Original subtitles

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[♪]

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX

[Mojo Nixon] My job, I've been put here on the planet to stir up some shit,

to get some rock and roll going, to be the fly in the ointment,

to be the Cheez Whiz in the caviar of life is what I am.

I can do anything I want. I'm a free man. This is America.

I'm free, drunk, and horny and I'm gonna do what I wanna do,

have some fun and you can't stop me, you knuckleheads.

["Ain't High Falutin'" by Mojo Nixon]

♪ Oh ♪

♪ I ain't got no tuxedo ♪

♪ I don't know What fork to hold ♪

♪ She asked me to a dance ♪

♪ Where they wear Fancy pants ♪

♪ Don't like me the way I am ♪

♪ Go suck some Spam ♪

♪ Ain't high falutin' ♪

♪ Little bit crazy ♪

♪ Ain't high falutin' ♪

♪ Pull my daisy ♪

♪ Her dad hates me At the front door ♪

♪ 'Cause I blew my nose On the floor ♪

♪ I ask him how it be ♪

♪ Down at the sock factory ♪

♪ He said, "Boy, what's that smell?" I said, "Muscatel" ♪

♪ Ain't high falutin' ♪

♪ Little bit crazy ♪

♪ Ain't high falutin' ♪

♪ Pull my daisy ♪

♪

To separate Mojo from the music,

it's like to say he was "Elvis is Everywhere."

It's just too simple and stupid.

Which is basically what record company types,

A and R types, are wont to do.

You know, to say, "Oh, well, this is the guy,

this is 'Elvis is Everywhere,' that's all there is."

And what I try to do is--

is produce the guy who's behind the song.

♪ Let's get out of here Get ourselves a beer ♪

Elvis come to Memphis, Otis Redding come to Memphis, Howlin' Wolf come to Memphis,

we figured we should come to Memphis, you know?

And there's a whole, you know, musical, social, cultural--

I mean it is the center of the Mid-South isn't it, you know?

It's the vortex of-- of this whole, you know, delta region.

It's, you know, all the energy from all these, you know,

all these hicks and everything out in the woods of all-- of all colors and denominations

kinda goes towards Memphis, you know?

And, you know, recording in San Diego or LA, I mean,

you know, you just-- you just don't-- you can't get good barbecue there.

I loved going to Memphis, I loved working with Jim Dickinson,

and we-- we-- we spent $100,000.

We spent three weeks in Memphis in the big Chips Moman Studio

with the faders that moved on their own and all that shit, you know--

you know, before they had computers,

they had to use automation on the board.

You know, I'm-- I'm trying to make the best,

biggest, loudest, rockingest record I can make.

["You Can Dress 'Em Up [But You Can't Take 'Em Out]" by Mojo Nixon]

In the band, I got Country Dick, my buddy from--

my best buddy from San Diego, playing the drums.

[Country Dick] I'm out here in Memphis

and I'm working on a Mojo Nixon album, of all things.

And believe it or not, it's turning out pretty good

considering, uh, it's Mojo's project.

[Nixon] I got John Doe. I've been in a movie with John Doe,

Great Balls of Fire.

I realized that he probably was the--

one of the more demented people I've ever met.

So, we just fit together like hand in glove.

[Nixon] I got Eric "Roscoe" Ambel from New York

who's a great guitar player and-- and, you know, a friend of Mojo,

and I got Bill Davis from Dash Rip Rock playing guitar.

Doing my time with the Liberation Army playing guitar

and adding squawks and squeaks with my guitar as where appropriate.

[Nixon] Also, Dickinson is playing keyboards on most songs

and Jim Spake is playing saxophone on most songs.

So we're making a big-- we're in a big studio making a big noise.

Otiswas kind of an experiment.

There was no band. You know, this was, like,

Dickinson put a band, you know, put a band around Mojo.

Mojo and Skid couldn't agree on the band situation,

so that's why they split.

He's like, "I'm gonna form a band."

And Skid didn't want him to.

My feeling is Skid didn't want him to

because he didn't want to split up the money more ways.

Skid Roper says they split because Mojo started a band

and didn't ask him to be in the band.

So their stories do not mesh up.

I remember the conversation, "You can be the bass player,

you can be a drummer, you can be a guitar player,"

because Skid played all those instruments.

What do you want to do in the band?

Which story is true? I don't know.

My songs had arrangements, you know, before,

but the arrangements would just be based on whatever I played, you know?

You know, Skid would just follow me, you know,

so we actually rehearsed in San Diego,

me and John Doe and Country Dick.

And that was pretty weird.

You know, 'cause a lot of times before,

I would write-- I would finish the songs, you know,

you know, as-- as I was singing them in the mic.

And this time they're gonna be a lot more finished.

Though I've left plenty of holes for Mojo style

extemporaneous pontification.

You could see him, he'd put down his notebook and, uh,

and get in front of the mic and, uh, and just start working from the brain

and-- and, yeah, I would say it was--

it was pretty interesting to see him, um, improvise.

[Nixon] There's a part of me, and this is something

that happens to all people that are funny,

because part of me wants to be taken seriously

as a musician, as a rock and roller.

I don't really wanna be taken seriously as a musician,

I want to be taken seriously as a rock and roller.

I'm still funny. I'm still a funny motherfucker.

"Don Henley must die.

Don't let him Get back together With Glenn Frey.

Yeah, Shane's dentist Don't work too hard."

This shit is funny, right? This shit is funny.

I'm a funny man, but I'm trying to put more rock and roll in it.

And Dickinson understands exactly what I want to do.

He understands that I want it to be raw,

primitive rock and roll.

I don't know what other producers are interested in.

Um, they're interested maybe being on the radio

or making quality craft.

I don't give a fuck about quality craft,

I want to make a loud, stupid, fun album

that some kid who's 15 and hasn't been laid yet

is gonna listen to a 100 times and go, "God damn!"

Trying to capture the Zen moment,

that's what all, you know, recording is about,

that's done properly, of course.

I try, as a producer,

not to just capture the Zen moment

because that would just be documentary production.

I try to extend the Zen moment, see, in space and time.

♪

[Mojo vocalizing]

[singing indistinctly]

[song picks up]

[Nixon] Dickinson was like the last keeper of the cool flame.

He was like the last hipster alive.

Pre-Bob Dylan, pre-Beatnik, pre-Allen Ginsberg.

Dickinson was like some link back to, you know, uh,

back to the blues and the jazz cats.

And then we were in Memphis and then Dickinson's also the keeper

of the secret history of Memphis,

him and his buddy Robert Gordon.

And they're telling the secret history, not the--

not the Al Green's, Sam and Dave history of Memphis,

the weird, crazy, nutty underground part of Memphis,

you know, where the real music is happening.

Real music is always happening,

sometimes it's just harder to find than other times.

You know, what we want to do

and I think what Jim will help us do too,

is to get, you know, get some of that funk and grit

and get some of that screwed-upness,

get some of that fucked-upness on the record, you know?

All these records, it's just computers and machines

and, um, you know, it's nice to listen to while you're vacuuming

or while you're riding in your car, but it--

it don't mean anything to you.

You hear it, it don't mean nothing.

Now when I'm screaming "Destroy All Lawyers," I mean it

and I want the music to sound like I mean it, too.

I want people to feel it, I want to be just kind of

this big stupid roar, you know?

You know, there's some kind of order there to it

and some kind of, you know, musicalness to it,

but it's essentially, it's just,

you know, there's this big-- [screams]

♪ Destroy all lawyers ♪

♪ Destroy all lawyers ♪

♪ Bunch of evil Weasel posers ♪

♪ Destroy all lawyers ♪

Mojo Nixon is now getting to be a very well known name,

at least in, you know, certain circles.

And we-- we're making a record and we have a line item that says go-kart.

It's a few hundred bucks.

And the record company, for whatever reason,

maybe somebody who had to approve the budget or press it,

they said, "Great, buy the go-kart,

use the go-kart when you're making the record,

but we gotta call it something else,

we can't have a line item in the budget that says go-kart."

But we're insisting, "No, it stays in.

The line item called 'go-kart' stays in."

We thought this was an important principle.

You can torture me, you can tie me down,

you can put hot spikes up my butt,

but you cannot make me listen to no Don Henley records.

No, you can't.

You know, some people say, "Oh, Mojo,

Don Henley's not so bad, you know,

he's just trying to be a socially conscious artist."

Well, you know, Don Henley is a fool!

♪ One, two, three, four ♪

["Don Henley Must Die" by Mojo Nixon]

♪ He's a tortured artist ♪

♪ Used to be in The Eagles ♪

♪ Now he whines Like a wounded beagle ♪

♪ Poet of despair ♪

♪ Pumped up with hot air ♪

♪ He's serious, pretentious ♪

♪ And I just don't care ♪

♪ Don Henley must die ♪

♪ Put a sharp stick In his eye ♪

♪ Don Henley must die ♪

♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪

♪ Quit playin' that crap You're out of the band ♪

[Nixon] And now I have a post-cowpunk supergroup.

I'm gonna be competing with Los Lobos and The Replacements.

