1987 Alternative Rock Top 40

1987 was a turning point for Eighties rock: Boomercentric classic rock was starting to fade again after getting a big corporate push in the mid-Eighties, GenX metal and alternative rock were on the ascendancy, and the Top 40 was rapidly losing the luster it had just three years prior.


The slack left by Cyndi Lauper and Huey Lewis et al would be taken up by rudimentary proto-hip-hop and plastic mall pop like Taylor Dane, Debbie Gibson and Samantha Fox.

1987 was also a pivotal year for me. I landed my first full-time art gig, got married and had our first baby. I was immersed in Alan Watts, and also formed my first real band and started writing real songs, all at the tender age of 21...

You all know where I stand by now: Music is Magic, straight up.

Sometimes I think it’s the only true form of magic, but I don’t like to get too over-reductive about it; gotta keep the door open to other (if not lesser) possibilities.

Still, nothing tattoos a time and place onto your memory circuits like a great song, so Music is my personal time machine.

Music powers me to phase in and out of various periods of my life, and can also often revive long-buried experiences. I’m a Cancerian, so you know I’m eminently qualified to hold forth on these things.

Click here for playlist and full article: 

it's on the house.

So fire up the wayback machine and let me give you the skinny, Ginny.