Great sounds silenced
Saying goodbye to Mojo Nixon, Dragoljub Crnčević and Robert Cowan
Finding out that Mojo Nixon died last month during an outlaw country music cruise he was performing on was a bit surreal. He’d already outlived his friend Country Dick Montana of the Beat Farmers by a good three decades. But at 66, well, it still seemed a bit young to lose someone so possessed of a vital life force.
After landing in San Diego in 1980 and knocking around in various bands, Kirby McMillan finally found success — his path, really — in his mid-20s with the stage persona of Mojo Nixon. Mojo’s act combined over-the-top offensive song titles and lyrics with an enthusiastic blend of blues, rockabilly and punk.
If Kirby could be a somewhat quiet introvert with a tremendous passion for popular musical history (he knew more about American rock, blues and R&B than almost anyone your loyal correspondent ever ran across), Mojo was his opposite: A gregarious, nonstop fountain of musical mayhem.
In his adopted San Diego, he found kindred spirits in local cowpunks the Beat Farmers — a band which he had openly campaigned to join, and when that fell through, eagerly opened for on dozens, maybe hundreds of dates. His partner in crime during those breakthrough years was Skid Roper (Richard Banke), who accompanied Mojo’s manic guitar playing and screaming vocals with a quiet demeanor on washboard.
Their first album, 1985's self-titled Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper, had song titles seemingly chosen to ensure no radio station would play them: “Art Fag Shuffle,” “Moanin’ With Your Mama,” “Mushroom Maniac,” and the sacrilegious “Jesus at McDonald’s.”
A year later, Restless Records issued their follow-up EP in a clear vinyl cover. Get Out Of My Way! contained yet more in-your-face titles: “Burn Down the Malls,” “Transylvanian Xmas” and, in a clear shot at MTV, “Stuffin’ Martha’s Muffin” in which Mojo laid out his sexual fantasies about MTV host Martha Quinn, declaring:
MTV
Get away from me
I don't want to see
No MTV
That song was also included on their full-length LP, Frenzy, later that same year. The other song titles were a little tamer, with the more edgy ones including “The Amazing Bigfoot Diet” and “I’m Living With a Three-Foot Anti-Christ.”
But in 1987, their fourth release, Bo-Day-Shus!!! brought them more fame, I think, then they ever expected. “Elvis Is Everywhere” suddenly broke on alternative radio stations.
And in a delicious bit of irony, MTV.
Not too long after that, he was a sports reporter of sorts for MTV, covering the Super Bowl in San Diego.
For that, some music fans termed him a sell-out — taking a paycheck from the same network he’d once so mercilessly mocked.
By 1989, he’d restored his counter-culture bona fides when his new video, “Debbie Gibson is Pregnant with My Two-Headed Love Child,” was banned by MTV.
In 1997 he again surfaced in pop culture when he had a couple songs featured in the bestselling video game “Redneck Rampage.” The next year he contributed the theme for “Redneck Rampage Rides Again.”
Mojo could be angry and bitter about the shifting tides of musical popularity. At a street fair in the early 2000s, as sales and airplay declined, he angrily announced it would be his last performance ever.
A few years later, at a tiny bar on El Cajon Boulevard in San Diego, he was again angry at the fact that most of the patrons — young enough to be his own kids — were ignoring his one-man performance while they chatted.
But it seems that in recent years he’d made his peace with the universe — grateful for the fans he did have, releasing most of his music to the public domain for anyone to enjoy, and occasionally reuniting with old co-horts like Roper or the Beat Farmers. He was hosting several shows on Sirius-XM, and, as mentioned, was on an outlaw country cruise when he passed.
The clearest image your loyal correspondent has of Mojo was when he opened, solo, at the Beat Farmers’ first anniversary show at the Spring Valley Inn in the early 1980s. Mojo showed up wearing a pink bunny one-piece pajama, which inspired the song he seemingly made up on the spot: He banged a plastic water cooler jug against his head for rhythm while chanting “Footsie Pajamas.”
The Spring Valley Inn is an unabashed biker bar, with all that entails (although that night, the Beat Farmer’s disparate fan base was out in full force) — yet Mojo had that crowd, equal parts bikers and bankers, singing along.
If Belgrade had its own version of Country Dick, it would have been Dragoljub Crnčević, who passed just this last week at age 69.
Better known to his non-Serb friends simply as “DR,” Dragoljub fronted the long-running Pointblank Blues Band.
Informed as much by 1960s British bands (John Mayall, Savoy Brown, Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac) as by the original American progenitors, the Pointblank Blues Band issued its first album, The Blues, in 1984. Two more LPs followed before they crossed paths with your loyal correspondent.
One day in 2003, there was a small padded envelope from Belgrade in my PO box.
Belgrade?
Belgrade!
Inside was Eight Blue Balls (Ready to Play), with a hand-written note expressing the hope I might consider writing a review.
Only took about three songs before I was hooked.
I wrote the review, and then mailed a copy to the return address.
A DVD arrived in my PO Box a couple years later, then subsequent albums in ’06, ’08, ’12 and ’15 — each delving ever deeper into the music, featuring more complex arrangements, more imaginative songwriting.
DR was the leader of the band (the band’s full name was “The DR Project: Pointblank Blues Band”), lead guitarist, lead singer, primary songwriter, booking agent, publicist, and anything else that needed doing.
What with his mailing me new releases, and me mailing back copies of my reviews, we got to be pen pals. He began having other jazz and blues musicians in Belgrade send me their releases for possible review: Katarina Pejak, Raw Hide, Nenad Zlatanovic, Texas Flood, Cotton Pickers, Zora Vitas.
All of them encouraged, nurtured and often booked by DR.
When he came to San Diego in 2011, introductions were made with The Farmers — led by former Beat Farmer Jerry Raney, and playing much of that band’s old repertoire — and DR was invited to play a set during a gig at the The Kraken in Solana Beach.
Joining DR on stage that night was his former bass payer from Belgrade, Darko Petrovic, now living in San Diego and still gigging around town. Farmers’ drummer Joel Kmak kept time, and after a song or two Raney snuck back on stage to join the fun.
In the days since he passed, the outpouring of grief, affection and gratitude from other members of Belgrade’s remarkably large roots and jazz community has made clear what a central figure he was.
Much as Country Dick (Dan McClain) was far more than drummer for the Beat Farmers — also booking looking clubs, thus giving many other bands an opportunity to build an audience — so did DR in Belgrade.
He was also a tremendous advocate for Belgrade’s music community in the larger world.
While his more introspective nature contrasted greatly with the gregarious onstage personas of both DR and Mojo, San Diego harmonica player Robert Cowan moved in much the same orbit. He was a regular presence at Farmers shows, often sitting in with them in recent years, and met DR on that first trip to San Diego.
They hit it off so well that not only did Cowan play with him when DR came back to San Diego three years later, but Cowan was the only non-Serb to play on the band’s 2012 album, Unforgiven.
Cowan, who passed in January, was much more than just his work with DR and The Farmers, of course. He has his own band, little monsters, and a lengthy career in San Diego and Los Angeles.
As with Mojo and DR, he was a tireless promoter of other artists - often more so than his own efforts.
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