Mixology: More Music Your Mom Hates

Mixology is a recurring feature in which I take a look at one of the many mix tapes I made over the years. Some are better than others, but all of them are fun to revisit.

More Music Your Mom Hates (11/4/92)

The year was 1992. I was 25 and fairly happy with the way my life was going at the time. And yet, for some inexplicable reason, I liked the Spin Doctors. Cut me some slack: They wrote catchy tunes, there was some decent guitar and...yeah, I know. They quickly rose and fell, victims of the massive radio oversaturation and the wave of darker themed music that was taking hold of the rock world. Chris Barron and the fellas didn't have the staying power once "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong" and "Two Princes" finally stopped getting MTV play.

I was getting into the whole alt-rock scene that emerged in the wake of Nirvana and Pearl Jam: Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Screaming Trees, Alice in Chains. I was digging it all. In fact, a few weeks after this tape was made, my brother and I went to see Alice in Chains, Screaming Trees and Gruntruck at the late great Channel nightclub in South Boston. It was a pretty terrific show. I was impressed with Gruntruck, who were more of a metal act than anything else, but they rocked. The Trees provided the interesting visual counterpoint of Mark Lanegan standing statue still while the Conner brothers were bouncing and rolling all over the stage. And then AiC came out, Layne Staley singing while in a wheelchair because he had a broken leg. The album Dirt had just come out a few months earlier and was blowing up, and despite all the lyrics about heroin and death, Staley seemed to be fairly with it. At one point during the show, he jumped out of his chair and grabbed ahold of one of the overhanging pipes from the low ceiling, singing as he held on literally right over our heads. The Channel was a great little claustrophobic club and that was one of the last shows ever held there. I think it became a strip club after that before closing down for good. Staley descended into a nasty heroin addiction in the years that followed, doing one more album with AiC and becoming a recluse. He died in 2002.

My life, thankfully, was much more boring by comparison.

Side A
Jimmy Olsen's Blues - Spin Doctors
All in the Groove - Blues Traveler
My Morning Song - Black Crowes
Ignoreland - R.E.M.
World's Such a Wonder - Kim Mitchell
Digging in the Dirt - Peter Gabriel
Dyslexic Heart - Paul Westerberg
Rest in Peace - Extreme
Paper Scratcher - Blind Melon
Suck My Kiss - Red Hot Chili Peppers
Suck Me Dry - Mudhoney

Side B
Them Bones - Alice in Chains
In Bloom - Nirvana
Nearly Lost You - Screaming Trees
State of Love and Trust - Pearl Jam
Make It Now - Mudhoney
Naked in the Rain - Red Hot Chili Peppers
Soak the Sin - Blind Melon
Hotel Illness - Black Crowes
Midlife Crisis - Faith No More
Seasons - Chris Cornell
What's Good - Lou Reed
Man on the Moon - R.E.M.

My Morning Song:


Them Bones: