ATN's Music News of the World: Mojo Nixon and David Geffen

BRING MOJO NIXON THE HEAD OF DAVID GEFFENAddicted To Noise staff writer Gil Kaufman reports: It's a funny thing about Mojo Nixon. Never squarely a serious rocker, but never quite 24-7 goofy enough to be a novelty act, Nixon has spent over a decade floating in that nebulous nether world between the guy who wrote funny/scary "Stuffin' Martha's Muffin" and the guy who also penned the cool blues shuffle, "Where the Hell's My Money?" Oh fuck it, the guy is a whackjob who writes songs like "Kylie Minogue is Pregnant with My Two-Headed Love Child" and "Tie My Pecker to My Leg." Rock and roll hall of fame-bound he ain't.So, when the package bearing Mojo's new album, Gadzooks!!! The Homemade Bootleg (Needletime), due out Jan. 28, arrived, needless to say nobody was rushing over to the CD jukebox and yanking the new Chemical Brothers CD out to slap Mojo in.Just reading the song titles from the 17-song collection, which gathers everything from the first song Nixon wrote ("Death Row Blues") to five new tunes, including some typically party-oriented tunes like "I Like Marijuana," "Are You Drinkin' With me Jesus," "Beer Ain't Drinkin'," "I'm Drunk," "She's All Liquored Up," and that old favorite, "The Poontango," one would be hard-pressed to find a tune appropriate for mixed, or sober, company.Hell, some drunken frat boys might even be put-off by old Mojo's ranting. But, if you're really a Mojophile, then this collection contains the Holy Grail of Mojobilia, the legendary Lost Song, the Eighth Wonder of the Mojo Museum, the never-heard, seldom-performed "Bring Me the Head of David Geffen."Legend has it that this song was yanked from Mojo's last record when Nixon's lawyers freaked out about his stab at one of the most powerful men in the music business. According to the liner notes, "this psychotic howl was left off Whereabouts Unknown due to certain associates of mine crapping in their pants when they heard the title. Re-recorded with the Toadliquors and jimmy-jacked up even higher on the hate-meter after a year of live performances. Why David Geffen? Because he brought back Aerosmith & the Eagles that's why!"Needless to say, at the time, Geffen Records denied any potential lawsuit, claiming the whole thing was "a lame publicity stunt," but one listen to the lyrics (what we can make out, anyway) and it's safe to say Mojo has, at the very least, outdone himself on the bad-taste-o-meter.MATTHEW SWEET ON MARSAddicted To Noise staff writer Gil Kaufman reports: Matthew Sweet will touch down with a new album on Mar. 25. Titled Blue Sky on Mars, the 12 song collection was co-produced by Sweet and Brendan O'Brien (Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine, STP) and recorded at O'Brien's studio in Atlanta last October.The album features peerless pop prince Sweet playing virtually every instrument and note on it, a la' The Artist himself. With the exception of some keyboard and drums by O'Brien and some drumming by sideman Rick Menck, Sweet wrote, played and sang all lead and backing vocals all over the record, whose first single will be "Where You Get Love."The video for the song will be directed by Andy Fleming (The Craft) and Sweet will start a 20-date mini-club tour on January 25th at Albuquerque, NM's Dingo Bar before launching a full-on tour in March.The vinyl release will pre-date the CD by two weeks and the first 3,000 copies will be personally autographed by Sweet. If the album cover, a NASA photo of the 1976 Viking 1 probe landing on Mars looks familiar, that's because it's, um, the actual photo of the Viking 1 landing on Mars in 1976. Get it? Other song titles on the album are: "Come to California," "Back to You," "Hollow," "Behind the Smile," "Until You Break," "Over It," "Heaven and Earth," "All over My Head," "Into Your Drug," "Make Believe" and "Missing Time."THE RESURRECTION OF THE MISFITSAddicted To Noise staff writer Gil Kaufman reports: Realizing that 135,000 misfits can't be wrong (the number of fans who either bought copies of the band's coffin-shaped greatest-hits package, or the single CD Collection 2), the Misfits recently entombed themselves in a New York studio to record their first album of all-new material in over ten years.Produced by longtime Ramones collaborator Daniel Raye, the album, tentatively-titled Misfits (April 8), will be the band's first for Geffen Records and will feature two original members Jerry Only (bass) and his brother Doyle (guitar), plus drummer Dr. Chud and front-man Michael Graves, who replaces original singer Glenn Danzig.Raye said the new songs, 23 of which have been recorded in a New York studio over the past two months, are in the "same twisted vein as the original Misfits stuff." About his maiden voyage with the band that launched the career of the now, ahem, pumped-up industrial rocker Danzig, Raye said, "It's the first time I've worked with them, but it's been really