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The Real Sock Ray Blue! (Texas Prison Field Recordings Vol. 3) (with the Toad Liquors) (1999)
Shanachie 9016 (CD)
Track listing:
All songs written by Mojo Nixon and published by Muffin Stuffin' Music [BMI], administered by Bug Music [BMI] except as indicated
Inside CD cover text:
THE PLAYERS:
Mojo Nixon - vocals, guitar, Honorary Team Captain 1998 U.S. Olympic Luge Team
The Toadliquors:
Mike "Wild" Middleton - Drums, Drinking, Vocals
Earl "B" Freedom - Bass, Vocals, 48 Hrs Tape
Honorary Toadliquor:
Joey "Mudbone" Harris - Guitars, Vocals, Speech
Toadliquor Emeritus:
Pete "Wetdawg" Gordon - Piano
Hired Gun Liquors:
Tom "Clump" Clifford - Harmonica & Shotguns
Patrick "Patches" Barker-Benfield - Organ
Gurf Morlix - Hillbilly singing, Guitars, Celis Pale Bock Bottle, Lap Steel
RECORDED AT:
Top Hat Studio - Austin, TX, Dec-Jan '97/'98
Produced by Ron Goudie
Engineer by John Harvey and Dave Eaton
Mixed at Ravenswork by Robert Feist, Eric Ryan, Chris Canning & Scott Burns
Mastered at Oasis by Eddy Schreyer and Gene Grimaldi
Guitar Stuff: Strings Provided by Dean Markley
Drum Stuff: Tommy's Drum Shop, Aquarian Drum Head, Fibes Drums, Pro Mark Sticks, Sabian Cymbals
MANAGEMENT:
$cott Ambrose Reilly - Bullethead - Invasion Group, Ltd., NYC
If you owe Mojo money, send checks to:
Lindsay Weinberg & Assoc., Los Angeles, CA
Booking Agent - John Bell, Entourage Talent NYC
The Cuban: Brad Navin
ART DIRECTION
Troy Finamore & Brett Dallesandro
PRODUCTION MANAGER Stacey Cooper
MOJO PHOTOS by Melanie Brown
OTHER PHOTOS by Allan Finamore
Liner Notes by John Swenson
Who is Mojo Nixon?
He is the Honorary Captain of the 1998 Olympic Luge team. He appeared on the cover of the Wall Street Journal the same week he appeared naked in Future Sex magazine. He debated Pat Buchanan on Crossfire. He was an answer on Jeopardy. He appeared on Politically Incorrect. He had two lines edited out of a song because his distributor was afraid of being sued by McDonalds. He once had to hire an armed guard for a show due to death threats from an angry Don Henley fan. He had Don Henley join him on stage to sing along on his song "Don Henley Must Die." His song "Bring Me The Head Of David Geffen" was abruptly pulled from an album after threats of lawsuits. He has performed shows with acts ranging from Soul Asylum, The Dead Kennedys and the Butthole Surfers to Koko Taylor, Jerry Lee Lewis and Ali Farke Toure. He was the subject of a New York Times op ed piece on Clinton's choice of campaign songs. His video for "Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant With My Two-Headed Love Child" starred Winona Ryder. This is his 12th full length album.
Who is Mojo Nixon?
Though his influence on 20th century culture is beyond measure, the very identity of Mojo Nixon is clouded by the fame of his prophet/protege Mojo Nixon II (John Belushi), who cashed in on many of Mojo's innovations, particularly his Joe Cocker imitation, on his way to TV and film stardom, even before the exploits of the real Mojo Nixon ever came to public light.
Though Nixon claims to be the offspring of black sharecroppers, secret FBI files obtained through the Freedom of Information act (1) seem to indicate that he is suspected of being an illegal alien smuggled in from Albania. There may be some identity confusion with another of Nixon's protoges, Steve Martin, who portrayed himself as the son of black sharecroppers in "The Jerk." (2)
No less an authority than Ed Swenson has speculated that the name "Mojo" was actually inspired by a disease attributed to a hung-over bank examiner by W.C. Fields, "Mojo of the G-GoGo." (3)
Others who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible believe that Mojo is a super-being whose pithecanthropine existence was predicted by Esau and dates well back into the old testament. (4)
Few clues to these theories have been offered by Mojo himself until this album. (5) Mojo's situation is informed by the dilemma faced by St. Augustine himself: "O lord, give me chastity, but NOT YET!" (6)
Mojo has tipped his hand here on the anti-techno anthem "Machines Ain't Music," which is played to the tune of "I Got My Mojo Workin'," and suggests that, like the Rolling Stones, Mojo is ultimately inspired by Muddy Waters. (7)
"Drum machines don't get drunk/and try to start a fight/Sneak around your back door/and try to screw your wife," Mojo sings, extolling the urtues of crazy human drummers. "If you ain't got no live drummer/Then you just disco doomed." (8)
The beatifically insane human drummer is one of several themes running through this work, which also covers murder, depravity, international conspiracy theories and sheer outrage for the love of it. "The Ballad of Country Dick" honors the patron saint of insane drummers, the Mojo running buddy and former leader of the Beat Farmers who died onstage behind the skins.
"Country Dick was our king/the truth he did sing," Mojo chants, "But that evil rotten turd/Mister Mike Perv/Laid Country Dick in his grave." (9)
Murder and madness are the dominant themes of the album, beginning with Mojo's comment on O.J. Simpson, "Orental James Is A Mighty Bad Man."
