Darrell “Whisky Prajer” Reimer has an eclectic mix to suggest, mostly but not entirely new stuff, from Bettye LaVette to the reconstituted Dinosaur Jr. Definitely worth your attention.

The Sound Salvation Army, who describe themselves as “a few crazy Canadians who think we know what’s best for rock and roll”, have kicked off their inaugural mix tape with four songs on the subject of radio, a phenomenon that you may remember used to be carried on actual radio waves.

They lead off with Elvis Costello’s “Radio Radio,” which makes sense, and eventually they will have 13 tracks.

A lot to like in this announcement:

Every week we here at Cacophony Central will pick and choose the songs that have gotten us through the week. Sometimes there’s a rhyme and reason to them, other times, there’s not. We’ll let you decide if there’s a theme or not. Some of it is new, some old, some you’re heard of, some you probably haven’t, but seek out these tracks and we guarantee you some good times. Or at least a way to make you look as cool as us. If we could, we would post these up, but seeing as we don’t want the man looking down on us, we encourage you to go out and find some of these tunes, wherever they may be. We promise, you won’t be disappointed.

As arguments for mix tapes (and CDs) go, this is definitely one of the better ones: it covers all the major justifications, the ones you’d admit to and the ones you think to yourself. And the actual programs (the second one went up today) are pretty good, too.

Get your kicks, indeed: Steph’s put together a mix for a trip down the Mother Road, and the proposed cover art is truly wondrous. And you have to like anything which finds room for Voice of the Beehive’s “There’s A Barbarian In The Back Of My Car,” right?

Not a Bryan Ferry reference, but a description of this set of cover versions at Middledawn, including some well-known (Pearl Jam’s “Last Kiss,” for instance) and some I’d not heard before (Dishwalla’s take on “Tainted Love”). Definitely worth some of your time, and you can actually listen to the tracks onsite.

Los Angeles Times sportswriter Christine Daniels has something like seventy-five tracks in this ongoing mix, and she’s posted 20 of them (so far) for public consumption. I’ll mention one here: “Black Metallic” by Catherine Wheel, which, says a friend of hers, is “the most majestic, awe-inspiring song of the 1990s,” and she’s not inclined to disagree.

Once in a while for no particularly good reason I will call out “Time!” as though I were doing my own version of the Chambers Brothers’ “Time Has Come Today,” in which you hear this word shouted at regular intervals. (This particular lyric technique has largely fallen into desuetude: the most recent variation I can recall is the periodic call of “Science!” in Thomas Dolby’s “She Blinded Me With Science,” more than two decades ago. Updates will be welcomed.)

Time is also a good subject for a mix, and Monty has a two-disc mix of time-related songs, including most of the obvious ones (the Chambers Brothers were left on the shelf) and, in a stroke of genius, the Guess Who’s “No Time.” I will have to plunder this for a Time cycle of my own.

Stephanie’s “Sock Hop Tape” starts with Debbie Gibson’s “Shake Your Love” and ends with the Promise’s “When In Rome,” both sort-of-iconic 1980s tracks, but in between there’s serious outside-the-decade action, going back as far as 1961 and the Tokens’ “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” Ingeniously, she’s stuck it between Tiffany and New Edition, and fortunately, I’m not so much of a purist that it would ever occur to me to complain about such a thing.

Are the 1980s the Big Bang of mix tapes? Here’s an artifact from that era:

I, like a lot of kids that grew up during the Reagan years, put a lot of thought and effort into the making of mix tapes.

Here is a playlist I found in a journal from 8th grade. Actually, the journal was given to me for 8th grade graduation, so I guess you could say I was a freshman. Even after all of these years, I can tell I was in the brainstorming phase for this mix tape; because I could give a damn about some of these songs, for instance the Chuck Berry tune. The theme was song titles that were girls’ names.

Been there (a couple of times), done that. Here’s what was on his track list:

• “Diane” by Husker Du
• “Cecilia” by Simon and Garfunkel
• “Maybelline” by Chuck Berry
• “Vicky Verky” by The Squeeze
• “Lola” by The Kinks
• “Athena” by The Who
• “Michelle” by The Beatles
• “Suzy Q” by Creedence Clearwater Revival
• “Delta Dawn” by the Ray Conniff Singers
• “Rosemary” by The Dickies
• “Roxanne” by The Police

Which reminds me: I need to get started on Major Babes 3.

I’ve already taken a shot at a Valentine’s Day Mix — and, being properly cynical, I did it in October — but I’d hardly consider it definitive, and I’m always delighted to spot a workable alternative.

This compilation by a Michigan law student looks promising enough that I may actually put it together myself, and damn the iTunes expense. It’s more contemporary than mine, which cuts off in the 1970s: the leadoff track is “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” by the Jayhawks, which is not the song of the same title that every single Motown act seems to have recorded at one time or another.