I got some good songs. Here we go!

So, the record company goes out of business,

spends their last million dollars promoting David Cassidy,

not Mojo Nixon.

We had a video shoot all ready

with the original Bigfoot truck

to the tune of "I Want to Race Bigfoot Trucks."

It was-- the whole thing was gonna cost $7,500.

I was gonna get to drive the Bigfoot.

But no! We gotta spend the money on motherfucking David Cassidy.

♪ Watch him fry Don Henley must die ♪

♪ Don Henley must die! ♪

♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪

So, The Dead Milkmen are on the same label as us. They're on Enigma Records.

So, when "Stuffin' Martha's Muffin"

is shooting up the college radio charts,

simultaneously "Bitchin' Camaro" by The Dead Milkmen,

another funny song from a Philadelphia, kind of,

you know, funny punk rock group, is going up the charts.

Ha! Boo, boo, boo. Boo, boo, boo.

Who's the shortest, scruffiest, lightest band in the land?

Why, it can only be me and Skid Roper's good friends.

[Nixon] The Dead Milkmen are out on the West Coast

and they got nowhere to go for Thanksgiving.

So they come to my house in San Diego.

And they, you know, sleep on the floor

and I got 12, you know, turkey He Man dinners

and four bottles of Wild Turkey

and we have a big, you know, Thanksgiving celebration.

Their next record has this song on it, "Punk Rock Girl."

And in that song they talk about me.

"Your store doesn't have Mojo Nixon.

Your store could use some fixin'."

That song fucking goes crazy on MTV

and is, like, in the top five videos.

Then eventually we do this tour together.

And it's Cave Dogs, Mojo, Dead Milkmen.

We got tour busses, we're playing in front of, you know,

500 to 2,000 people every night.

Mojo's on fire! [laughing]

We hit the road for 10, 12 weeks or something altogether

and there was two busses, uh, with three bands.

And quickly, Mojo's bus quickly became the--

the bad, very bad bus.

We get back to San Diego

and we're dropping the bus off and the guy,

the owner of the bus company, comes on this bus, inside,

and this is the worst fucking bus

he has ever seen returned on tour ever.

And somebody's gonna pay for his bus.

Easily the best concert I've ever seen in my entire life

and I have seen-- I've seen the Rolling Stones,

I've seen Paul McCartney, I've seen Jerry Lee Lewis.

And that 1990 concert at Michigan State University

is still the best rock and roll concert

I've seen in my entire life.

[Nixon] The reason Joe put us in that song

is because we were nice to him when he stayed at our house.

When they-- when they were broke,

they were out in the West Coast, nobody knew who they were,

they had nowhere to go, they had no money.

And that's how I'm forever linked with The Dead Milkmen.

♪ Punk rock girl, Please look at me, Punk rock girl♪

♪ What do you see? Let's travel round the world ♪

♪ Just you and me Punk rock girl ♪

I madeOtis in Memphis, I got a touring band, The Toadliquors,

you know, out of Washington D.C.,

I got those guys with me on tour.

We're playing the songs fromOtis,

we're playing in bigger and bigger venues, it's going great.

All his buddies in the Del-Lords and Dash Rip Rock, Beat Farmers said,

"Well, these guys in Austin are-- are the guys, you know?

They're-- they're-- got a young band

and they're-- sure they'd play with you, um,

and it's a total rock and roll thing, it'll be perfect."

And we met, uh, and we got together

and immediately it all gelled and he was,

you know, the exact front man we'd always wanted.

The first show we played in Arizona was this--

this huge festival and we're at the top of the bill

playing in front of 20, 30,000 people in a big stadium.

And that's how big it was right then

and we'd, you know, flown in, had the bus and the whole deal.

It was-- it was great. So for us it was a huge thing,

but Mojo was always, from day one, just, you know,

"We're a band, we're a band. It's not Mojo Nixon and the Toadliquors,

Mojo Nixon and the Toadliquors is one unit

and that's how we're gonna do it every night on and off stage."

And that's how it's always been.

[Nixon] I'm happy as a clam,

except, you know, we're reaching the wall here

because one, ho-- you know, how big can Mojo be?

Two, you know, Enigma Records is getting ready to collapse.

Mojo knew now he wasn't going to be Bruce Springsteen.

He wasn't going to be big.

We're putting out the records on our own

using my wife's credit cards to fund them.

It was not a regular record company thing.

And we didn't really have the pressure of the record company thing.

He had no illusions anymore, which meant the--

the leash was off, the muzzle was off.

[Nixon] Why should I hold back? I'm in fucking Des Moines, Iowa.

I'm high, I'm drunk, I'm horny,

you know, I've fuckin'-- I've been awake for a week.

I'm gonna fucking say whatever comes into my mind.

I am gonna try to incite a riot.

I advocate the legalization of all drugs.

I advocate liquor sales 24 hours a day,

seven days a week, 365 days out of the year

and any goddamn time I want it!

["Redneck Rampage" by Mojo Nixon]

[Nixon] It was primitive, four to the floor,

simple, straight ahead rock and roll.

It wasn't no damn European art music.

It was music to dance to, to drink to, to fuck to.

Mojo Nixon and The Toadliquors

made a joyful noise unto the Lord,

the Lord of rock and roll, whoo!

[music continues]

♪ I'm on a redneck rampage ♪

♪ Tearing up the Everglades ♪

♪ I'm on a redneck rampage ♪

♪ Huntin' down Jimmy Page ♪

[Nixon] So, it's Wetdawg on the piano,

Earl B. Freedom on the bass,

and Wid on the drums.

Wetdawg was just outstanding. I mean, they all were.

Wid was solid, solid as he could be, but I was just amazed

'cause one of my main motives for doing an album with Mojo

was so I could work with Wetdawg because he blew me away.

There'd always be one, two, or three big Mojo fans waiting,

waiting for us to pull up in the van and we get out

and they'd immediately, you know, "Mojo, Mojo, Mojo!"

Want to talk to Mojo about whatever.

We'd do our sound check, Mojo was always good to these folks,

these fans, take care of them, sign all their stuff,

and-- and talk to them, and we get on stage and then--

now we got 200, 300 insane Mojo fans coming out to every show.

And that's what kept us going every night, night after night,

anytime we were in, 200, 300 Mojo fans

that are intense Mojo fans.

They've been listening to the records, they've been,

you know, believing everything that comes out

'cause it's all good stuff. It's all the truth.

You're free. Maybe you don't know it, but you should. You're free.

You don't need an identification. You know who you are.

Live like you wanna live, regulate yourself

and don't let anybody else tell you what to do.

And they come and they want to hear it from the man himself.

And when Mojo starts yelling out something, they yell it right back.

[audience] ♪ Gonna tie my pecker To my leg, to my leg ♪

♪ Gonna tie My pecker to my leg ♪

♪ Me, your mama, And some other whore ♪

♪ Floating down the river On a shithouse door ♪

♪ I'm gonna tie my pecker To my leg, to my leg ♪

♪ Gonna tie my pecker To my leg ♪

I'd give all my lines to have written just that one.

I don't even know. And the "Floating down the river on the shithouse door."

Together those are just two--

Mark Twain would fucking kill for those to be his.

Whatever line there is, we have crossed it and taken a shit on it. [laughs]

♪ She's all liquored up ♪

♪ Oh, she's normally A nice girl ♪

♪ She's all liquored up ♪

♪ Look at her go ♪

♪ She's all liquored up ♪

♪ I'm gonna attack The guitar ♪

To him, rock and roll is drinking and drugging

and late nights and wild times and he's doing all of that.

He was just a leader at that kind of, like,

carpe diem, rock and roll all day, every day,

not just for 90 minutes a night, you know?

Go to town and conquer. This Viking, you know, mentality

of rock and roll, sex, drugs, rock and roll, push it to the limit.

Mojo Nixon is wild, crazy, in America.

I love life, you love life. There are no rules.

The thing is, is that I didn't drink, I didn't smoke,

I didn't do drugs before I met Mojo.

I mean, it's-- it's-- I fully expected Mojo was going to die on stage

during those Toadliquor shows.

And darkness seeping into that

kind of confused me a little bit as a fan, you know?

Some of y'all going, "Mojo, you're fat, drunk and stupid

and you look like Cornelius from Planet of the Apes.

How can you lead a revolution?"

I can lead it with song. I can lead it with drink.

I can lead it with sex and drugs.

These are things I know something about.

These are things I advocate, you know?

You always see pro-choice, pro-life bumper stickers,

you never see one that says pro-fucking.

Unless you're behind me, baby. Pro-drinking, pro-fucking.

I'm not pro too drunk to fuck.

I'm not gonna vote in any elections anymore

because the Democrats and Republicans

are selling us the same bag of shit

with different colors on it, man.

I'm not gonna get involved with some third party. I'm tired of this voting shit.

I advocate the violent overthrow of the American government.

I call for an insurrection!

[music playing]

["Go Back Home" by Mojo Nixon]

♪ Wanna go back home, Back to North Carolina ♪

♪ Wanna go back home And see my dad ♪

♪ Wanna go back home, Back to North Carolina ♪

♪ Wanna go back To the things I had ♪

[Nixon] The story I heard

is the MacMillans were kicked out of Scotland

for being drunk preachers.

