What It Is: A weekly mix tape posted on Mondays, created by the fans of Addicted to Vinyl, posted for all to enjoy!

Be A Part Of It: I want you to make me/us a mix CD. I want to hear the tunes that you are into, new or old. And I want to feature your mix on this site!

You can mail your CD to the following address:

Addicted to Vinyl
P.O. Box 771685
Lakewood, OH 44107

What To Include: Include track listing, song notes (if you want to) and any particular notes that you want to share about the mix. Save a digital copy of your notes that you can send me via email, so I don’t get carpal tunnel retyping them! Include a printed copy of the notes, and an email address that I can use to contact you for the digital version of the notes. For the real mix tape feel, feel free to hand write your song titles, draw artistic drawings on the “label,” etc – I can scan them in using my handy dandy color scanner. Go nuts!

And if you’re feeling particularly daring, give your mix a clever title!

What You’ll Get: I’ll feature your mixes and stories here on the site, and send you something cool from the Addicted to Vinyl prize closet, so please include your address (legibly please!) with your mix notes.

The response to my little “Make Me A Mix Tape” post has been in a word, overwhelming! And awesome. On the eve of my announcement post, I put up a Twitter message about a “blog post/idea” that I was brainstorming that was going to be either really cool, or a total bomb. Thankfully, it’s turning out to be really cool. Really, really cool. My hope for an educationally fun musical series is turning out to be exactly as I had hoped. It seems that indeed, the ATV faithful are big mix tape fans like I am! Newly created mixes are coming in, and we’ve even got some vintage analog tape contributions on the way.

So rad.

I figured that it would probably be good to start out by posting one of my own mixes that inspired this idea. As I’ve mentioned, my pal D.X. Ferris has been known to kick out an admirable number of yearly mixes. And the Cleveland Bachelor, despite being my mortal enemy, seems to have a new mix CD for me every time that I see him. That looks kind of disturbing, now that I’m reading it on the computer screen. So much for my chances of dating females ever again, right?

But here’s where it really started: My buddy Brian and I were at the Agora for the Gaslight Anthem show, and stopped in to see my beloved Andrea, mistress of all things Agora-related. She showed us some mixes that she had made for a friend that was about to depart the Cleveland zip code. I yelped when I saw “Smile” by Pearl Jam, and several cuts from Petty’s Wildflowers album, and told her that she HAD to make me copies. She made three mixes – a “chill” mix, and two “rock” mixes, and sent me all three, since she “couldn’t decide which rock mix she liked best.”

I officially had to make my own mix disc. Four of them, actually. I wanted to make my own “rock” disc, a “what I’ve been listening to lately” disc ala Cleveland Bachelor (damn him, and his ability to churn them out,) a “chill” disc, and as I got into it, I realized that I was actually going to need to make two “rock” discs, because I had an urge to make a 90’s disc that was calling my name, rather loudly.

They began life as “mix 1,” “mix 2,” “mix 3,” and “mix 4.”

They got clever names.

“Pat’s going to hate 60% of this” = rock disc

“Bastard of a Midnight Crossmaker” = the “listening to lately” disc.

“Not Where It’s At, But It’s Alright” = the kinda “chill” disc, I guess.

and the mix featured here today, “No More Salt In My 90’s Lovin’ Tears.”

The “Pat’s going to hate 60% of this” disc actually ended up being one that I hated most of as well. Not the tunes, but the flow just didn’t work.

The other three hit it, and held up better and better with each listen in my esteemed mix-making opinion. We’ll put that to the test today, with my 90’s mix.

No More Salt In My 90’s Lovin’ Tears (Download)

1. Martin Briley – “The Salt In My Tears” – What the hell, Matt? I thought you said this was a 90’s mix? Well, it was, but I had this tune in my head all week long on the week that I made this mix, and I had to put it somewhere, or I was going to be making mix disc #5. Here it goes.

2. Journey – “The Party’s Over (Hopelessly in Love) – Seriously dude, what’s going on here? Easy answer, here’s another tune that I had in my head, a member of the Journey catalog that went relatively unnoticed by my listening ears until my former better half, a fellow Journey nut, pointed it out to me at some point during our relationship.

So how do we get from there, to the 90’s? I have the thought – “Kitchen” by the Lemonheads. And it totally works. P.S. New covers album on the way from Dando and his Lemonheads, accessorized with tour dates. Coming to the Grog Shop in June. Come hang out with me.

3. Lemonheads – “Kitchen”

4. Letters to Cleo – “Here and Now” – You had to know that with my love of female vocalists, it would pop up eventually. And this ditty from Kay Hanley and crew is still one of the finest slices of 90’s goodness. Catch up with Kay via this great Popdose interview. And don’t miss the Beavis and Butthead dissection of “Here and Now.”

