The 1986 Listening Post - Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper - Frenzy

Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper - Frenzy

#157/1322

1986 Housekeeping

Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper

Frenzy

Genre: Alterna-Blues

4.75 out of 5

Highlights:

The Amazing Bigfoot Diet

Stuffin’ Martha’s Muffin

I Hate Banks

Where the Hell’s My Money?

Gonna Put My Face On a Nuclear Bomb

I wrote about my experience with Mojo here https://www.facebook.com/groups/342997453183600/permalink/387779065372105/.

I can’t speak enough about how often I spun this record. So much that it’s nigh on impossible for me to be objective.

For a while my roommate subscribed to The Weekly World News because it was so ridiculously hilarious. We couldn’t wait for Ed Anger’s column. All of that and the lunacy of what was to come is on the opening track. 

Mojo gets as close to his live show here, especially on  “Stuffin’ Martha’s Muffin” (He even makes a mistake and just keeps going) and “Where the Hell’s My Money?”, the most unapologetic bite on the Blues I’ve heard but what he’s singing about is more honest to the form than Aerosmith or Mick & Keef’s versions. And everything Zappa tried to do on Thing-Fish is outdone here by Mojo who appropriates those styles and merges them with gospel and the aforementioned Jagger.

As we’ve seen in 86 this album has the requisite classic song cover. While most of them are awful, there’s something so hilariously charming about Skid Roper’s version of “Inna Gadd Da Vida”. His Elvis impression backed only by Mojo on harmonica & Arrowhead Water bottle is terrific. 

The album proper ends with one of my favorite songs of the era (and ever, really), “The Ballad of Wendell Scott”. The mini-lp that comes after is just added treats.  

https://music.apple.com/us/album/frenzy/219001857

The 1985 Listening Post - Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper - Mojo and Skid

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