The other story is that the English hired the Scottish

to run their estates over in Northern Ireland.

So they hired the Scots to be their middle man,

but all this did really was make the Scots angry and the Irish angry.

So eventually those-- those are the Scotch-Irish

who eventually moved to the US.

They're the ones that became the moonshiners.

They're the ones who became, you know, the Daniel Boone,

Davy Crockett, hillbilly marksmen.

They love hillbilly music, they love drinking,

and they love telling people to get the fuck-- "Get off my land!"

[laughs] Right? They're ornery.

They have a giant mistrust of the state and federal government.

They go to church because they know they're going to hell.

If there's a hell, I'm gonna be there.

I'm gonna be there with Country Dick.

I'm gonna be there with motherfucking Bob Mitchum

and Hunter S. Thompson. We're gonna be playing cards.

If there's a hell, Mojo's going.

The thing is, you know, there probably isn't a hell.

["The Ballad of Wendell Scott" by Mojo Nixon]

When I was 12, they passed a leash law.

They passed the leash laws saying all dogs had to be on a leash

and my-- my childhood dog, Flint the dog, he was a free range dog.

He ran around, every night we let him go.

He'd stay tied up during the day, but at night we let him go.

He'd run around, he'd come back.

But he was a kid in Danville

and there was some sort of dog ordinance in the city

where they were going around,

the dog catcher was locking up all the dogs and, uh,

and then you had to go get your dog or something like that.

It was a real, you know, a real sort of fascist state dog thing happening.

[Nixon] I was on a big "free the dogs" kick.

I was gonna liberate my dog from the leash laws.

And my mom got me a T-shirt,

a sweatshirt for Christmas that I wore every day said "Free The Dogs."

And so Kirby didn't want to have the dogs chained up

and so, but they still passed the law,

but he stood for it and he went down there

and talked to him and, um, he wore this T-shirt.

Probably still wears it, or sweatshirt.

[Nixon] You know, I was very interested in politics.

I knew a lot about history and government.

My dad, you know, went to the state Democratic convention.

My uncle was involved in politics

and I was very much interested in that.

You know, at 12, I thought justice would prevail

and a person with a right cause

would be able to convince other people that that was right.

But not-- not so much, you know not so true.

To even get listened to you have to cause a shit storm.

Should all dogs be leashed because one bad apple spoils the whole bunch?

Are you gonna let one bad dog mess up my dog's life?

So I write a letter to the mayor.

You gotta keep the dogs free and if you, like,

if you allow this law to go into effect,

I can't be responsible for what might happen to your safety.

Mayor goes to a New Year's Eve party with my parents.

And everybody's there, drinking, band's playing and everything, you know.

And the mayor grabs my dad and says,

"Your son wrote me this letter threatening to kill me

if I enacted the leash law!"

["The Ballad of Wendell Scott" by Mojo Nixon]

In Danville, which was a town of about 40,000 people,

Danville in 1960 had no black people on the city payroll.

Not a janitor, not a-- not a garbage man.

Nobody. Why? Because them jobs where for white folks.

You know, it couldn't be more divided, more racist,

since also Danville is about one-third black.

It's not like there's a few black folks over in the corner somewhere,

there's black folks everywhere you go.

The big protests were in like '62,

'63, '64, so I was a little kid.

Martin Luther King came to town. There were actual riots.

There was literally, you know, you see the guys with the fire hoses and the dogs

that-- that all happened in Danville

My dad first worked at the newspaper,

first worked at the newspaper atThe Commercial Appeal.

That's where the guy, the famous photo of the Nazi who--

the Nazis sent my dad a Back to Africa ticket.

'Cause my father spoke out, you know,

that, you know, blacks should be treated equal.

That, uh, you know, we should have civil rights.

There's very few white businessmen,

there was my dad, there were some preachers,

there were some college professors, and there were some Jews.

So 99% of your white businessmen were not for--

even if they were for equal rights,

they were scared to come out and say it.

When Martin Luther King came to Danville

and gave his "We Shall Overcome" speech,

uh, Neill recorded it or had a recording of the speech

and played it over and over again on his-- on his radio station.

Uh, for that he got a lot of grief and he got his tires slashed

and maybe a little graffiti on the station, but he took some heat over that.

[Nixon] It was a calling for change.

You know, we're part of a great struggle

to emancipate a people, to get equality.

You know, and my father saw himself as part of that.

And my father's mother, my grandmother Roda-- Roda Holden McMillan,

she was like an Eleanor Roosevelt, you know, liberal in the South.

And she saw herself as part of that.

My father saw himself as a Southern liberal

who believed in equal rights.

["We Gotta Have More Soul" by Mojo Nixon]

So, my dad worked at the black radio station,

which was great because I could go down there and get records.

So, I had access to all these records that I did--

wouldn't normally have access to, you know, from the radio station.

"We're gonna save those for Neill's son, you know,

'cause he's gonna come down here and want to get them."

When I was a little kid, my favorite song

was "Sweet Soul Music" by Arthur Conley,

I heard that song and it transformed my life.

Every time, even now, when I hear that song,

I'm like sitting there in my car riding down the road, I hear them horns.

[vocalizing]

At first you might think it's the Marlboro Man,

but no, it's Arthur Conley going,

♪ Do you like good music? Yeah, yeah ♪

[Nixon] And the radio station had a van

where they did the remotes out of.

And it was a Volkswagen van called the Soul Mobile.

WILA Soul Radio and the Soul Mobile.

And I used to drive it around. [laughs]

He was talking about his childhood

when he was just a wee lad

and spending time with his father at the radio station,

the family radio station in Danville, Virginia,

not too far from where I grew up.

And it's a real nice part of the country, I can tell you.

Once when I was driving through a truck went by my car,

blew out my windshield, smashed it out in the middle of winter.

I stopped at a junkyard mechanic

and they put me a new windshield in for ten bucks.

That's the kind of place Danville is.

And I think that part of Mojo, that Danville part of Mojo,

is something a lot of people don't get about the guy.

As much as I hated being in Danville when I was 18,

you know, I carry Danville around with me.

I always loved, you know, the crazy preacher

who's going just a little too far.

The guy who spoke to your spirit.

He spoke to your sense of adventure.

Right, you knew he was lying, but you didn't care because it was exciting

and because it hinted that there was more going on

than the daily drudgery of existence,

the existential ennui of bullshit.

It hinted that there could be a magical place.

[crowd cheering]

["Jesus at McDonald's" by Mojo Nixon]

♪ I saw Allah at Arby's I saw Buddha at Burger King ♪

♪ I saw Moses at McDonald's ♪

There's kind of an unrelenting ubiquity. Did you get that?

There's an unrelenting ubiquity of Jesus and McDonald's.

Well, let's fuck with both of them by sticking them together.

♪ I saw Jesus at McDonald's At midnight ♪

♪ Said he wasn't Doin' all right ♪

♪ Said he didn't feel So fine, fine, fine ♪

♪ Said he's 'bout, 'bout, 'Bout to lose his mind ♪

[Nixon] That song is just two chords and an excuse to rant.

I start telling these stories, you know, and--

and the best part of "Jesus at McDonald's,"

I am at the mythical down by the power lines.

And, man, I'm at that place, that teenage make out,

you know, a place where you'd go and drink

and you're down there and you're out on the outskirts of town

and you've been out too late and then some-- something's gonna happen.

Something magical and special is gonna happen

down by the power lines.

Kirby left Danville, probably 1976, '75

to go to school in Ohio and pretty much never came back after that.

I was painfully aware

that there was something going on in music, in politics

in, you know, the-- the whole hippie thing.

The hippie thing didn't hit Danville till '75, you know, kind of like--

like after the Allman Brothers, you know, came through or something.

I was pa-- you know, reading Hunter Thompson

and Abbie Hoffman and hearing, you know, Arlo Guthrie and things,

you know, seeing Rolling Stone

and going to see Led Zeppelin, I knew something was going on.

It was his dream for me to go to law school, not my dream.

They thought because I was a good bullshit artist, I'd be a good lawyer.

And I am quite adept at lying. [laughs]

By the second year of college, I knew I hated it,

I hated the professors, I hated the fucking classes.

I wanted to fucking kill everybody there.

In church, in school, my parents,

"You're not gonna be able to get a job.

You're not gonna be able to get a real job, acting like this."

I ain't cut out for no real job, motherfucker.

But once my father died, then I real--

I don't have to go to law school.

In fact, I'm not going to law school. I'm moving to England.

I'm moving to England to live in a squat in Brixton

and I'm gonna try to join The Clash.

You know, and then I'm gonna move to fuckin' Colorado, because why?

Because that's where Hunter Thompson lives. I-- I--

♪ I gotta be me ♪

I'm in Denver. I got the job.

Uh, I'm in Vista, which is like a domestic Peace Corps.

I'm literally pretending to be Woody Guthrie.

