May 25th, 1989

Jumping ahead a few years from the last chart, and you can see there has been some absolutely massive changes. For a start, it’s down 10 tracks and is just a Top 30 now but more importantly, it is now divided into a Compact Disc chart and an Album/Vinyl chart. A lot of the same releases on each chart but also quite a few differences. Oddly enough, on the surface it appears heavy metal fans were slower to adopt the new medium with only Appetite for Destruction appearing in the CD list but it also appears in the vinyl list along with G’N'R Lies, And Justice For All, and Hysteria. I bought my first CD player in ‘88—a Yamaha that gave me no end of trouble with a disc tray that wouldn’t open properly—and the CD version of Metallica’s, And Justice For All, was one of the first CDs I bought…and I still have it.

The singles part of the New FM Music section lists If A Tree Falls by Bruce Cockburn. I was already a huge fan, so bought the CD the week it was released (still have it), and when he toured later that year I was there to see him perform at the Opera Theatre on Grote street (same place I first saw Gary Numan in 1980). That Bruce Cockburn concert has always stuck in my mind because not only is he an amazing acoustic guitarist and songwriter but that show was one of the most relaxed and friendliest shows I’ve ever attended.
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On the other side of the page is where you’ll now find the singles chart—as with the CD and Album charts, this too is down to a Top 30 list. Not much that would’ve caught my interest back then, and not a lot that I’d listen to now. It appears 1927 were having a good time in SA in ‘89, with a long play at #2 on the CD and Album charts, plus 2 tracks in the singles chart.

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