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- Essentially, college rock is the (largely) alternative music that dominated college radio playlists from the rise of alternative rock (circa 1983-84) through the '80s. Most college rock was born in the confluence of new wave, post-punk, and early alternative rock.
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Jul 26, 2017 · Left of the Dial: My Top 200 Favorite ’80s College Rock Songs. The Stone Roses. The phrase “Left of the Dial” comes from the 1985 Replacements song title from their brilliant album Tim. The the first time, a band was paying homage to the college radio stations who were playing their music.
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Initially, the term “college rock” was as much about the medium as the music, but by the mid-’80s, it had come to symbolize a strain of alternative rock that reflected a certain grad-student personality: well-read but underfed, deceptively tidy in appearance but combative in spirit.
- Pylon, “Cool”
- R.E.M., “Radio Free Europe”
- The Embarrassment, “Celebrity Art Party”
- Camper Van Beethoven, “Take The Skinheads Bowling”
- Guadalcanal Diary, “Watusi Rodeo”
- The dB’s, “Black and White”
- Let’s Active, “Every Word Means No”
- Love Tractor, “Satan”
- Dumptruck, “Watch Her Fall”
- Big Dipper, “Ron Klaus Wrecked His House”
The seminal Athens band took the clipped, stentorian dance-punk of U.K. groups like Au Pairs and Gang of Four and flipped it into something fresh and wide-open, offering “everything is cool” as a chill salvo for small-town art-school slackers looking for affordable kicks.
Their first single on a tiny local label was speedy and dreamy, driving into a brand new kind of rock & roll mystery. This version has the hyped-up punch they’d vague out marvelously for the recording that appears on their historic 1983 debut, Murmur.
From Wichita, Kansas, the Embarrassment were four guys in glasses with a wry sense of wit and a knack for charging, churning guitar tangle: Who hangs out at a celebrity art party? “Art Carney!” Guess Don Knotts went home early.
Camper Van Beethoven formed at UC Santa Cruz and packed their songs with scenester in-jokes you could sing along with. “Skinheads” was a college-radio smash that even trickled down to cool high-school kids.
A sly, rollicking riff on cultural colonialism wrapped in madcap surf-rock jangle from this great second-generation Athens band. Guadalcanal Diary had a searching earnestness that was admirably endemic to college-y bands.
Chris Stamey and Peter Holsapple of the dB’s were Beatles fans from North Carolina who headed up to New York and proved themselves peerless pop masters on songs like this tense, testy banger from their first record.
If college rock had a sonic architect, it was Mitch Easter, who produced R.E.M.’s landmark early records; his own North Carolina band’s debut EP is full of bright, slippery tunes like this one, driven by Mitch’s sharp songs and cheery voice and ace drummer Sara Romweber.
Another weird, cool band from Athens, Love Tractor was founded in 1980, and they’re still going, usually cracking out oddly transporting instrumentals. “Satan,” from 1989’s Themes From Venus, shows they could write killer rock songs too.
Seth Tiven went to Wesleyan, moved to Boston, and threw himself into his own style of post-punk squall. If over-cutesiness could be a college rock Achilles’ heel, that was never Seth’s issue: “Watch Her Fall” is full of likably bracing sad-dude angst.
Members of the Embarrassment teamed up with members of the Volcano Suns to form Big Dipper. Their best moment is a heraldic-sounding anthem about a guy who throws a party that gets out of hand — like an indie-rock version of a wild scene in some goofy Eighties coming-of-age comedy.
- 1 min
- Jon Dolan
College Rock: Campus Favorites of the '80s. Andrew Carpenter. Before 'indie' or 'alternative’, College Rock was the most commonly used term for new music running on the left side of the...
Before 'indie' or 'alternative’, College Rock was the most commonly used term for new music running on the left side of the established trends. * The term derives from the student-run radio...
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Jul 24, 2017 · College Rock Music of the 80s: My Top 200 Songs. R.E.M. The Smiths. Now, back when I began my two-week excursion into the New Wave music of the late-70s and early-80s, I really got to thinking about the whole big genre that was labeled by baby boomers who were running radio stations in the late-80s and early-90s.
