Alternative music in the 1980s

[Griftor]

Does anyone know of a good source of information about hit songs at the then-burgeoning alternative music (or modern rock) format PRIOR to the institution of Billboard's Modern Rock chart in September 1988?

I've found a website that lists the year-end countdowns from a couple of stations like L.A.'s KROQ, but obviously this is only one or two radio stations. I'm looking for a more national consensus as to what the biggest alternative music hits were at the time they were released, not simply looking back from today.

Anyone know of a knowledge-source I could hit up?

[Verisimilitude]

MTV's 120 Minutes video playlists can give you a good indication of the alternative scene from 1986 onwards.

Otherwise, the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart is your next best guess.

[Deleted]

I'm curious how many Alternative rock music stations there really were in the US prior to 1988. Maybe that's one reason it's so hard to find. A lot of the biggest supporters of Alternative rock in the 80s were college radio stations.

[halo19]

I've always been very interested as well -- rocklists.com goes back to before '88 on many radio stations. Even '88 will include either local-area hits and/or songs that would likely had become hits if the charts were there before. Year-end charts are somewhat arbitrary but give a decent indication of what was going on at the given time. Also, it's likely to exclude stuff that might have actually been bigger than what was included on that year-end report from the radio station.

That goes as far back as 1980 with KROQ. Usually "rock" stations that played more new wave than usual were pre-cursors to the "alternative" format, which KROQ officially switched in 1982. WFNX was a pretty early one that I think originally aired as different call letters the same year.
I think there were about 6 or so alt. stations around by '83 - WOXY, XTRA/91X and KQAK, a San Francisco KITS predecessor. I think there's another one I'm just not thinking about.

I think the early charts had ~18 "alternative" stations and ~11 reported college radio stations.

I've looked at the 120 Minutes archive, but admittedly it's rather short on 1986 and 1987 playlists. Even then, the program often still had underground and in later years it even represented some music that still was not really on the charts when the modern rock chart existed.

Mainstream rock does have a decent amount of artists that were part of the alternative playlist from the 80s.

[Slinky]

Jun 5, 2012 4:36:46 GMT -5 halo19 said:

I think there were about 6 or so alt. stations around by '83 - WOXY, XTRA/91X and KQAK, a San Francisco KITS predecessor. I think there's another one I'm just not thinking about.

WLIR/Long Island, maybe?

There was also an Alt. station in Philadelphia called I92 in the early 80's, but it was very short-lived.

[halo19]

Yeah, that was one of them (WLIR).

There's actually an online list of the "Screamer" selections that happened weekly on that station (I can't remember the site, but it can probably find results on Google under "WLIR screamers". I think it starts back in the 80s before they went alt. and even after the temporary call letter difference thing, all the way to 1997 when I guess that was discontinued on the station.

Another chart to look at for all the way until Aug. 1988? The dance charts. Lots of alternative songs can be found in there.

[dth1971]

Was the forerunner of alternative music called NEW WAVE?