Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper - Mojo and Skid
#326/961
1985 Housekeeping
Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper
Mojo and Skid
Genre: Psychobilly
3.75 out of 5
Highlights:
Jesus at McDonald’s
I’m In Love with Your Girlfriend
Rockin’ Religion
Black Yo’ Eye
True story:
My roommate and I arrived in Los Angeles in June 1987. We drove across the country from New York in a “drive-away” car. He and his childhood friend were the only ones allowed in the car but I tagged along, smoking cigarettes and putting teeny holes in the back seat.
A couple months after arriving I wrote a little piece called “Parallel Parking, Who Needs It?”. It was a New Yorker Fish Out of Water article. The kind you write when you are 22 and think you know a whole helluva lot more than you do.
I sent it to the LA Weekly.
A few weeks later I got a letter in the mail. The thrust of it was that there were two editors at the paper and one of them liked it and one of them hated it. So they bought it.
The letter was from the late, great editor Jonathan Gold and included was a check for $75.
I kept copies of neither inasmuch as I’m not much of a sentimentalist.
It was the first time I’d ever been paid for something I wrote.
It was not published.
A couple months later I called the Weekly and, playing on my history as one of their “writers” I convinced them to let me cover Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper at Club Lingerie in Hollywood.
They didn’t publish or pay for that review and that’s fine. I phone that one in.
But, holy shit I still remember that concert. Mojo climbed the walls of the club, pulled out an empty Arrowhead container and performed an incredible drum solo with his bare hands. Skid was cool as a cucumber.
Mojo tore the house down.
His insane, stream of consciousness, psycho-blues narrations to remarkable pulpit destroying recitations were incredible to watch.
I have loved a LOT of Mojo’s stuff after this, but this one is like a demo.
He’s juvenile and stupid and gross and hilarious.
This is as stripped down as it gets. An electric guitar, a washboard and a lunatic.
Nixon is part Screaming’ Jay Hawkins, part Elvis and part anti-Springsteen.
Eugene Chadbourne got it right in his Allmusic review:
“this is the recording equivalent of the broken lock on the barnyard door. It reveals this dynamic duo at their vibrant best, putting across an instrumental conceit that weds a kind of old-timey instrumentation with a whisky-soaked, poetry-slam mentality. In one sense the duo can be imagined playing on a street corner in Atlanta in the '20s. Sure, sometimes it is over the top, and calling out the riot squad would be the best solution. "Mushroom Maniac," "King of the Couch," and the wild "Art Fag Shuffle" are some of the more enjoyable tracks. Moaning about some of this material being offensive is besides the point.”
https://open.spotify.com/album/2fjUbjke9gdRw4Rtaysg8t?si=tBwi3_cmS7K_JxSrbJJrtQ
