1986- "Son Of Santa"

.....You know, there was a time when 'alternative music' didn't mean rehashes of Led Zeppelin. I remember the term being coined specifically to describe the hodgepodge of styles one could previously find only on college radio stations because they were outlets that (a) didn't agonize over commercial considerations and (b) had the highest concentration of a listener demographic defined by a desire to learn and experience new things, that is, college students. In fact, for the previous twenty years or so it was referred to as college music. The only reason people began to cast around for a new term is because during the eighties several events coincided that put much of that audience outside the gates of American colleges: public college tuitions increased not by increments but by multiples; affirmative action programs were under attack; and student loans briefly became taxable income (as though you were keeping the money rather than paying it back with interest). For the first time since the 1920's a student's academic potential became the least important consideration to their attendance. If you were poor, you could get accepted but you couldn't attend. You could, however, get a job a continue to be the intellectually curious person you always were. You could also live in a town with a college radio station and put your meager disposable income towards pursuing more of the bands you heard from it. There were enough people in that situation that it impacted the music market. Now that those people are middle aged, the music that they were told was non-commercial has become the soundtrack of their television ads. But there was a time when that music was unlike anything allowed onto commercial radio that was becoming more rigidly formatted every day.

• 03:40 "SON OF SANTA" (Mojo Nixon)


• performed by Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper


• original source: EP GET OUT OF MY WAY! Restless/Enigma 72185-1 (US) 1986


• and my source: CD FRENZY Restless/Enigma 72127-2 (US) 1987

.....FRENZY was Mojo Nixon's and Skid Roper's second album for Restless if you include the reissue of their eponymous debut, originally on an even-smaller independent label. It also marked a willingness among the emerging community for alternative music to be more visible and vocal in their rejection of the music industry in toto. By that point there were not only performers and audiences outside the mainstream, but many healthy labels, several competent distribution companies, viable retail outlets and mail-order services and even non-traditional venues all functioning parallel to their larger corporate subsidiary counterparts rather than subsisting on crumbs from their table. The corporations, however, seemed still convinced that these people and enterprises were merely competing with them and failing; there was an inability or unwillingness to comprehend that this smaller music scene had worked for (and to a large extent already achieved) different, unrelated objectives. Thus, when Mojo Nixon repeatedly butted heads with MTV's censors the assumption was that he would dissolve into a deserved obscurity. Instead he faced the greatest demand of his career. To keep ahead of it, he recorded an EP as a stop-gap measure until he could open space in his schedule to complete an album.

.....The first side of EP GET OUT OF MY WAY! starts with the title track, which sounds as though it might have been a likely single or recommended play track from a planned follow-up album to FRENZY. The next songs are both from the FRENZY sessions, "STUFFIN' MARTHA'S MUFFIN" (an anti-MTV harangue that became FRENZY's most popular track) and "RUTABAGAS" (an instrumental Skid Roper outtake). Side one closes with "BURN DOWN THE MALLS", which would have made an appropriate B-side to "GET OUT OF MY WAY".

.....The second side of the EP could have been a Christmas single. It begins with "SON OF SANTA", a song about the saint's errant offspring whose Christmas Eve jailbreak has alarmed the terminally nervous. Next is "TRANSYLVANIA XMAS", another Roper instrumental, this time an Eastern European flavored arrangement of "JOY TO THE WORLD". The last song is a rerecording of "JESUS AT MCDONALD'S" with Christmas references in the first verse. The original version is on the first album.

.....The song "SON OF SANTA" is a high octane rocker played almost entirely by Mojo and Skid with a large crowd of friends providing a vocal chorus. A year later they performed it live for a Christmas episode of I.R.S.'s "The Cutting Edge" series on MTV (which would have been about the end of the series). Not long afterwards, Mojo's long strained relationship with MTV had finally reached it's limit, their stated reasons being that his song "DEBBIE GIBSON IS PREGNANT WITH MY TWO-HEADED LOVE CHILD" constituted slander because their audience was likely to assume it was true. Then Roper left to pursue a more folk-oriented solo career, Enigma went out of business and finally Restless changed ownership. For the next decade Mojo continued to perform in several outfits before eventually becoming a staple of Sirius XM radio and offering his back catalogue as downloads. Paradoxically, his lo-fi music has become much easier to find in the digital age since most chain stores didn't have a "sexually depraved drunken street preacher" section. Be advised, though, that this song does not appear on his 1992 Christmas album CD HORNY HOLIDAYS.