With the release of Frenzy, Mojo Nixon insures his place among the pantheon of great rock eccentrics, among such strange stalwarts as Frank Zapa, Lord Buckley, and Captain Beefheart. Mojo and his sideman Skid Roper can best be described as musical minimalists, mutant madmen who swap washboard licks with demented guitar riffs and a little wild mouth harp now and then as Mojo runs amok through a musical menu that includes inspired covers of Alice Cooper’s “Be My Lover” and an amazing one-and-a-half-minute version of Iron Butterfly’s psychedelic classic, “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.”
Mojo’s original material is not for the weak of heart, showcasing his fervor and passion on such songs as “The Amazing Bigfoot Diet,” a good-natured swipe at those tabloids found in supermarket check-out lines; “Stuffin’ Martha’s Muffin,” a scatological anti-MTV protest song which reveals Mojo’s hidden lust for veejay Martha Quinn; and the hero worship of “The Ballad of Wendell Scott.” All totaled, Frenzy delivers over a dozen of Mojo’s finest creations, a musical blend of talking blues, roots-rock, and incredible insanity, counting among his influences artists as diverse as Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Lou Reed, and Iggy Pop. Mojo Nixon is a true social iconoclast.
For those of you who can’t get enough of the right Reverend Mojo Nixon and his ‘Screamin’ Church of the Epileptic Jesus, his first LP – Free, Drunk & Horny – features such classic tunes as “Jesus At McDonald’s,” “Moanin’ With Yer Mama,” and “I’m In Love With Your Girlfriend” and is also available from Enigma Records. (Enigma Records, released 1986)
Review originally published by Nashville’s The Metro magazine...
I first met Kim Buie, the underrated Island Records A&R genius who guided
both Drivin’ N Cryin’ and Tom Waits to some of the best work of their careers,
while she was working for the legendary Enigma Records label. Mojo Nixon was
one of the better-selling artists among the label’s impressive roster of punk,
metal, and fringe performers, falling somewhere in between John Trubee and
Zoogz Rift as one of the most original and unique musicians to make a record
in America.
Kim turned me onto the first Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper
album, 1985’s Free, Drunk and Horny, before she ended up moving from L.A. to Nashville for a job with Jack
Emerson’s Praxis organization. I spoke with Mojo several times, usually while
drinking beer at some Nashville bar. I came up with the Ed Anger/Mojo Nixon
myth, a story that subsequently spread across the country, fueled partially by
Mojo himself. This is the only interview that survived our many conversations,
originally appearing in the November 1990 issue of Nashville’s The Metro
music magazine.
Sadly, Mojo (nee Neill Kirby McMillan Jr.) passed
away on Wednesday, February 7th from a “cardiac event” while on the Outlaw
Country Cruise, where he had performed the night before. Nixon was 66 years
old and enjoyed a full life as a beloved cult-rocker, occasional actor, radio
DJ, and Americana iconoclast. Mojo will long be remembered for his contagious
humor, quick wit, and rowdy, charismatic demeanor. R.I.P.
His origins are shrouded in mystery. From whence he comes, no one
really knows…except for Mojo, and he’s not talkin’. Rumor has it that he comes
from Pigfoot, Louisiana, while others say he grew up on the East Coast. Still
others have said that he’s the long-lost twin brother of the Beat Farmers’
Country Dick. Yes, rumors abound, but one thing is for certain…Mojo Nixon and
Weekly World News columnist Ed Anger have never been photographed
together…but more about that later.
Mojo’s on his way to Nashville,
you know, set to headline a massive all-ages show along with the Dead Milkmen
and the Cavedogs. The enigmatic Mr. Nixon is overcome with joy at his impending
return to the Music City. “I just wrote a song that I was thinking of pitching
to Nashville,” says Mojo. It’s called ‘I’m Addicted To ESPN, The Total Sports
Network Is My Friend.’” Does Mojo harbor aspirations towards becoming a Music
Row songwriter and country performer?
“That’ll be when I start my stock car racing career,” says Mojo. “Eventually
there’ll be some sign from above or below that the rock ‘n’ roll thing has run
its course. Then I’ll move back to North Carolina, where I grew up, and begin
racing stock cars and I’ll make my Nashville debut. But I don’t think that Jimmy
Bowen will be involved,” he adds, “Jack Clement, possibly, but not Jimmy
Bowen…”
Nixon will be returning to Nashville as part of a tour in
support of his latest vinyl triumph, Otis, a “big, large, stupid slab of
vibrating thingamajig,” says Mojo. “We recorded it in Memphis with Jim
Dickinson,” he continues, “who produced our last album. I got…somebody described
it as ‘The All-Gator Band’…I describe it as the first post-cowpunk supergroup,
with John Doe (X), and Country Dick of the Beat Farmers, Bill (Davis) from Dash
Rip Rock, and Eric (Ambel) from the Del-Lords. We just got down there and drank
a few beers and just started rocking and rolling. We had a lot of fun!”
Otis
is the first record Nixon has recorded without partner Skid Roper; a mature,
fully-realized exercise in musical mayhem and lyrical madness as only Mojo can
deliver. “I wanted to make a much more rock ‘n’ roll album than I had before,”
says Mojo. “I made five albums with Skid and each one of those is much more
advanced than the last. The first one was just totally primitive; we did it on a
four-track cassette. We didn’t even know that we were doing an album…they were
supposed to be demos in case we ever did an album.”