I'm going to soup kitchens and playing Woody Guthrie songs

because Woody Guthrie is a crazy motherfucker.

Woody Guthrie is like a proto-hippie.

He don't bathe, he's jumping on the box cars

and traveling around, he's writing these songs.

You know, Woody Guthrie is the real deal.

All right, so if you love Bob Dylan, then you've gotta love Woody.

Bruce is doing "This Land is Your Land,"

and it's around the same time, you know, in the early '80s.

But, you know, he wasn't singing--

he wasn't singing the outlaw verses.

You know, there's the two verses

that are kind of the more socialist, communist,

you know, populist verses.

So I want to do "This Land is Your Land,"

which I always thought was a better song than--

a much better song for a national anthem

than "Star Spangled Banner."

And I also want to talk about the dream of America.

One of the things that makes America great is the American dream.

The American dream that you can get ahead.

That you can-- that you can do better than your-- than your parents.

That, you know, that the possibilities are unlimited,

that you're not being held down by the Pope or the king

and that, you know, if you work hard

and you're smart and you're lucky,

hell, you might win the motherfucking lottery.

And that's part of what makes America great

and I wanted to sing about that

in a kind of-- in an insane kind of way.

Going to the root of folk music is people like Woody Guthrie.

Nick Tosches wrote this book, Country, The Biggest Music In America.

Greil Marcus wrote this book, Mystery Train.

These two books informed me

about how there was something else

bigger and grander going on in American music.

That it wasn't just Madonna

or Paul Anka or even the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

There was a secret, and this is part of Dickinson, too,

there's a secret history to American music

and I just want to be a bump on the ass of that.

I'm living my Woody Guthrie folk protest organizer dream.

And I got a punk rock band, Zebra 123,

and I'm starting to write some songs.

He would send me, um, or bring me home cassette tapes,

and I could have one, one from-- one of his very first ones.

♪ Hey, ho, let's go ♪

That was, um, whoever that was,

but that was one of his first covers that he did

maybe with Zebra 123, one of those bands.

[radio DJ] Zebra 123 band on the KFML starting point.

What do you want to do with your music?

Where do you want to go?

[Nixon] We'll take it as far as it'll go.

If we can make records, if we can go on tour,

whatever we can do, you know.

[radio DJ] Okay, "Could Not Be Your Friend"

is the next thing we're going to hear

and that was written by-- by you, Kirby.

[Nixon] We usually dedicate this song to our favorite politician,

Mr. Ronnie Reagan.

♪ I've been dead For a real long time ♪

♪ I got nothing on my mind ♪

♪ Kick me in the head ♪

♪ Now I am Dawn of the Dead ♪

♪ This is the zombie law ♪

♪ We're gonna eat you raw ♪

[Nixon] Denver peters out, I come to San Diego

and that's when I see Country Dick and The Snuggle Bunnies.

And they had-- they had the same idea.

They're gonna take the energy and the excitement

of The Clash and The Sex Pistols

and put it to hillbilly music.

Put it to Hank Williams, you know,

to The Louvin Brothers, to Chuck Berry.

[playing "Anarchy in the UK"]

[indistinct lyrics]

♪ I hate everything on this Whole fuckin' planet ♪

♪ I hate my friends, They don't like me either ♪

♪ Between life and death, I choose neither ♪

♪ 'Cause I wanna be ♪

♪ Anarchy ♪

[Nixon] And lots of people had that same idea.

You know, Jason and the Scorchers and The Blasters

and, you know, the Del-Lords, lots of people have this idea.

"We're gonna combine, you know, American roots music and punk rock."

There-- there's a lot of country roots in punk rock.

I mean, look at The Clash for that matter.

[Nixon] Mojo and Jello go to Austin to make a country album.

Cockamamie scheme number 357.

Punk rockers don't like it, Mojo fans don't like it.

So, oh, yeah, we got to do it. That's what we gotta do.

One thing-- one thing I learned is we were politically aligned,

but we saw a lot of the same things through different eyes

and that was a very big learning experience for me.

There's a song on there called "Where Are We Gonna Work When the Trees Are Gone?"

which is much more empathetic with, you know, common work--

you know, workers just trying to feed their families and put food on the table.

And Mojo saw things very much from that point of view,

as did Darryl Cherney and Judy Berry,

the Earth First activists who wrote the song

and were later bombed by persons unknown for their troubles.

Which is what Jello and Mojo do,

they use their humor in a smart way

to say things that are sort of profound.

["Where Are We Gonna Work [When the Trees Are Gone?]" by Mojo Nixon]

♪ Well I come from a long line Of tree falling men ♪

♪ And this company town Was here ♪

♪ Before my grandpappy Settled in ♪

♪ We kept enough trees A-standin' ♪

♪ So our kids Could tow the line ♪

♪ But now a big corporation Came and bought us out ♪

♪ Got us working overtime ♪

♪ But tell me Where are we gonna work ♪

♪ When the trees are gone? ♪

♪ Will the big boss Have us wash his car ♪

♪ Or maybe mow his lawn? ♪

♪ Well, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a lumberjack man ♪

♪ But I fear It ain't for long ♪

♪ Where are we gonna work When the trees are gone? ♪

Punk people see him as somebody who is uncompromising

and that is such an important part of the punk aesthetic.

[blues music playing]

[Bullethead] I wasn't there when he became Mojo Nixon.

When I met him, he was Mojo Nixon, he was already Mojo Nixon.

By the time I met him, the only ones who called him Kirby

were his, his-- his, uh,

uh, his wife and his mother.

I don't think even his siblings were still calling him Kirby by then.

So, but, you know, the story is, he's in New Orleans

on a bicycle trip cross country

Wasn't he like hitchhiking around this country

and sleeping in a graveyard when the Holy Spirit came to him

and he woke up as Mojo Nixon, you know?

Just the whole idea about the myth, you know,

you know, print-- print the legend, right?

[Nixon] The bicycle ride across the country morphed out of earlier bicycle trips.

The first trip we took when I was 12,

me and John Matthews rode our bikes to Smith Mountain Lake

and spent three nights up there

and rode back with no supervision.

We found out if you put a can of WD-40 in the camp fire,

it makes, like, a mushroom cloud.

You know, we're 12 and it was a dream.

You know, coast to coast. It's gonna be like being in the wagon train.

You know, it's gonna be like being a hobo riding the rails. It's gonna be an adventure.

We're gonna meet people, do things that you can't do on a package tour

or you know, any kind of organized thing.

And it's 58 days from San Diego to Danville, Virginia.

It was unbelievable. And we're riding across the desert.

You know, there's-- there's no place to stop, fucking wind's blowing.

[howling]

We weren't in that good of a shape when we left.

We're going to New Orleans to see my buddy from college

who's now suddenly out of the closet.

Takes us on a big tour of bars in New Orleans,

and that's where I get drunk and I'm picking people up,

whether they want to be or not,

putting them in airplane spins like I'm Hillbilly Jim

in wrestling and charging them a dollar so I can get more booze.

And it's during this cross country bike trip

that I kind of have the Mojo revelation.

I got a journal, I'm journalizing.

Like 24 hours a day, you're together with two dudes.

We ran out of shit to say around Albuquerque.

They'd heard every story I got.

So I started writing

crazy stuff in this thing

and the first page says something like,

"The Life and Times of Mojo Nixon,"

this imaginary blues character in my mind.

In my mind from Pigfoot, Louisiana, there's this blues guy

who's the offspring of Ms. Rudolph

from Richard Pryor's Mudbone skit, she's the Voodoo lady,

Ms. Rudolph and Richard Nixon had a kid.

His name was Mojo Nixon. And that's me.

[laughs]

[blues music playing]

And I did a few gigs by myself.

Sitting down, I called myself Mojo Nixon.

I sit down and I stomped and played.

I did maybe five gigs like that by myself.

Then I hooked up with Skid. Skid was in The Snuggle Bunnies,

Country Dick and The Snuggle Bunnies,

the band before The Beat Farmers,

He was always around. I was always around,

he was always around.

I tried to hire him to play snare drum

or maybe one of those cocktail drums with me.

He said, "No, I don't want to do that.

I've got this washboard on a stick

I use in The Snuggle Bunnies when I don't play the mandolin.

Why don't I do that?"

I wanted him to be Voodoo Agnew.

Mojo Nixon, Voodoo Agnew.

He said, "No, I got another name. Skid Roper."

The Snuggle Bunnies used to play every Sunday night

at the Spring Valley Inn.

Spring Valley Inn is tiny, tiny little biker bar,

you know, where you can buy speed.

Imagine that, we're in a biker bar where you can buy speed.

When they would take breaks, me and Skid would jump up.

That's the very beginning.

That's the-- that's gotta be, like, 1983.

That's the very beginning of Mojo and Skid.

We'd jump up and play like three songs.

The Snuggle Bunnies became the Country Dick element,

you know, that brought all sorts of musicians together.

And that was the germ that started

the San Diego music scene that became so--

that shot off so many different groups.

[Nixon] Country Dick becomes, not only my friend, but kind of,

like, you know, my-- my mentor, my...

demented mentor, my dementor, if you will.

