Sounds Like 1988!

1988 was the year they almost had you believing Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito were twins and you thought that if you were a bit more like Raymond Babbitt you too could clean up at the casinos and crack was whack.

1988 was the year NASA launched the Hubble Telescope and you still couldn’t get your cable to stay on long enough to watch endless My Three Sons reruns. It was the same year preacher man Swaggart got caught getting his hooker swagger on, Oliver North was a Reagan patsy, oh that Yasser Arafat, you could officially drink longer and more often in UK pubs, Ben Johnson lost his gold and it was the year Richard Marx was right there waiting.

In 1988 was the year you bought that chunky Ford Taurus for $10,000 but you should have chosen the cooler, slicker VW Rabbit for $7,500. A gallon of gasoline ran you about $1.65 a gallon, a Toshiba T1200 laptop would set you back $4100 ($7200 in today’s money), a movie ticket to see Who Framed Roger Rabbit was only $3.75, a pack of premium smoke ‘em if ya got ‘ems would slowly kill you for about $1 a pack and Deborah was still Debbie Gibson.

In 1988 Sade, Tiffany, Was (Not Was), Bobby Brown, Johnny Hates Jazz, George Michael ruled the pop radio airwaves and Steve Winwood wanted you to Roll With It but you weren’t having it. No, here are a handful of albums/tracks that kept the juices on the right side of your brain flowing in 1988.