Post by Charlie O. on Feb 8, 2024 4:58:13 GMT
It's easy enough to write him off as a novelty artist. He WAS a novelty artist. But boy could he whip up a crowd.
I know a lot of you folks resent it when performers try to cajole you to sing, clap your hands, get on your feet, etc. - heck, so do I. But I don't remember Mojo ever asking. People just did it. He himself was so generous with his energy, it made you feel like an asshole if you DIDN'T give some back.
(You don't have to watch this whole video - I haven't! - just enough to give you a taste.)
Sometime in 1988 - late Spring, if I remember right - the rockabilly-blues-punk band that I had dropped out of college to play bass for got a gig opening for Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper in Charlottesville, Virginia. We had issues: we had a brand new drummer that we hadn't quite broken in (we never did, actually), and before our set's halfway point our guitarist's amp conked out. While he and one or two other helpful souls tried to fix it, our singer had a brainstorm: "Do you know 'Wang Dang Doodle' by Howlin' Wolf?" he asked me. I knew he only knew the slow version from the London Sessions album, which I didn't know as well, but I said "yeah, sorta..." We bluffed our way through the song with just vocal, bass guitar, and drums (I doubt the drummer had ever heard the tune before). It was awful. I don't remember how our set ended - I guess the guitar amp got rectified somehow and we carried on. It wasn't our worst performance ever, but it was probably our second-worst.
Mojo and Skid were SO NICE, though - especially Mojo. Absolute salt of the earth guys. Backstage, Mojo wrote out his phone number for us and told us to call him if we ever got to LA. (We broke up shortly after that gig, so we never got to take him up on that.)
And Mojo had issues of his own that night: it was the last date of their tour, he was physically run down, and his voice was BLOWN - I mean, the raspiest rasp you could imagine, incapable of projecting anything that might even loosely be considered a musical note. During their set, he sometimes had to take a break, and percussionist Skid - a far more versatile musician than most fans of the duo probably ever got the chance to find out - would do a solo number, which was not something he ordinarily did. On guitar, he played a SOLO rendition of The Shadows'/Jorgen Ingmann's "Apache" that was breathtaking; I'd pay to see him do it again.
But Mojo was a fucking champ. When he was on stage - and just to be clear, that was for all but maybe seven or eight minutes of their roughly-hour-long set - he gave that crowd everything he had and maybe then some. The crowd knew what was going on with him and his voice, and they loved him just for throwing himself into it - for loving THEM.
For me, that performance as well as his fraternal kindness towards us was an object lesson in how the Real Guys do it. I'll never forget it.
This obscurity might be my favorite recording of him/them - it's certainly one of my favorite Chuck Berry covers.
Rock in peace, Brother Mojo.
I know a lot of you folks resent it when performers try to cajole you to sing, clap your hands, get on your feet, etc. - heck, so do I. But I don't remember Mojo ever asking. People just did it. He himself was so generous with his energy, it made you feel like an asshole if you DIDN'T give some back.
(You don't have to watch this whole video - I haven't! - just enough to give you a taste.)
Sometime in 1988 - late Spring, if I remember right - the rockabilly-blues-punk band that I had dropped out of college to play bass for got a gig opening for Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper in Charlottesville, Virginia. We had issues: we had a brand new drummer that we hadn't quite broken in (we never did, actually), and before our set's halfway point our guitarist's amp conked out. While he and one or two other helpful souls tried to fix it, our singer had a brainstorm: "Do you know 'Wang Dang Doodle' by Howlin' Wolf?" he asked me. I knew he only knew the slow version from the London Sessions album, which I didn't know as well, but I said "yeah, sorta..." We bluffed our way through the song with just vocal, bass guitar, and drums (I doubt the drummer had ever heard the tune before). It was awful. I don't remember how our set ended - I guess the guitar amp got rectified somehow and we carried on. It wasn't our worst performance ever, but it was probably our second-worst.
Mojo and Skid were SO NICE, though - especially Mojo. Absolute salt of the earth guys. Backstage, Mojo wrote out his phone number for us and told us to call him if we ever got to LA. (We broke up shortly after that gig, so we never got to take him up on that.)
And Mojo had issues of his own that night: it was the last date of their tour, he was physically run down, and his voice was BLOWN - I mean, the raspiest rasp you could imagine, incapable of projecting anything that might even loosely be considered a musical note. During their set, he sometimes had to take a break, and percussionist Skid - a far more versatile musician than most fans of the duo probably ever got the chance to find out - would do a solo number, which was not something he ordinarily did. On guitar, he played a SOLO rendition of The Shadows'/Jorgen Ingmann's "Apache" that was breathtaking; I'd pay to see him do it again.
But Mojo was a fucking champ. When he was on stage - and just to be clear, that was for all but maybe seven or eight minutes of their roughly-hour-long set - he gave that crowd everything he had and maybe then some. The crowd knew what was going on with him and his voice, and they loved him just for throwing himself into it - for loving THEM.
For me, that performance as well as his fraternal kindness towards us was an object lesson in how the Real Guys do it. I'll never forget it.
This obscurity might be my favorite recording of him/them - it's certainly one of my favorite Chuck Berry covers.
Rock in peace, Brother Mojo.
. 