He's a mythical character. It's almost like he's Paul Bunyan.

[Bullethead] I don't know when they met, how they met.

All I know is I'm guessing Mojo had never met

anybody bigger, louder, bolder than himself.

All the things Mojo Nixon stands for,

the "be yourself, don't settle for mediocre,"

the, uh, "make it fun and exciting."

Country Dick embodied those in a way even greater than Mojo.

Mojo's whole early days were,

"I'm going to write songs.

I'm going to do things that will impress Country Dick."

[Nixon] He's the king of the San Diego scene.

He brings everybody together.

Country Dick wanted to do this thing, the Pleasure Barons.

The stars of the Pleasure Barons,

it's gonna be me, Country Dick, and Dave Alvin.

And it's gonna be, uh-- it's gonna be a roots rock,

Vegas-style tribute to Tom Jones on acid from hell.

Country Dick did, you know, Tom Jones and Elvis songs.

Dave Alvin did, like, you know, Johnny "Guitar" Watson songs.

It was supposed to be showbiz, Southern California

roots punk rockers doing a big showbiz show.

We went to Texas and then to Colorado

and then all the way up to Vancouver. and back to San Diego

And to this day, crazy drunk motherfuckers

always come up to me, "Mojo, man, I was there."

God damn it, I couldn't be more pleased

than to introduce to you, you already know

this son of a bitch, but here he is. Mojo Nixon!

["Gin Guzzlin' Frenzy" by Mojo Nixon]

♪ Out of a glass Or out of a cup ♪

♪ Man, I'll drink That stuff right up ♪

♪ Bombay, Tanqueray, Gordon's or generic ♪

♪ Bathtub gin made by Eric ♪

♪ Man, I want to get Supersonic ♪

♪ Somebody get me A gin and tonic ♪

♪ I'm in a gin guzzlin' Frenzy ♪

♪ I'm in a gin guzzlin' Frenzy ♪

♪ Gin guzzlin' frenzy, Gin guzzlin' frenzy ♪

♪ Man, oh, man What can it be ♪

♪ I'm in a gin guzzlin'♪

[Nixon] So it was like 16 people. It was chaos!

It's overwhelming. It's too much.

You know, we're-- we're in four vehicles traveling.

This is complete chaos and instability

that only could move because Country Dick wanted it to move.

[Nixon] Country Dick is painting with a giant canvas.

He's got his super deep voice.

On stage he's a master showman

and he's also completely full of shit.

Completely, you know, he's lying about everything

all the time to make it--

to make the show and himself better.

In another life we were Elvis impersonators

and Shirley MacLaine used to come to all our shows

and we were being held prisoner underneath Graceland

and we were tunneling out and we came out in this women's prison

in Arkansas that was run by Howlin' Wolf's mom.

And that's where we played our first show.

♪ I'm opening up the casket ♪

[Nixon] I was interested in the blues guys

that were at the outer limits of blues.

Street, you know, medicine show guys. Harmonica Frank.

There's a guy named the Reverend Pearly Brown.

He's got a sign around his neck says,

"God loves a cheerful giver."

He's on the cover of a Wet Willie album.

He stands on the corner in Macon, Georgia

singing songs to Jesus and got a cup on the end.

There's a guy named Bongo Joe

who's outside the Astrodome

and he's got a 55 gallon drum with some, uh,

with some hatchet handles and soup cans full of BBs and he does this,

like, performance art thing and that's what I want to be.

I had this record, this John Lomax record,

from a prison, from Angola State Prison in Louisiana.

And these guys are singing a song while chopping wood

and so, to me, that's like the root, root,

the root of the blues.

Leadbelly. I listened to Leadbelly, Howlin' Wolf,

John Lee Hooker, and things like that.

The most, you know, the most raw,

most primitive, most, you know, earthy,

you know, blues.

The opposite of Robert Cray, right?

The opposite of the smooth, sophisticated blues guy.

In "Jesus at Mcdonald's" he mentioned,

"I have the entire, you know--

I have the entire Robert Johnson,

Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker

record collection stretched before me."

As a 17-year-old kid in the suburbs,

I had no idea who those guys were.

But once I started listening to him,

I needed to know and I went to the record store and said,

"I need these. Who are these guys?"

Just kind of a primitive jungle,

you know, stream of unconsciousness, you know, uh,

you kind of click in on this, you know,

collective subconsciousness of the whole race.

You know, back when everybody was doing

them dances around fires.

[vocalizing frantically]

[Nixon] I want it down, deep, dirty.

I wanted to be in a juke joint in Mississippi

with a dirt floor and the one light bulb swinging back and forth

and motherfuckers stabbing each other in the ass,

you know, while the band's playing.

You know, I wanted fucking and stabbing

and music and drinking and drugging all going at the same time.

["Legalize It" by Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper]

-♪ I love ♪ -♪ I love ♪

♪ Psychedelic ♪

♪ Psychedelic ♪

♪ Mushrooms ♪

♪ Mushrooms ♪

♪ One, two, three, four ♪

♪ Everybody jump Up and down ♪

[vocalizing]

Do y'all think we should legalize psychedelic mushrooms?

[crowd shouting] Yeah!

Do you think we should legalize marijuana?

[crowd shouting] Yeah!

♪ What we gotta do? Legalize it ♪

-♪ What we gotta do? ♪ -♪ Legalize it ♪

-♪ What we gotta do? ♪ -♪ Legalize it ♪

-♪ What we gotta do? ♪ -♪ Legalize it ♪

-♪ What we gotta do? ♪ -♪ Legalize it ♪

-♪ What we gotta do? ♪ -♪ Legalize it ♪

-♪ What we gotta do? ♪ -♪ Legalize it ♪

-♪ What we gotta do? ♪ -♪ Legalize it ♪

♪ Gotta put them pushers Right in the grave ♪

[Nixon] So at first we're playing and we're also both in,

like, three or four other bands,

but all the other bands start fading away.

This one is different, it's only two people.

Another thing, right, is I'm obviously insane, right?

I-- I-- I'm all in, I'm committed.

If I'm all in, it's just-- it's a matter of time

before I got my people.

I can find the thing that will put them on my side.

Confidence in knowing that is half the battle.

And so, right, 'cause other bands are getting up

and they're playing their songs and they're staring at their shoes.

I got the five gallon water jug and I'm doing a song

about psychedelic mushrooms.

I'm making everybody sing along and half the time

I'm not even on the mic. I'm just so fucking loud.

I'm just yelling, you know? [laughs]

[crowd chanting]

What I was telling people what the performance was,

he'll do anything, right? He'll-- right,

he'll do anything to sell this motherfucking song.

There was an element of National Lampoon,

which I loved and, you know, whether you liked his music

or you didn't, I mean, you connected with this guy and you could see him.

No two shows were alike.

The promoters-- the promoters would call you

and they would tell you how much fun it was

last night, that you should have been there.

It was never about money.

[Nixon] And lots of people don't like it,

but the ones that do like it, they really like it.

They dig it. Plus, I am determined not to quit.

This is half of it also.

You know, Woody Allen said, "Half of success is showing up."

Well, hey, and another half of it is,

this girl, the girl I moved out here to San Diego,

she said, you know, "You're never gonna make any money as a musician.

You should go to law school, too,

so you have something to fall back on."

So, I wrote a song about her called

"You're Gonna Eat Them Words".

It's on the second album and fuck you. [cackles]

And I was wildly overconfident in my abilities.

I had way too much confidence for my actual level of talent.

Lots of people have talent, but they don't have drive.

I had drive out the ass.

In San Diego, you grow up, you can't really see bands

till you're 21, there's no alternative radio

because that side of the dial is all Mexican radio.

So, I grew up without really knowing anything

about the alternative music scene, underground,

except there's just one punk rock band

that had been in San Diego, The Penetrators,

that Country Dick had been the drummer in

and they were doing a reunion gig.

And opening the show was Mojo Nixon.

I had no idea that you could sing songs

about having sex with your friend's mother.

The kind of, you know, crazy blues, wild hollering thing

that Mojo did, I didn't know it existed

as a kid growing up in, you know,

conservative San Diego. And it was like,

for the first time in my life, I thought

maybe there's other people like me in the world.

His manager Bullethead would actually write me back,

which was amazing to me, like, just to have some--

that kind of contact was just unbelievable to me.

I still have those letters. I treasure them.

[Nixon] Me, Bullethead, and Skid, we pull into Muncie, Indiana,

and we used to bet, we'd have an over-under

on how many people would be at the show.

So there was a lot at Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday nights,

we were headlining shitholes with 12 people.

I used to carry around at all times cassettes

of what was the first album.

Because I was always ready to-- "I'm ready to hand you one.

Right, right, here's my band, we're looking to get a deal."

So at this point, we're playing up in LA a little bit.

Tex and The Horseheads were part of the cowpunk thing,

you know, with Blood on the Saddle

and Green on Red and Blasters and X and all the LA bands.

They're playing down here, they're part of it

and they're tied in with Jeffrey Lee Pierce and Gun Club,

and we open up for them and they dig it.

