The Chart Time Tunnel: Ben Harper

10/02/09 1:57pm

by Chris Burland (CHARTattack)

As mentioned in last week's Time Tunnel, Julie Doiron and The Wooden Stars' collaboration began its four-week chart dominance, so this look back at the campus chart for Sept. 23 to 30, 1999 will focus on the chart action beyond #1.

The biggest chart rise on this (or any other chart) was the 47-place jump made by The Folk Implosion's One Part Lullaby landing at #2. Stereolab's Cobra And Phases Group Play Voltage In The Milky Night remained at #3 again, while Guided By Voices' Do The Collapse continued its downward trend falling from #2 to #4. After a couple of weeks of tumbling down the chart, Superchunk's Come Pick Me Up rocketed back up 33 spots to land at #5.

The highest debut that week was Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals' Burn To Shine, which entered the chart at #14.

For a decade beginning in 1994, Harper was a popular campus radio performer, appealing to that second-generation hippie crowd. While his first two albums — 1994's Welcome To The Cruel World and 1995's Fight For Your Mind — preceded the weekly campus chart, his studio albums from 1997 to 2003 all had moderate chart success, hanging around for 10 plus weeks, but rarely hitting the top 10.

The Will To Live lasted 13 weeks peaking at #13 in 1997. Burn To Shine eventually put in 11 weeks peaking at #5 and Diamonds On The Inside also lasted for 11 weeks peaking at #11 in 2003.

After that, many programmers tired of Harper's schtick as 2006's Both Sides Of The Gun lasted only seven weeks, hitting at #13 for one week. 2007's Lifeline surfaced in the 40s for two weeks and this year's White Lies For Dark Times didn't even crack the top 50 of the campus chart.

Other new entries this week included Momus' Stars Forever at #18, Tricky with DJ Muggs' Juxtapose at #21 and G Love & Special Sauce's Philadelphonic at #24

Down near the bottom, the only Beatles album to appear on the weekly campus chart began it short chart history. The Fab Four's remastered Yellow Submarine soundtrack debuted at #40, hitting #13 in late October.