Maybe it was a coincidence that
Mojo Nixon had trouble getting records released after he declared "Don Henley Must Die" on his 1990 debut solo album
Otis (which followed five albums co-credited to percussionist Skid Roper). Maybe it was that the labels he recorded for, Restless and I.R.S., went out of business and nobody else would touch him. But except for a 1992 Christmas album, the aptly named
Whereabouts Unknown was his first album in five years. Clearly,
Nixon had not mellowed in the interim: shortly into the opening track, "Gotta Be Free," he was talking about having his penis enlarged, and later on, "Tie My Pecker to My Leg" was his bawdiest effort yet. In between, often shouting over familiar blues-rock riffs, he explained that he loved his girlfriend more than anything except football; noted, "I ain't gonna be George Bush's whore" in the four-years-out-of-date anti-war song "My Free Will Just Ain't Willin'"; demanded "Don't Ask Me Why I Drink"; and launched into a cover of
the Smiths' "Girlfriend in a Coma" that found him calling songwriter
Morrissey "a fruitcake" and declaring, "I am the anti-
Morrissey." It was probably less dangerous attacking
Morrissey than
Henley, but
Nixon's humor remained as sophomoric as it was politically incorrect. As usual, he was pretty funny the first time around, though. ~ William Ruhlmann