And they got, like, a manager guy with them

and I give him the tape.

So he gives it to his partner, Ron Gowdy.

Ron Gowdy calls me and says, "Hey, let's put this out."

And I go, well, I said, "No, that's just demos."

He goes, "No, no, no, put a little reverb on the vocal

and we'll put the motherfucker out."

We go to Hit Single here,

we run the four track cassette

through the board.

You know, put a little juice on it.

That's the first album.

Ron is very good at picking bands.

He picked Poison, he picked Stryper,

he picked Dead Milkmen,

he picked a bunch of good bands.

You know, he was good at hearing the potential.

Ron had his own little sub-label, RBI Records.

We didn't have an actual written deal,

it was all jackleg, bootleg, half-assed.

So anyway, the record gets a little attention.

It sells five or 10,000 copies.

I get a call from Bill Hyde, "Hey, we're gonna put you actually on Enigma.

Let's make another record."

And I have with me right here the president of Enigma,

the big cheese, the head cheese, the grand wazoo.

The CEO a-go-go. How you doing there, Mr. Bill Hyde?

-Doing fine, Mojo. -Good, good, good.

[Nixon] So I signed a deal with Enigma

and we make the second album.

And the second album has,

you know, "Stuffin' Martha's Muffin."

This is at the heyday of college radio and they got separate,

like, college radio charts and it gets a ton of play.

During the MTV era of Mojo Nixon,

he wrote a song called "Stuffin' Martha's Muffin",

which was a tribute to VJ Martha Quinn.

Martha Quinn! Martha Quinn!

Martha Quinn is a great big chicken, man.

She-- she ain't called me up or nothing.

She don't let me know what's going, man.

She don't even return my phone calls.

I thought at least she'd sue me or something.

And I went to this theater in San Diego. It was called the Ken Theater

and they show all these old art films and everything.

And I went to an afternoon matinee.

Mojo comes out with Skid Roper to open a movie,

which I've never seen a musician come out to open a movie.

And he's got a Sparkletts water bottle

and he's singing a song and this is at the height of MTV when it was getting going

and he's singing a song about, "I wanna be stuffin' Martha's muffin."

And the whole thing was just so wrong in so many ways

because there were people there that were there to see an art film.

Like, some art snobs and he's offending

half the theater and the other half's going nuts.

Well, I was going nuts.

It was great to have a duo.

Having a duo meant we could be on the road opening

for Soul Asylum or Butthole Surfers

or Einsturzende Neubauten, or we could be playing with Koko Taylor

or Jerry Lee Lewis or with Ali Farka Touré.

-[crowd cheering] -Speaking of Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper,

we've got a little album out here, God dang it.

This album is on Enigma Records, it's called Frenzy.

And I want to thank the college radio stations

for playing us a bunch and everything.

I thank y'all for supporting--

supporting what you call non-loverboy type music and everything.

I'm gonna leave you with just a little tune.

You're sitting at home alone rubbing your love bone

waiting for the telephone say, "I saw Jesus at McDonald's at midnight."

[Bullethead] So then, we do an EP,

it has "Burn Down the Malls" on it. We make a video.

♪ You know, it started out Just kind of a corner store ♪

♪ Then it turned into A shopping center ♪

♪ Oh, I remember The shopping center openings ♪

♪ Man, they used to have Those big lights shining up ♪

♪ And now, now where do The old folks go? ♪

♪ Where do The young kids go? ♪

♪ What's America, What's America turning into? ♪

♪ Mondo condo shopping mall Hell I say ♪

♪ Burn down the malls, Burn down the malls ♪

♪ Burn down the malls, Burn down the malls ♪

I meant it. I meant burn down the malls.

And the mall is just part of the everything turning into

fucking Mcdonald's, everything turning into some kind of national chain.

A local guy who owns his own business, he's part of the community.

A corporation is not part of the community.

Every time a shopping mall or a giant corporation shows up in your neighborhood,

a little piece of your soul is chipped away

and it ain't coming back. It ain't never coming back.

"Burn Down the Malls" was meant to be a flexi-disc for The BOB.

And as we were driving to the studio we were going to record the EP,

"Get Out Of My Way" and Mojo wrote the song in the van.

He was playing guitar, Skid's in the back, lying down,

working out the stuff on the washboard. And we get to the studio,

record it in one take, and Ron Gowdy from Enigma said,

"That's not going on The BOB flexi-disc. That's going on the record."

And then it ended up being the video that we shot for a few hundred dollars

and, uh, and was really a great step.

People loved the song, college radio loved the song.

And then MTV, at least on120 Minutes and some of their specialty shows,

started playing this video that was made for a few hundred bucks.

120 Minutes,Sunday night on MTV is playing the shit out of it,

you know, every week for six months, "Burn Down the Malls".

All the clubs we opened at before, we're now headlining

and we're making money and we're also--

we're in this position where, because it's just the three of us,

we can survive on a lot less money because if a band has

four people in it and they got the road manager and the T-shirt guy

and the light man and the sound man, they're losing money.

We were making money.

Still, it's all dudes. It's just dude.

It's a sausage fest. Dick City at the Mojo show.

The front row is just full of huge Mojo fans, huge.

I mean, huge.

They love Mojo, but huge because they're huge people

and they're just, like, they take it all in.

They take all the Mojo in them and it just explodes within their body

to a point where they become the big Mojo fan.

Sometimes you need that affirmation that you're alive

and listening to Mojo's music and his message just really sat with me.

It wasn't just about, you know, making fun of--

of Don Henley or Debbie Gibson.

I mean, yeah, those songs were fun and I'm glad that they got

other people to listen, but that's not what it was about.

[Nixon] We go and make the next record and we would do "Elvis is Everywhere."

Guys are now bringing girls to the show. [cackles]

-♪ Who built the pyramids? ♪ -♪ Elvis ♪

-♪ Who built Stonehenge? ♪ -♪ Elvis! ♪

-♪ Who built Easter Island? ♪ -♪ Elvis! ♪

♪ Why they call it vitamin E? ♪

♪ Elvis! ♪

Elvis is everywhere. He's in everything.

He's even in Beanie Weenies. I think I've been eating

so many Beanie Weenies lately that the spirit of Elvis

has just jumped up inside of me there.

You know, you see a guy walking down the street, pushing a shopping cart

Talking to himself, is he talking to God?

Is he talking to Allah?

Is he talking To Robert Anton Wilson?

He's talking to Elvis, Elvis.

Really normal people, like, people you meet

at shopping malls, you know, they go,

"So what kind of music does your band play?"

And I go, "Well, it's crazy. It's rock and roll,

it's rhythm and blues, it's comedy,

it's country, it's front porch, it's down home,

it's nasty, you know, and everything."

And they go, "Golly, is it-- is it like Bon Jovi?"

And I go, "No, it's not." [laughing]

The vibe of the music with Skid was definitely,

uh, more of a down home sound.

Washboard and guitar and we'll take on the world.

And that's pretty exciting.

[Nixon] Then the next big thing, we opened for The Pogues.

Now we're fucking-- we got-- we're on TV.

[cackling]

Well, you all know about Shane, you know, the singer in the Pogues,

we toured with the Pogues a couple times.

In fact, I had a song on my last record,

"Pirate Radio."

And I was singing it and I wanted to do a song

about this pirate radio station that the FCC closed down in New York.

And I thought, "Well, I'll make it a pirate song."

You know, the pirate song is kind of like an Irish song.

He still thinks it's an Irish song,

but it's not an Irish song. It's a Mojo song.

♪ The Coast Guard's a-comin' ♪

♪ To shut the pirates down ♪

♪ They don't believe In free speech ♪

♪ The FCC's in town ♪

♪ Their hacksaws And their hammers ♪

♪ They smash it all to bits ♪

[indistinct lyrics]

♪ Sing! Aye, ay, mateys ♪

♪ Oh, come on the pirate radio ♪

♪ Land of the free And home of the brave ♪

♪ FCC, crawl in your grave ♪

Okay, everybody, drink from their plunger!

We toured about three weeks with the Pogues

and we did about five weeks on our own down South mainly.

We're doing another tour. We're going to Europe.

We're gonna have an EP come out.

You know, I feel like pretty soon

we're gonna have world domination, you know?

So why do you think people are eating up your stuff right now?

Well, I don't know. I mean, they're not quite eating it up,

but everything is going real good.

I think because we're just freewheeling nuts.

We don't pretend to be something we aren't.

We just like to have a good time, let people know it's okay to have a good time.

So many people walk around, they're like, "God, is it okay to dance?

"I mean, maybe, can I clap now?

Gosh, if everybody else is clapping, I'll clap."

I mean sometimes you just gotta cut loose.

[yells] And just be free, you know?

[Bullethead] We were on the road, I think, 200 days that year,

which is a lot of days and a lot of venues that were 12 people.

We used to bet how many were gonna be there.

Sometimes there'd be 12 and then you'd do shows

where there's 1,000 people, like here in Austin.

It was-- it was all sort of exploding.

It was a lot of the tension between this crazy cult figure

and this sort of mainstream starting to catch on.

