- Home
- Original Fiction
- Humor
- Music Review - Whiskey Rebellion by Mojo Nixon
Music Review - Whiskey Rebellion by Mojo Nixon
- By Adrian Tallent
- Published 10/17/2009
- Music
- Unrated
Adrian Tallent
A former student of Spartanburg Technical College and overall geek, I enjoy listening to music, reading books, playing video games, and watching movies. Sometimes I write about them.
View all articles by Adrian Tallent
Mojo Nixon is a strange one. He rose to fame by having his songs played on college radio in the 80’s, which eventually got him a deal with MTV and offered him one thing that most artists of his stripe never get: mainstream promotion. From there he went on to be featured in films and have homages paid to him from several avenues of popular culture. All this from a guy who began his career in dive bars and never saw fit to change his music once he got out of that culture.
His style is hardcore psychobilly. His songs are strangely infectious and parody a number of subjects, both political and pop-culture. Some of his best known songs are ones that make fun of celebrities, including Rick Astley, Don Henley and Debbie Gibson. Subject matter can and will get offensive; Mojo isn’t afraid of anything, and he actually cut ties with MTV back in the day when they wanted to censor his song “Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant With My Two-Headed Love-Child”.
These days, Mojo Nixon had been considered retired, with a good number of albums under his belt, both solo endeavors and those with other bands, most notably the Toadliqors. He is currently a radio host for Sirius, hosting three shows for them, The Loon In The Afternoon (channel 63,) The NASCAR channel’s Mojo Nixon’s Manifold Destiny (channel 128,) and the politically themed Lyin’ Cocksuckers (channel 104).
While cleaning out his porch in October of 2009, he discovered a box containing unreleased songs he had stored on a collection of cassette tapes under the deck. After finishing up the tracks, he re-recorded them for release on a new album, “Whiskey Rebellion”, making the announcement that he was coming out of retirement to promote the album (playing a grand total of two live concerts). More bizarrely, he also announced that he was making his entire discography free to download on Amazon, including the new album, as part of his “unretirement” promotion, claiming that making his songs free would help stimulate the economy.
I don’t know if all of that is true or not, but you owe it to yourself to check out Mojo Nixon’s works. “Whiskey Rebellion” was released on October 7, 2009, and it is presumed his albums will remain free for a week or two after that date. This presents an excellent opportunity to introduce yourself to his work, so there is no excuse to remain ignorant of him. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by his writing, which is really good rockabilly regardless of the subject matter of his songs. Speaking of which, “Whiskey Rebellion” seems no different from his other albums, and he sings of Texas governor hopeful Kinky Friedman, Dr. Laura, and asparagus, among other things. All of these songs were left off of his previous albums, but it doesn’t feel as though the album was cobbled together at all. You may not like his style, but I guarantee you’ll find him amusing (and probably a little offensive, but that’s part of his charm). Stop reading this and go check him out already, before his insane promotion ends.
His style is hardcore psychobilly. His songs are strangely infectious and parody a number of subjects, both political and pop-culture. Some of his best known songs are ones that make fun of celebrities, including Rick Astley, Don Henley and Debbie Gibson. Subject matter can and will get offensive; Mojo isn’t afraid of anything, and he actually cut ties with MTV back in the day when they wanted to censor his song “Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant With My Two-Headed Love-Child”.
These days, Mojo Nixon had been considered retired, with a good number of albums under his belt, both solo endeavors and those with other bands, most notably the Toadliqors. He is currently a radio host for Sirius, hosting three shows for them, The Loon In The Afternoon (channel 63,) The NASCAR channel’s Mojo Nixon’s Manifold Destiny (channel 128,) and the politically themed Lyin’ Cocksuckers (channel 104).
I don’t know if all of that is true or not, but you owe it to yourself to check out Mojo Nixon’s works. “Whiskey Rebellion” was released on October 7, 2009, and it is presumed his albums will remain free for a week or two after that date. This presents an excellent opportunity to introduce yourself to his work, so there is no excuse to remain ignorant of him. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by his writing, which is really good rockabilly regardless of the subject matter of his songs. Speaking of which, “Whiskey Rebellion” seems no different from his other albums, and he sings of Texas governor hopeful Kinky Friedman, Dr. Laura, and asparagus, among other things. All of these songs were left off of his previous albums, but it doesn’t feel as though the album was cobbled together at all. You may not like his style, but I guarantee you’ll find him amusing (and probably a little offensive, but that’s part of his charm). Stop reading this and go check him out already, before his insane promotion ends.