RIP Mojo Nixon

[Raindog]

I haven't been on in a couple weeks and was catching up Surprised that no one mentioned the passing of Mojo Nixon on Feb 7. He was a true wildman, not just one that used it as a role.

[toomanycats]

I never heard of this guy until I moved to North Carolina. He's a legend here. You've got to respect somebody who writes a song titled, "Tie My Pecker to My Leg." If that's not rock & roll then I don't know what is.

[jhull54]

Below is a cool story about Nixon playing a club in Austin called the Hole In The Wall. "The Hole" is pretty well-known to Austinites as a place where you could go grab a burger and listen to local bands pretty much every day of the week, and though it has never gotten as much "cred" as Austin clubs like the Continental, Soap Creek, the Armadillo, etc., it is every bit as legendary.

The reasons for that are several, but the biggest is that the Hole is freaking tiny, and it's located directly across the street from UT Austin, so not quite the same vibe as the more glamorous (?) 6th Street area. It's a dive, but it's been there forever, and has stayed open and rockin for 50 years.

Anyway, this is a great story if you haven't heard it.

https://www.austinchronicle.com/music/2 ... -must-die/

[tonebender]

RIP Kirby. I grew up in the same town, Danville, Virginia and went to school with him. He was one grade ahead of me and had a little brother one grade below me. I played sandlot football with him and others on occasion. His father owned the AM Soul radio station in town. We all knew him as Kirby McMillan but his full name was Neill Kirby McMillan. His folks had a house is Woodberry Hills, a modest to upscale neighborhood, and my dad bought a house just down the street from them in the 70's after I joined the service. I started hearing about his success in the early 80's but there was no internet so I had to get updates by word of mouth when I would travel back from Florida to Virginia to visit relatives. In one of his songs about Barbecue joints he mentions places in Danville and makes reference to Mt Cross Road in one song where I lived with my mother for awhile after my parents divorced. He was quite the character and has to be the most famous person from my town, although I think he was born down the road a piece in NC.

He was on Arsenio when his song Elvis Is Everywhere came out and he had everyone in the audience wear an Elvis mask. It was hysterical.

[tonebender]

I have sitting thinking about Kirby and thinking about his dying from a heart attack. I know how close I was to the same fate in November of 2022. If I have ignored the signs no doubt I would not be here today. I had 95% blockage in the widow make artery and you don't get many second chances when that one is blocked. The signs were subtle and I had to force them to run the necessary tests to find the issue. The medical industry is very close to accurate screening with images that can detect blockage early. Currently they rely on the stress test but soon the CT scan will be more effective. It is effective for some but not quite to the degree of the stress test. My cardio doc explained that there is much debate but with some the way the veins are woven around in some people the scan may not show as much as the stress test imaging so the medical insurance industry opts for the stress test to avoid law suits from not finding things when just running a CT scan. I had much debate with my doc about it. My 65 year old neighbor went in for a routine physical and his cholesterol was really high so his GP recommended a scan but told him insurance would not pay for it. He asked and was told it was $250 so he just paid for it out of pocket and they found blockage. Long story short he had a stent installed and is fine now. When I went in they made me go for the stress test and it took from the day of my symptoms another 5 weeks before they finally had my results. Meanwhile I could have dropped dead. EKG normal, blood pressure normal, pulse rate normal to low yet I was on the verge of death. Those tests do not detect blockage like I had so there was no sense of urgency for them.

When the surgeon finished up installed my stent he told me how bad it was and asked me to look at the two images on the screen, one before and one after the stent was in. He was proud of his work and I was glad to be fixed. I immediately asked him when they did take that before image the day I came in with symptoms and he literally had no answer. He looked at me in silence, turned and walked away. I discussed with them on my follow ups and that was when they explained about the debate in the industry about imaging versus the stress test procedure. Hopefully soon imaging will do the trick and people can start getting images done regularly after a certain age in the same manner we do colonoscopies, mammograms, etc. Then we can head off the one and done heart attacks in many, like the one that got my father in 2006.My father was 69 and had just had a complete physical. He was thin and appeared healthy. He did not drink, smoke, eat bad foods, etc. They told him he was in great shape. Bottom line, if they don't take an image of the flow through your veins they actually have no idea how healthy you are.

[nomadh]

I thought MOJO was a san diego guy. He popped up alot here with other local talent. I always thought I'd catch his show here but he was never really in my circle of bands I was watching.

[tonebender]

Yeah, that was what we were all saying back in the 80's, "Kirby went to California and made it big!"

[idiotsdelight]

Holy shit. I'd just looked through Mojo Nixon vids a few months ago. Saw him and Skid at the Rock Island Brewing Company about '85-'86? How did I not hear about this?

What a bummer.