Uh, and starting to do some MTV stuff, some TV appearances.

Alternative radio was just exploding

so he's doing that and you sort of--

you know, we got caught up

in this fantasy, how big can this get?

[audience cheering]

From their new album, Bo-Day-Shus!!! Where is that album?

Here it is. Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper!

-Give it up! -[audience cheering]

["Elvis Is Everywhere" by Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper]

♪ When I look out Into your eyes out there ♪

♪ When I look out Into your faces, You know what I see? ♪

♪ I see a little bit of Elvis In each and every one of you Out there ♪

♪ Let me tell you, well ♪

♪ Elvis is everywhere, Elvis is everything ♪

♪ Elvis is everybody, Elvis is still the king ♪

♪ Man, oh, man, What I want you to see ♪

♪ Is that the big E's Inside of you and me ♪

[Nixon] "Elvis Is Everywhere" is actually getting on regular rock radio.

It's getting on, like, morning shows.

All the variations of alternative and college

and weirdo and Dr. Demento, they're all playing it.

So it's getting huge play.

And it also, it was just by chance that it came out

the same week that Elvis is on the cover ofTime and Newsweek

the week before the 10th anniversary of Elvis's death.

I didn't-- you would think that I would have known that.

No, fuck no, fuck.

Just you know, synchronicity or,

there was an Elvis-- there was a vibration

10 years after Elvis's death,

there was a vibration in the air.

I sucked it in, spewed it out as the song.

There's two things going on. There's one,

I'm making-- I'm celebrating the greatness of Elvis

and I'm making fun of Elvis fans,

but I'm also celebrating them too because I am one, right?

And Elvis and his fans represent what's the best

and the worst about America.

♪ Yeah, And Elvis is in Joan Rivers ♪

♪ But he's trying To get out, man ♪

♪ He's trying to get out ♪

Can we talk? I've got Elvis inside me. [chuckling]

Beavis, that doesn't sound anything like her.

-Oh. -[both chuckling]

Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

[Nixon] Elvis is like the American Jesus.

When Elvis dies, there's all these books written about him

kind of like when Jesus died, there's a bunch of books written about him.

They're called the New Testament.

And Peter Buck from R.E.M.

had a shrine to Elvis in his bathroom.

Here Elvis has been dead 10 years.

So I'm just picking up on this.

Plus Elvis, Elvis could do the greatest thing

and the stupidest thing in the same five minutes

and he didn't seem to know the difference.

Elvis is rock and roll. There is no rock and roll without Elvis.

And Elvis is in everybody. He's in everything.

And this is also part of taking mushrooms early on

and realizing the interconnectivity of all existence.

You know, this is what happens when you take acid and mushrooms.

You realize, "Oh, nature is all intertwined in ways

we'll never fucking even begin to understand."

Right? That, you know, that's how high I was.

♪ Elvis is everywhere, Elvis is everything ♪

♪ Elvis is everybody, Elvis is still the king ♪

♪ Man, oh, man, What I want you to see ♪

♪ Is that the big E's ♪

♪ Inside of you and me, Elvis is everywhere ♪

Yeah, Butthead, go-karts.

Yeah. Go-karts rule.

[Beavis] When I'm old instead of a car, I'm gonna have a go-kart.

[chuckling]

♪ That the big E's inside Of you and me, Elvis! ♪

You know, they come up to me after a show and they say,

"I really like that 'Elvis is Everywhere' song,

but do you like Elvis?"

I say, "Yeah, I like Elvis." I say, you know,

"The song wouldn't work if I didn't like Elvis," you know?

Elvis is the point man for the sexual revolution.

Elvis goes on TV in 1956 and wipes out 2,000 years

of Judeo-Christian uptightness about sex and stuff.

2,000 years of, you know, "Cover your body, your body is nasty."

2,000 years of no dancing and no having fun.

And Elvis goes on TV and Elvis just is, you know,

this kind of the life spirit, you know, the thing that makes us create more life.

It takes two people to make new people

and Elvis is on TV just making sure that we understand

all that real clear and everything.

♪ One, two, three, five ♪

MTV was trying to hold on to its cool factor

and within that they were making these great promos

that always threw you off a little bit.

They were a little off-kilter,

a little on the edge, trying to keep the cool up.

So they got Mojo and they had seen his shows,

they had seen the banter between and in that wild man

evangelist mode that he gets into.

They said, "We have to put this on film.

This has gotta be a part of what we are."

[woman] Marker.

[Nixon] They would get outside characters,

kind of almost outsider art,

use them in their promos to make them appear to be hip

while what was on TV was a Journey video.

Once Journey found out they could make a video, it's over for MTV

in terms of being hip and cool.

Mojo is unbridled,

unhinged, unfiltered.

So putting him on the air sends a signal automatically

-"We're still rebellious." -On an equally funky front,

we spent last Saturday with our man Mojo Nixon

who got married at a place called Fun Farm Go-karts

out in Chula Vista, California

in pretty much the unhinged manner you might expect.

We were glad when we found out that Mojo

wasn't really going to marry his 13-year-old cousin.

["Wedding March" playing]

[woman whooping]

Congratulations, guys.

They approached me and they said,

"We'd like for you to do these promos

kind of like the Randee of the Redwoods thing."

And I'm like, "No, no, no, no. I'm not gonna be co-opted by the man."

And everybody said, "No, you should actually talk to them."

So I did talk to them. I made a list of 24 things.

I demanded complete, you know, artistic control.

You gotta pay me, you gotta pay Skid.

Complete control over everything.

They agreed to all of it!

[laughing]

Brothers and sisters, bring on the revolution,

I am the Reverend Mojo Nixon from the screaming church

of the Epileptic Jesus.

They're reading books by guys from France.

You know, what's that guy, "Camus-moo"?

The patron saint of the existential cow.

And "Nietzscheshiki" and Kierkegaardian.

I don't quite get what's going on here,

but I know it's kind of cool.

[yelling] You can get married, screw yourself up real good.

[yelling] But you can't buy beer.

♪ Yeah, I got a girl Who walks just like a duck ♪

♪ Yeah, I got a girl, She just loved to-- ♪

Hey, you thought I was gonna say a bad word, didn't you?

This regular TV stuff is making me crazy!

Crazy!

[yelling] I'm sick of it.

I'm sick of it! Die, die, you pig!

You evil pig!

Die, die, die, die!

Mr. Nixon, I gather Mojo is not your baptismal name,

so we'll just go with Mr. Nixon.

Next thing you know, here's Mojo Nixon...

[chuckles] ...facing off against Pat Buchanan on CNN.

You look like a fellow who would want a warning label

on that and say, "Look, this is rotten stuff."

-No, no, no, no. -Isn't that true?

You're misreading my face there, Mr. Buchanan.

You know, he's fought the censorship thing all the time.

I mean, he's always pushing the envelope.

Almost every record will have a sticker on it saying,

"This contains something that will offend somebody."

You know, all politicians lie very well, Mojo doesn't.

Mojo is a truth-seeking missile.

This is the land of the free, the home of the brave.

You have to take responsibility for your actions.

You know, he wrote an article for Hustler

back in '86 and they edited stuff out of it.

I guess Hustler draws the line, you can't talk about Jesus' tally whacker.

[funky vocalizing]

["Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant With My Two-Headed Love Child" By Mojo Nixon]

♪ Debbie Gibson is pregnant ♪

♪ With my two-headed Love child ♪

♪ It's a bigfoot baby, All covered in fur now ♪

♪ Stark raving naked In the fornication nation ♪

♪ We were secretly married Out in Las Vegas ♪

♪ At a little bitty chapel, Joan Collins married us ♪

♪ Rootin', tootin', Ain't high falutin' ♪

♪ Rick Astley is a pantywaist, Mash my butt in his face ♪

♪ He's teeny tiny, Two inches of terror ♪

♪ They're all Gonna scare you ♪

♪ Hair-brained, Cockamamie, Knuckle-headed, Idjit, galoot ♪

♪ No truth to the rumor About Spuds and Debbie G ♪

♪ Only went to the motel Just to watch a little TV ♪

♪ Hate that dog, He must die ♪

"Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant With My Two-Headed Love Child"

was written sort of spontaneously in Australia, actually.

Originally performed on stage

as "Kylie Minogue Is Pregnant With My Two-Headed Love Child."

Hi, I'm Debbie Gibson.

I got this video. I got this video.

I got Winona Ryder.

I got Winona Ryder to play Debbie Gibson.

Me and Mojo had talked about it when I first heard the song

in Memphis when we did a movie, Great Balls of Fire,

together and he played me the song and I was like,

"Oh, if you make a video let me be Debbie G!"

[Nixon] I've gone to Memphis

and got Jim Dickinson

who's playing piano on it and producing the thing.

I shot the video in New York.

MTV did a, you know, a little news feature

with Kurt Loder, "And now let's find out

about Mojo making a video about Debbie Gibson."

And it ran on MTV News.

This one standing for outrageous,

which pretty accurately describes the video

that Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper shot this week

for their next single, "Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant With My Two-Headed Love Child."

There's no way to describe this thing in words, so let's just take a look at it.

