My site is named for a Mojo Nixon lyric, which I believe to be the funniest in Rock history. My friend Dave saw Mojo open for the Pogues once and came home a stone cold convert. We used to have this college radio show that summer and we used to fantasize about having Mojo on. This was pre-Elvis is Everywhere. Dave and I were probably among the 30 people who had any idea who he was at the time. We never really pursued it, but I bet that if we did we could have at least gotten his partner Skid Roper.
We were on from 2-6 in the morning, which seemed as likely of a time for Mojo to have been up as any. It was Dave’s show but I was his semi permanent guest host. One week Dave had his girlfriend on instead and played all Irish Music. What a drag that was – for me at least. Usually, Dave would play really new really punk music while I would play all kinds of old Rock and Roll tunes that I, and probably only I, loved. “Runaway” by Del Shannon, lots of Eddie Cochran, “Another Shot of My Baby’s Love” by the Swinging Medallions. I was one of those obnoxious guys that liked to say “In a fair world this would have been a huge hit.”
Our show was a free form show. We were supposed to play all kinds of music, but neither one of us wanted to play anything but Rock and Roll and comedy so we’d play whatever we felt like and write down that we were playing Burl Ives and Glen Campbell.
We were really good friends living in the same fraternity house over the summer, but we never seemed to get to talk to each other except for on the air during our shows. I’m guessing that about 50 % of our show was talking about which of us was better looking, which of us had more fans, and how the music that the other was playing sucked.
My favorite routine that I came up with back then was my belief that there should be a Drunk Driver day, where you encouraged everyone out there to drive drunk. For that one day go crazy and enjoy yourself. That way everyone else could stay home for one day and all of the drunk drivers could weed themselves out. That was a pretty good indication of my attitude in those days.
I was intensely jealous of anyone else being on our radio show. One time we had a buddy named Evan on and every time he even thought about speaking I would immediately cut him down. He had his sister phone him on the air and I went into this huge rant about how he’d been there for thirty seconds and he was already beginning to take over our show.
There was this girl I had a crush on that I had listen one night. She called in and said that her brother wanted to hear some Ronnie James Dio. Dave listened to like half of it and then ripped it off the air which led to a huge on air spat between us. Hell, I had to listen to like an entire night of Irish music and he wouldn’t let me air one damn bad metal song to get some play? This eventually led to an all out war between the two of us. I even proposed that we split the feed so that my show would be in the right speaker and Dave’s show could be in the left. Then everyone at home could use their balance control to decide which of us to listen too. Dave agreed that it was a good idea but between the two of us we barely knew how to play the right public service carts. For the rest of the night we alternated songs. I would play really hot rocking songs like “Rocks off” from Exile on Main Street and Dave would play songs about how much he hated me. You’d be surprised how many punk songs there are about hating someone. In the meantime, we would be telling all of our callers that we didn’t have whatever it was that they were requesting. It was a very special moment.
One night we had a really wild show and this girl called. She talked to both of us for a really long time. We would always beg girls to come down and be on our show. This one sounded really wild and told us that she would come down if we would pay her cab fare. We were both broke so we begged off. She was claiming to be a model who was in the very cool crowd whatever that was at the time. She said “I don’t know if it helps any but I’m wearing torn red fishnet stockings and I have some cocaine.” Now I’d sort of like to say that I paid her cab fare, but back then I was all innocent. It’s never something that you are proud to say but at the time I wouldn’t have had the faintest idea what to do with a hot girl and a bunch of cocaine. I have a lot of regrets in my life. That one seems pretty high on the list right now.
