on this album: Rules Were Made to be Broken, a primer on Nazi Germany’s hatred of jazz. They called it “Judeo-Negroid music”.
“This is stuff by a guy who used to be in Images in Vogue?” I asked when I first heard it.
“Ohhhhhhhhh yeeeeeaaaaaaahhhhhh (chicka-chickahhhh!)” How many movie soundtracks did that song end up on, anyway?
Brian Eno for the Doc Martens and spiky-hair set!
George and I played this a lot back in Leonard Hall.
I was seeing a rather wacky girl at the time and I associate the big single on this album, Beautiful Imbalance, along with the entire Singles: 45 and Under album by Squeeze with her.
My friend Yann and I used to have this favourite Cockburn joke: If a tree fell on Bruce Cockburn, would anybody care? He’s just too damned earnest, even for me.
Everybody remembers Elvis is Everywhere, but Don’t Want No Foo-Foo Haircut on My Head/cite> was also pretty good.
I’ve done the occasional Tampa-to-St. Pete commute during peak times, and they can easily stretch…
Anitra and I saw the sticker pictured above on a Model Y Tesla parked outside…
It’s Sunday, and it’s time for another “picdump!” Here are the memes, pictures, and cartoons…
I saw this a couple of weeks ago in Austin at Uncommon Objects, a delightfully…
This stuff makes for amazing fried rice or musubi (a.k.a. “Spam sushi”).
Anitra and I were dropping off a package at the UPS Store on Kennedy when…
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Dear Joey,
Sinead O'Connor actually made some really great music after she went bonkers too. Universal Mother is a phenomenal album, and she did some good things on that Massive Attack album with "window" in the title. Have a good wedding.
Sincerely,
Jodi
_Hey, I did the same thing (without Bolding & strikeouts) but for 1986:
http://classicquarters.blogspot.com/2005/08/ode-to-1986-music_30.html