Well, I'm going to wrestle in green Jell-O

with Tiffany, or a girl who's playing Tiffany.

Sounds good to me.

I'm going to give birth

to the two-headed love child

and I think that's it for today.

There's something in Rolling Stone where she said something about,

she was gonna write a song about me, but that's all I heard.

So I'm thinking, man, this is gonna be bigger than Jesus.

You know, this is gonna be bigger than Jesus' dick.

It's gonna be fucking huge!

Totally, this is the greatest role.

Debbie Gibson! Teen dream.

[Nixon] All of a sudden, MTV won't play the video.

And, you know, and they start giving,

"Oh, it's just got the word fornication in it."

It turns out,

see, I'm making fun of Rick Astley,

Tiffany, Debbie Gibson, and Spuds Mackenzie.

That's how they make their money.

And when MTV took a turn away from music

and more towards business and all that entails,

Mojo had problems with them.

And those culminated in "Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant with My Two-Headed Love Child"

not making it onto the air.

It was pretty apparent to Mojo they were never going to run the video.

They had gotten pressure from, whether Budweiser as a sponsor

or Atlantic Records because of Debbie Gibson,

which we later found out there was a lot of pressure

from that front, they're not gonna run this video.

The record company, the manager, "Mojo, you gotta make the edits.

You gotta do these things," and Mojo's just like,

"This is not where we need to spend our time.

This is not any fun. I'm not having fun with this conversation."

So he calls up main contact at MTV, he says, "Here's how it's gonna work.

You need to tell my people that you're never gonna run

his video no matter what we do

and you need to get them to tell the truth.

And if you don't, I can't keep doing spots for you."

And I think he was scheduled to do a spring break.

Mojo did, uh, Spring Break in Daytona and he kept saying,

"I've got a boner in Daytonar," and they didn't like that.

And they would not come out flat and say, "We're not running this

because we're getting outside pressure."

They wouldn't tell them that.

And Mojo wasn't saying, "You have to run the video."

He didn't expect they would, he thought it was too wild.

He didn't care if they would, but he said,

"You have to be straight that you're not running it

or we can't have a relationship."

["This Land is Your Land" by Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper]

♪ This piece of dirt under Our feet doesn't belong To just one person ♪

♪ The person With the most lawyers Doesn't own all of it ♪

♪ It belongs to everybody ♪

♪ This land is your land ♪

[Nixon] It's shocking that I got as far as I did.

It should have been, "Fuck you, Mojo," the first time

before I made the promos, but somehow it wasn't.

Now some people say, "Well, Mojo, you fucked it up."

But see, had I given in, then I wouldn't be Mojo.

The thing people loved about me, the thing people liked,

was that I was gonna go too far.

I was gonna-- fuck, it was gonna be too much.

That's why they came to the show.

That's why they bought the records.

Nobody wants safe, nice, boring, exercising,

you know, 12 hours of sleep Mojo.

People don't want that bullshit.

People came to the show for the chaos,

for the anarchy, for the "fuck you."

There was two things going on at the show,

"We don't give a shit and fuck you!"

And, well, I only knew one way to do it.

I only knew one way to do the show,

high, drunk, and horny.

No one wants to see Mojo with his hair dyed

and fucking, you know, eating tofu and got contacts in.

And, "Here's another one of my songs from 1986.

I hope you like it. I hope nobody's offended."

Fuck all you people! Fuck you motherfuckers!

I hope everybody's offended.

I want to offend people that ain't even here.

["You Can't Kill Me" by Mojo Nixon]

♪ You can't kill me I will not die ♪

♪ Not now, Not ever, no never ♪

♪ I'm gonna live A long, long time ♪

♪ My soul raves on forever ♪

♪ Time has come We will not wait ♪

♪ We storm the gates at dawn ♪

♪ Busting out of here Into the world ♪

♪ Sing our victory song ♪

♪ Come on, boys ♪

♪ You can't kill me, I will not die ♪

♪ Not now, Not ever, no never ♪

♪ I'm gonna live A long, long time ♪

♪ My soul raves on forever ♪

♪ Aim-A-Flame Johnson ♪

♪ Well, you can shoot My body full of holes ♪

♪ But you can't kill The spirit of rock and roll, Baby ♪

["Are You Drinking With Me, Jesus?" By Mojo Nixon]

♪ Oh, well I saw you Sitting there ♪

♪ I was trying not to stare ♪

♪ I wasn't sure If it was you ♪

♪ I didn't know Just what to do ♪

♪ Well, are you drinking With me, Jesus? ♪

♪ I can't see you very clear ♪

♪ Are you drinkin' With me, Jesus? ♪

♪ Won't you buy A friend a beer? ♪

♪ As you nestle On your barstool ♪

♪ I felt your Warmness within ♪

♪ I looked down at my pants, And that wasn't warmness ♪

♪ I wet myself again ♪

♪ Well are you drinkin' With me, Jesus? ♪

♪ I can't see you very clear ♪

♪ Are you drinking With me, Jesus? ♪

♪ Won't you buy A friend a beer? ♪

♪ Does your head pound, Jesus? ♪

♪ As hungover you do rise? ♪

♪ How does paradise look, Jesus ♪

♪ Through holy Bloodshot eyes? ♪

♪ Should we take A cab home, Jesus? ♪

♪ Shit, man, We can hoof it from here ♪

♪ I know You can walk on the water ♪

♪ But can you walk On this much beer? ♪

♪ Let me ask you Are you drinking With me, Jesus? ♪

♪ I can't see you very clear ♪

♪ Are you drinking With me, Jesus? ♪

♪ Won't you buy A friend a beer? ♪

♪ Everybody now! Are you drinking With me, Jesus? ♪

♪ I can't see you very clear ♪

♪ Are you drinking With me, Jesus? ♪

♪ Won't you buy A friend a beer? ♪

♪ Yeah! ♪

♪ Thank you, Jesus, Yeah, that's my tab Go ahead and pay for it ♪

[music stops]

["UFOs Big Rigs & BBQ" by Mojo Nixon]

♪ Howdy! ♪

♪ I'm gonna tell y'all a story You ain't gonna believe ♪

It's Kirby's wedding. I had mine at a church in Hamlet, North Carolina.

He's having his at a go-kart in San Diego or Chula Vista?

Is that where I am? Wherever I am.

[laughs] It's fine. It's just fine.

♪ I seen somethin shootin' Right across the sky ♪

♪ All covered in fur With one big eye, shazam ♪

Now, I will say that Don Henley

did come on stage with us

and got up there and joined us on stage.

Was one of the few times I've ever seen Mojo speechless.

He looked around at us like, "I guess we gotta play the song."

We fired up "Don Henley Must Die" and to his credit

he sang it with us and rocked out and had a good time.

♪ Well, UFOs are big rigs That come from outer space ♪

♪ Stoppin' off At the truck stop, Earth ♪

♪ Lookin' for Some Food to eat ♪

What are you waiting on? This is it.

You're alive once. This is your chance.

What? You're gonna fucking party up in heaven?

I heard there's no fucking booze up there.

♪ Now that furry Flying saucer boy said ♪

♪ He was looking for Some barbecue ♪

♪ So I took him down To Dreamland Barbecue ♪

♪ In Tuscaloosa, Alabama, You know what we got? ♪

♪ We got ribs, white bread And ice cold beer ♪

♪ We was eating so hard I didn't even stare ♪

♪ And that boy was ugly too ♪

♪ Said the waitress Reminded him of someone ♪

♪ Who was far, far away ♪

♪ Took another white pill Another long day ♪

♪ Everybody now, Well, UFOs are big rigs ♪

♪ That come from outer space ♪

♪ Stoppin' off At the truck stop, Earth ♪

♪ Lookin' for some Food to eat ♪

♪ Ya can't get No Beanie Weenies ♪

♪ Out past the great unknown ♪

♪ Well, UFOs are big rigs Far from home ♪

♪ C'mon, boys! ♪

♪ I think I see Mr. Spock over there ♪

♪ Hey ♪

♪ Then that space alien said Something that was music ♪

♪ To my truck driving Carbuncle-budded ears ♪

♪ Let me tell ya ♪

♪ Well, out past Mars Ain't no speed limit ♪

♪ Said he owns his space truck He don't rent it ♪

♪ And his back was aching Could he somewhere get him A massage? ♪

♪ There stood Sapphire's Space Age Love Garage ♪

♪ Ha ha, c'mon, Well, UFOs are big rigs ♪

♪ That come from outer space ♪

♪ Stopping off At the truck stop, Earth ♪

♪ Lookin' for some Food to eat ♪

♪ Ya can't get No Beanie Weenies ♪

♪ Out past the great unknown ♪

♪ Yeah, UFOs are big rigs Far from home ♪

♪ Yeah, UFOs are big rigs Far from home ♪

♪ Oh, yeah ♪

♪ Man, that boy shot out Of here faster than Richard Petty ♪

♪ Look at That antenna he's got ♪

♪ I betcha he could pick up Dave Nemo and the Road Gang ♪

♪ On the other side Of the Sun ♪

[music fades]