Pop Music Reviews : Mojo: Training Wheels of Independent Rock

If a man may be measured by the caliber of his enemies, funny punk Mojo Nixon’s minor-celebrity baiting doesn’t exactly make him the Vaclav Havel of rock ‘n’ roll.

As these things go, it’s harder to make fun of Thatcher’s social policy than of the Pogues’ Shane MacGowan’s rotten teeth, more difficult to take on Madonna or U2 than Don Henley and Debbie Gibson. Mojo Nixon is the official bad boy of American rock ‘n’ roll, MTV-friendly, courted by Spin magazine, quoted by editors around the country on a wide array of kitsch and Elvisiana.

Yet the fact remains: Nixon’s set at Club Lingerie on Monday sounded like an hourlong Taco Bell commercial, all slick, anonymous blues and paint-by-numbers barrelhouse boogie overlaid with Nixon’s mildly ribald voice-overs, and the highlight of the set may have been when Nixon forced his keyboard player to have mock coitus with an inflatable sheep.

Even by the low standards of comedy rock, this was pretty feeble stuff--compared to Nixon, Flo & Eddie are as radical as the Sex Pistols. The smallish audience seemed to love it though, dancing, screaming, singing along with every song.

Nixon’s value may be his role as the training wheels of indie rock, a stage some listeners go through before they discover Mudhoney or Steel Pole Bathtub. He may have attracted something of a college-radio crowd, but most of them looked like freshmen. Nixon (who plays the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano tonight) dedicated a song to Jesse Helms’ daughter, and more than one guy on the dance floor felt compelled to ask who Jesse Helms was.