5. Lush – “Ladykillers” – My high school friend Jeremy LOVED this band, and I was relatively unaware of them until much later. One of the great 90’s tunes that you’ll know that you know it if you don’t recognize it now, after you hear it.

6. Filter – “Jurassitol” – Catching three Filter shows in 2008 put the band right back into my frequent listening pile. You can now conveniently find this until-very-recently non-album track (and several others) on the recently released Filter anthology The Very Best Things.

7. God Lives Underwater – “No More Love” – This is one of those tunes I associate with the WMMS alternative era. Pretty sure that these guys came by the station on the weekend afternoon that our DJ was locked/stuck in the air studio. Might have been Everclear. Either way, it was a memorable moment, and this tune was/is a jam.

8. Cause & Effect – “It’s Over Now” – This tune totally takes me back to the last part of high school, listening to legendary Cleveland alternative station 107.9 The End. Former End jock Pat The Producer and I have had many conversations about nugget tunes like this.

9. & 10. INXS – “Guns In The Sky”/“New Sensation” – Okay, now we slipped into the 80’s, I know. Kick is one of those albums that still holds up just as well, as the first day that I heard it. This is in my opinion, one of the greatest one/two album opening sets of all time. Made to be played loud. Not a dud on the entire Kick album really, in my opinion.

11. Eels – “Mr. E’s Beautiful Blues” – Oops, now we’re cheating with a tune from the 00’s. What the hell? I can justify this one: The 90’s were all about the “hidden track,” and this one was hidden on Daisies of the Galaxy…..no doubt, in tribute to the awesome 90’s!

12. Indians – “Bed of Roses” – From one of my all-time favorite movie soundtracks (and movies,) Reality Bites. I saw The Indians at some point in the 90s playing a multi-band End show at the Agora. The rest of the bands on the bill escape my memory. Drat. Been trying to figure this one out for a while. Kevin can attest how much I love this song, and the play count on my Ipod tells the rest of the story.

13. Lenny Kravitz – “Let Love Rule” – This is another one that holds strong ‘MMS memories for me. I don’t think there was a single one of us that didn’t love this song, and bliss out, every time it came on the control room speakers. We always had to turn this one up loud. It was such a thrill watching Lenny play this one live on a hot summer day at the WOMAD Festival at Buckeye Lake outside of Columbus, OH.

14. Freedy Johnston – “Bad Reputation” – Kelly and Jose get the credit on this one. I loved Freedy in the 90’s, mainly this tune and “On The Way Up,” but I hadn’t listened to this one in ages. An inclusion within a blog post on Sensory Overload brought this one roaring back to the front of my memory.

15. The Smithereens – “Yesterday Girl” – I’ve got a million different live versions of this tune, yet I can’t seem to dig out the one that I really love. The version that I really love features guitarist Jim Babjak and bassist Mike Mesaros trading off on the opening lick, back and forth, back and forth, for about a minute. Hopefully one of these days, I’ll come across the disc that has that mythical version that I played so many times before misplacing it.

16. Pale Hollow – “Sugarcane” – Pale Hollow are a great rock and roll band from right here in Cleveland, OH that turned out one of last year’s most enjoyable albums. This one is on here, because it shoulda been a hit in the 90’s, and it just happens that it was recorded now.

17. Magnapop – “Open The Door” – I got a big urge to hear this song, and headed off to the record store to pick up a budget copy of Rubbing Doesn’t Help, which I had seen in the budget bins so many times for a buck or slightly more. Of course, now that I wanted it, it was nowhere to be found. Thankfully, I had a friend that sent me this tune, and I later found a copy of Rubbing Doesn’t Help on CD. Love the Eels cover of this one, as well.

18. Edwyn Collins – A Girl Like You – One of many great retro-sounding tunes that came out during the 90’s. If you didn’t hear it via the Gorgeous George album release, perhaps you remember it from Empire Records. Don’t really think you coulda missed this one.

19. Chris Isaak – “Somebody’s Crying” – Speaking of retro: My favorite Isaak tune is probably “Wicked Game,” and not just because of the girl in the video. That tune made me pick up quite a few Isaak albums, and I recall not being the biggest fan of “Somebody’s Crying” when it first came out, but I really have grown to love it as the years have passed.

20. Biz Markie – “Just A Friend” – I had to end on a goofy note. There was a goofy moment or two stuck in each one of the four mixes that I made. This particular song takes me back to the 90’s, hanging out with my church friends while singing this song at the top of our lungs, being generally silly.

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