"It's a traditional mountain banjo murder ballad," said Mojo. "I tell the story from that kind of reality, it's psycho and hate-filled. People are afraid of the whole race thing and I'm not afraid of it at all. You've gotta treat each person by their actions, not by your forebearers or theirs. Ex-husbands killing their ex-wives over a jealous rage, this happens all the time. It's the number one cause of murder. That's who kills each other, husbands and wives. This really destroys, too, the second or third greatest football running back of all time, who is now a shithead, a liar, no better than some actor. Now he thinks he's the greatest actor of all time. Jim Brown said 'I'm not sayin' nothin' about O.J. until the motherfucker stands up and says the truth.' It's unmanly. It's a blight on all men. Suddenly this football guy is playing a Hollywood big lie. If I say it long enough and hard enough on enough TV shows people are gonna believe it. Facts be damned!"
The highlight of the album is Mojo's take on that most sacred of all bovines, Princess Di. Apparently five consecutive days of round-the-clock Dead Di coverage catapulted Nixon into a psychotic shit-rain of outrage that he called "Drunk Divorced Floozie (The Ballad of Diana Spencer)."
"She was a drunk divorced floozie/Goin' 120 miles per hour/With her A-rab-play-boy-toy/Down by the Eiffel Tower," sings Mojo. "She's just a jet set party girl/Gone to meet her maker/That nobility crap/Don't stop the undertaker." (10)
Mojo shifts the blame from the paparazzi to the phony worship of royalty and the star system it supports: "It was a pitiful public display/of unwarrented grief/A sure sign that/Our emptiness is complete." (11)
Mojo is perhaps the only man on the planet who can see the connection between sexgate, McDonalds and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
"It's all about fucking! Who cares?," he sez of Ken Starr's peepshow. "Have you seen 'Wag the Dog?' I was watching it in a theater with about 25 people and I was the only one laughing until about halfway through the movie. The people thought it was real. All that stuff is a distraction from what's really goin' on. They're poisoning the airwaves! They're making you eat mad cow meat in you hamburgers! They want you to believe the Eagles belong in a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame! Wake up America!"
"MTV, Warner Brothers, Viacom, they're all in cahoots with the devil! They're sucking Satan's dick! McDonalds is putting something in their food to make us weak, sterile and subservient. I call God up, say 'God, how come Country Dick's dead and Michael Bolton's still around?' God says 'Mojo, I've lost control of the planet.' The goddam aliens are in cahoots with McDonalds and the devil to make everything bland. You've been watching 'Aliens,' you've been watching 'X Files,' right? The fucking aliens are trying to make everybody worker bees, drones. Well I'm gonna fight these motherfuckers to the end of time. Eventually I'm going to be forced to fulfill my genetic destiny which is to lead an armed revolt against an oppressive government in a desperate struggle for freedom and liberty." (12)
Who is Mojo Nixon? According to Mojo himself, he currently believes he is actually a traditional folk singer named Sock Ray Blue.
- John Swenson
Notes:
1. ####$%%%$#(HPO+U%R%^$^^&*&*bmhvhfsdtesgdxgjdx. access denied
2. "The Jerk"
3. "The Bank Dick"
4. Genesis 17:1 may well be an account of the Ur-Mojo and his first meeting with "El"
5. Mojo utilizes many of the secret society themes. As Marrou notes in his analysis fo Augustine and his crew, "L'obscurite de l'expression, le mystere qui entoure i'dee ainsi dissimulee, est pour elle-ci le plus bef amement, une cause puissante d'attrait... Vela faciunt honorem secreti," an observation that applies equally well to Mojo.
6. Augustine, Saint. Confessions.
7. Nixon, Mojo. Address to the citizens of Texas, 1994.
8. Nixon, Mojo. "Machines Ain't Music," 1998.
9. Nixon, Mojo. "The Ballad of Country Dick," 1998.
10. Nixon, Mojo. "Drunk Divorced Floozie (The Ballad of Diana Spencer)," 1998.
11. Ibid.
12. Transcript of interview by the author with Mojo Nixon.
Bibliography:
Bakhtiar, L. Sufi Expression of the Mystic Quest. London, 1979.
Bayles, Martha. Hole in My Soul: The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American Popular Music. New Your: The Free Press, 1994.
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Princeton, 1949.
Cane, Gampiero. Canto nero. 2nd ed. Bologna: Cooperative Liberia Universaria, 1982.
Eliade, Mircea. Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return. (transl. Willard J. Trask). Princeton, 1954.
Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane. (transl. Willard J. Trask). New York, 1959.
Krone, Julie. Riding For My Life. Boston: Little, Brown, 1995.
Melhuish, Martin. Bachman Turner Overdrive: Rock Is My Life This Is My Song. Toronto: Methune, 1976.
Meltzer, R. Gulcher. Post-Rock Cultural Pluralism in America (1649-1980). San Francisco, 1972.
Ouspensky, P.D. Tertium Organum. New York, 1920.
Tosches, Nick. Country: The Twisted Roots of Rock 'N' Roll. New York: Da Capo, 1985, 1996.
Wind, Edgar. Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958.
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Last update: 20-Feb-2000
Send corrections, updates or additions to: Paul Clarkson