To be sure, that first Mojo and Skid disc, Free, Drunk and Horny,
contained some Mojo classics, gems such as “Jesus At McDonald’s” and “Rockin’
Religion.” “Yeah, it’s got some ‘stream-of-consciousness’ on it,” says Mojo. “A
lot of people say to me, ‘well, I like the first album’ or ‘I like the second
album.’ I think that there’s a natural order to things. I had to do the first
two albums to get to ‘Elvis Is Everywhere’ and I had to do the next two albums
to get to ‘Don Henley Must Die.’ Sooner or later, this adding stuff will peter
out and I’ll just go back to me and a guitar. It’s a process you have to go
through and I don’t want to miss any of the steps. You know, sooner or later, I
may have a hit in spite of my own stupid self!”
Mojo is known for
tossing lyrical arrows at a wide range of targets. Otis pokes fun at or
insults everyone from George Bush down to Don Henley. “There was some
controversy even before the record came out on the Don Henley thing,” says Mojo
of “Don Henley Must Die.” “My point is that rock ‘n’ roll is supposed to be wild
and crazy and free and fun and anarchy and sex and pandemonium and drive-in
movie theaters with fake-I.D. beer! What the hell is Don Henley doing? Not that
he’s not talented…but VH-1 is wide-open. Why not go there and stay?”
Most
of the targets of Mojo’s musical missiles have been quite, shall we
say…understanding. “They’re supposed to be funny, not hate-filled or anything,”
says Mojo, “not even the most hate-filled ones. I don’t know Don Henley or Phil
Collins or Sting…they might be good race car drivers for all I know, but it’s
unlikely.” MTV’s Martha Quinn, an early recipient of a Mojo barb with the song
“Stuffin’ Martha’s Muffin” actually brags about the encounter…
“Martha
Quinn,” says Mojo, “I never talked to Martha but I just heard that she was on TV
talking about the song just recently, says that she was the only VJ to have a
song written about her.” Of others, Nixon says, “Debbie Gibson took it all in
stride and Michael J. Fox…well, I’m not worried about him because he’s near
dwarf-sized. What’s he going to do, hire somebody to beat me up? Get together
with Prince and beat me up…a bunch of short guys whuppin’ up on me?!”
Mojo’s
music is an eclectic blend of talking blues, old time R&B, and roots-rock.
Says Mojo of influences, “the kind of John Lee Hooker, front-porch Delta blues
thing is a big influence, as is Hunter Thompson’s ‘railing at the gods’ kind of
thing, railing at the absurdities and injustices; and a lot of your basic rock
‘n’ roll and rhythm and blues stuff that I derived out of Otis Redding, out of
the gospel church…”
“I was thinking the other day,” says Mojo, “that
rock ‘n’ roll seems to have forgotten somebody like Roger Miller. I think that
he won something like six Grammys. He’s a funny guy and also a musical guy.
There’s a long tradition in country and R&B of people who were funny but
musical, whether it was Jerry Reed or the Coasters or the Big Bopper…you could
name a whole slew of them. The concept that these were novelty acts or
whatnot…well, the Coasters went to number one, as did Roger Miller. Somewhere
along the way, rock ‘n’ roll forgot this.”
Rock ‘n’ roll as a corporate entity has pretty well led to a cultural decline
for, says Mojo, “the same reasons that the hamburgers at McDonald’s taste like
cardboard compared to a hamburger at some Joe Bob’s hamburger stand that they
run themselves. It’s a big business, a big corporate thing and they’re going for
the lowest common denominator to sell the most units they can. They don’t give a
flying fuck about whether it’s good or not!”
In a climate such as
this, Nixon continues to deliver sincere, heartfelt, if decidedly non-mainstream
discs to his adoring fans. Says Mojo, “I’m pretty much determined to have
success on my own terms. People in suits recognize quickly that I have some
talent that can be exploited, but none of them seems to have any clue as to how
to do that. Until one of them does, I’m just going to keep doing what I do.”
As
for the question of Mojo’s involvement with the pseudonymous Mr. Anger, well,
let’s just check the facts, shall we. Ed Anger writes a column of patriotic,
right-wing pap called “My America” in the Weekly World News tabloid, a
column that many believe to be done with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Nixon
has been known to comb the very same scandal sheet for song ideas, even going so
far as to lifting headlines for song titles.
So how about it Mojo,
what’s the scoop on you and Ed? “Some people think that we may be the same
person,” says Mojo, “I’ve never seen me and Ed in the same room together! I’ve
been pig-biting mad myself, you know.” The answer to this mystery? “Possibly
aliens are channeling my energies and turning them into Ed’s column,” says Mojo.
‘Nuff said… (1990)
Excitable Press and That Devil Music’s Rev. Gordon are happy to announce the publication of the fourth volume in the Rev’s ongoing collections of artists interviews. The Rock ‘n’ Roll Archives, Volume Four: Cult Rockers is a budget-priced collection of thirteen “cult rockers” who have made great music that failed to find a mainstream audience, talents like Billy Bragg, Eugene Chadbourne, Mojo Nixon, Kirsty MacColl, Band of Susans, Barrence Whitfield, and They Might Be Giants, among others. The book also includes album reviews for many of the featured artists.
The “Reverend of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” Rev. Keith A. Gordon has been writing about music for 45+ years. A former contributor to the All Music Guide books and website, and the former Blues Expert for About.com, Rev. Gordon has also written for Blurt magazine, Creem, High Times, and The Blues (U.K.), among many other publications, and has written eighteen previous music-related books, including Blues Deluxe: The Joe Bonamassa Buying Guide, The Other Side of Nashville, and Scorched Earth: A Jason & the Scorchers Scrapbook.
The Rock ‘n’ Roll Archives, Volume Four: Cult Rockers is a 74pp 5.5” x 8.5” paperback with B&W photos, priced at $7.99 for the print book and $2.99 for the eBook version with the same content. Get your copy through the handy Amazon.com links below:
