The Time Zone Top 40

The Time Zone Top 40 is the 40 top-selling music tracks in Australia exactly forty years ago, to the day.

 

Some time ago – when the earth was still flat and climate change wasn’t so damn obvious – 88.9 FM built a time machine that could travel back exactly 40 years to the better days of rock and roll.

Since then, with the help of the Kent music report and your imagination, we’ve gone back 40 years every single week. You can check out the Kent music report at australianchartbook.com.au

1979 was a year of memorable events, good, bad and just plain awful. This was good: Australia’s first Aboriginal Parliamentarian, Senator Neville Bonner was announced 1979s Australian of the year.

Domico Speranza hijacked a Pan-Am plane at Sydney Airport for 5 hours until he was shot dead by police. That was bad. Seven people died in a fire at Sydney’s Luna Park. That was just plain awful.

The US space station Skylab crashed at Esperance in WA without damaging anybody or anything. That was good. 1979 was the year of the First NSW Lotto draw and I still haven’t won it. That’s bad.

The Australian film industry began a new era with the release of the Original Mad Max movie. That was a very good thing.

And lots of excellent music was created in 1979. Remember the Cricket song, Come on Aussie Come on? Up There Cazaly? Abba’s Chiquitita?

My Sharona? And of course you will remember Video Killed the radio stars.

So it’s that time again - time to travel back exactly forty years to this day in 1979 for Robyne’s presentation of the top forty music tracks across Australia.