MOJO NIXON OFFERS NO APOLOGIES

“It’s OK to offend people,” said singer Mojo Nixon, calling from a Sacramento diner between concert tour stops.

For Nixon, who with his washboard percussion partner Skid Roper will be at McCabe’s for two shows tonight, that statement could very well serve as a motto.

The pair’s latest release, “Bo-Day-Shus!” contains such guaranteed-to-rub-the-wrong-way titles as “Gin Guzzlin’ Frenzy” and, on CD and cassette versions only, the anti-fashion “Don’t Want No Foo-Foo Haircut on My Head.” Those follow in the footstomps of such earlier efforts as “I’m Living With the Three Foot Anti-Christ,” a song about the son of Nixon’s girlfriend, and “Jesus at McDonald’s,” concerning the mass murder in San Diego, home base for Nixon and Roper.

Delivered in a rowdy rock ‘n’ soul ‘n’ blues style that Nixon likens to “three drunks hollering in a field,” the material is meant to rile some folks. (He also has a tender side, as evidenced by his sweetly nostalgic song, “Lincoln Logs.”) But rather than operate on the shock level of such comedians as Sam Kinison or such radio personalities as New York’s Howard Stern, Nixon’s generally funny songs are always pointed.

“Somewhere along the line small groups of people have been able to scare radio and TV into believing they’re gonna create a ruckus, whether they’re Fundamentalists or Serbo-Croatians or People for the Rights of Bald Heads or whatever,” he said, his voice settling in at its usual rant level as he discussed the prospects of “Gin Guzzlin’ Frenzy” getting airplay in these sober times.

“If these mad mothers don’t want to hear it, they can change the station. A 15-year-old needs some guidance, but he’s gotta make decisions for himself. If he wants to drink, he’s gonna. People forget they have to take responsibility for themselves. I go into tirades about this every night on stage. I think everything should be wide open, like the frontier. We need more elbow room in this country.”

Thus far, though, Nixon hasn’t had many direct confrontations with the forces of conformity.

“Generally, most of the people I see are drunks at our shows,” he confessed. “Big beefy guys . . . who go crazy when I do ‘Gin Guzzlin’ Frenzy.’ ”

But, he acknowledges, that is starting to change, thanks to the duo’s increased visibility from constant touring (Nixon said he and Roper have already put 70,000 miles on the van they bought just over a year ago) and to the success of the song “Elvis Is Everywhere.”

The song is a sly, raucous hymm/sermon to the King that identifies him as the “perfect being” and claims that everyone has some of Elvis in him/her--save for the “evil Anti-Elvis.” (The punch line: “Michael J. Fox doesn’t have any Elvis in him.”)

Released as Elvis-mania was peaking in August with the 10th anniversary of Presley’s death, the song is working into something of a left-field hit. Rolling Stone writer David Fricke went so far as to say that it “could be the best song released by anyone this year.”

And though it’s brought Nixon a long way from when the Chapel Hill, N.C., native first started performing with Roper in San Diego five years ago (he recalls one club where the only person who liked the act was deaf), it’s not like he’s noticing the onset of Mojo-mania. “I think we’ve just reached the point where you can call us underground,” he said.

But even that level of success, he finds, is bringing him into contact with people whose attitudes he just can’t tolerate.

“The bigger the audience gets, the less people are committed to the whole deal,” he bemoaned. “I’m getting people standing in the back of the clubs who want to talk about real estate. I yell at them: ‘If you want to talk about real estate, why don’t you go to a Journey concert?’ ”