He wound up as a periodic host for the channel during 1988 - an unlikely turn of events given the subject of his first hit.
#Mojo nixon redneck rampage series#
In 1987, Nixon released the even more successful Bo-Day-Shus!!!, which became his first album to make the national charts thanks to what became his best-known song, "Elvis Is Everywhere." MTV not only embraced the video, but invited Nixon to film a series of short rants that ran during commercial breaks. The album also featured other Nixon staples like "I Hate Banks," "Where the Hell's My Money," and "The Amazing Bigfoot Diet." It was followed later that year by the Get Out of My Way EP, which landed Nixon his first MTV airplay via "Burn Down the Malls." Released in 1986, Frenzy expanded their cult audience by leaps and bounds, thanks to the novelty hit "Stuffin' Martha's Muffin," an X-rated tribute to bubbly MTV VJ Martha Quinn. Nixon and Roper toured as the Beat Farmers' opening act, then went to Los Angeles to record their second album, the aptly titled Frenzy. Their demo was released later in 1985 as Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper, and the anticorporate "Jesus at McDonald's" became a hit on college radio. Together they cut a demo in late 1984, and early the next year were spotted by Enigma Records while opening for Tex & the Horseheads. Upon returning to San Diego in early 1983, the newly christened Mojo Nixon began performing in dive bars with a partner, washboard/harmonica player Skid Roper (born Richard Banke), who supplied rudimentary accompaniment for Nixon's guitar work, and occasionally sang as well. During a cross-country bicycle trip, Nixon first came up with his stage name (a combination of "voodoo and bad politics"), allegedly while roaring drunk in New Orleans. Moving to San Diego in 1981, he met fellow roots-music enthusiast and future Beat Farmer Country Dick Montana. in 1980 settling for a short time in Denver, he performed in a punk band called Zebra 123, which drew the ire of the Secret Service for promoting a gig called the Assassination Ball with posters depicting the exploding heads of Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. After earning degrees in political science and history from Miami University in Ohio, he went to England in 1979, where he played old-time rock & roll covers and hoped to break into the punk scene. He grew up mostly in Danville, VA, and started listening to rock & roll at a young age. Label problems helped decrease his visibility in the '90s, but he continued to tour and record for a still-devoted fan base, as well as working in radio. As his audience grew, Nixon found himself accepting gigs as an MTV host, several small roles in what he described as "sh*tty movies," and occasional mainstream media attention (most notably debating Pat Buchanan on CNN over the subject of record censorship). All of it was performed in maximum overdrive on a bed of rockabilly, blues, and R&B, which earned Nixon some friends in the roots rock community but had enough punk attitude - in its own bizarre way - to make him a college radio staple during his heyday. Nixon had a particular knack for celebrity-themed novelty hits ("Elvis Is Everywhere," "Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant With My Two-Headed Love Child," "Don Henley Must Die"), but he was prone to gleefully crass rants on a variety of social ills ("I Hate Banks," "Destroy All Lawyers," "I Ain't Gonna Piss In No Jar"), while celebrating lowbrow, blue-collar America in all its trashy, beer-soaked glory. One of the most outsized personalities on college radio in the '80s, Mojo Nixon won a fervent cult following with his motor-mouthed redneck persona and a gonzo brand of satire with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
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