amazing, because they're one of my favorite bands and they sound better than ever." Raye expects at least 20 of the songs will end up on the album since "they're all only about a minute and a half long."Some song titles so far include "Speak of the Devil," "The Hunger," "From Hell They Came," "Dig Up Her Bones," "Don't Open Til Doomsday," "Hate the Living, Love the Dead" and "Resurrection." The current line-up's maiden show took place at Coney Island High in New York on Halloween of 1995.COOL FOR (STRAY) CATSAddicted To Noise staff writer Gil Kaufman reports: The band that launched a thousand pompadoured punkabilly imitators in the early 80's, the Stray Cats, get their due on a new collection released Jan. 14 called Runaway Boys: A Retrospective 81-92. The 25-track look back contains all the songs you know and love by the tattooed retrofitters (the Dave Edmunds-produced hits "Rock This Town" and "Stray Cat Strut"), plus some rare and previously unreleased tracks that prove the band were more than a one-hit wonder party band.Some of the tracks never before released in the U.S. include a cover of the Bobby Fuller Four's "I Fought the Law" and the originals "My One Desire," "Fishnet Stockings" and "Give it To Me." Another rarity in the package, which features liner notes by veteran rock scribe (and ATN contributor) Ira Robbins, are all four tracks from the rare "(She's Sexy) + 17" double seven inch (1983), never before available on CD. All three band members (Brian Setzer, Lee Rocker, Slim Jim Phantom) helped compile the set, although it's unlikely they'll be joining forces again soon since Setzer has been busy with his Brian Setzer Orchestra and bassist Rocker is working on a solo record.SURFERS COOKING UP A "BUTTHOLE STEW" FOR NEXT ALBUMAddicted To Noise staff writer Gil Kaufman reports: Nothing exceeds like success. So, after more than a dozen years of struggle and psychic damage, the Butthole Surfers finally surfed to the top last year with their album, Electriclarryland, mostly on the strength of the trippy single "Pepper." And if it was any other band, you might think they'd rush back into the studio and pound out some more of the same. Uh, but this is the Butthole Surfers. So, when we caught up with drummer King Coffey last week at his Austin estate, we asked what the group was up to and what we can expect on their next album."Well, right now we're just shopping for computers and samplers and some new toys," said Coffey, his dog barking in the background, as AOL crashed his computer for the third time that morning. "The next record is what we've wanted to do for a while, which is to say it will be a lot looser, more like Rembrandt Pussyhorse or Locust Abortion Technician, where we had no idea where we were going and we just started getting some basic ideas together and kept building up on them."Coffey said the band has been listening to "a lot of sample-oriented music lately," and so they've been shopping around for new samplers and computers that will allow them to collage the sounds they're aiming for. "We need to find a sampling system that will work for all three of us, where one of us comes up with an element, then we give it to the next one and he adds his element and so on. We all want to be trading samples and elements and building this strange sound. Kind of a Butthole stew." Tasty.Although, the Buttholes are still in the research phase, Coffey said they're in no hurry to get back into the studio, and are certainly not itching to hit the road again. "The success of the last album hasn't really changed us that much," Coffey said. "Actually, we're more burnt-out from the last record and tour than we have been in a while. For the past year we've been a full-on rock band, doing big rock shows, the full-on rock thing, and that's not really in our heart."At the root, we're not a conventional rock band," he continued. "We prefer to do smaller, more experimental types of things and not have to do the big rock thing every other night."Coffey said the group are ready to just take some time and fool around with the new gadgets they hope to buy soon and make a less structured, more experimental type of album, which will come out, "sometime, when we're done with it."OFF-THE-(ATN)-WIRE: Bush will hit the road on Mar. 20 to begin the first leg of their North American tour, a six-week, 36-city trek that will find them playing arenas in the South, Midwest and East Coast. The group will then head to Europe. The second leg of the North American tour will bring the group to the West Coast this summer...Look out for Built To Spill's major label debut, Perfect From Now On, a very groovy CD that doesn't find the group compromising their music in any way now that they record for a mega-corporation...Moe Tucker of Velvet Underground fame has joined Magnet, a Washington, D.C.-based combo. The group's debut album, Don't Be A Penguin, will be released in March, a spring tour is in the planning stages...