Ross Johnson isn't much of a singer. He's a talker, taking the stage to rant and howl and generally hold forth on life, booze, women, music, booze, women, and death. For thirty years he's has been a mainstay on the Memphis roots punk scene, starting as a drummer for the locally famous Panther Burns and as a cohort of post-Big Star Alex Chilton. That's Johnson ranting on "Baron of Love Pt. I" on Like Flies on Sherbert. Over the years he has played in groups that could barely be called bands, like the short-lived Our Favorite Band, American Musical Fantasy, and the even-shorter-lived Young Seniors. Make It Stop! The Most of Ross Johnson, from Memphis-based Goner Records, is his first "career" retrospective, featuring 24 tracks that include an assortment of sloppy covers, inspired digressions, and gloriously messy rockabilly and garage-band riffs served up like local delicacies. If you were to ask him, Johnson would likely say the comp doesn't warrant your money or your time. "The main feeling I have when I listen back to these pieces (I won't call them songs) is discomfort," he writes in the liners. "I loved recording them, but I can't listen to them without cringing and feeling ashamed."
The self-denigration continues: "To be a real musician takes a certain amount of conceit and bravado that I just don't have. Oh, I've got plenty of sociopathic nerve when it comes to performing." Thank God he's not a real musician. A "real musician" wouldn't be able to turn his middle-class autobiography and mental and moral ailments (both real and imagined) into Southern monologues that are simultaneously hilarious, uncomfortable, and tragic. "So I says to her, 'What part of I have a personality disorder don't you get?'" Johnson exclaims on the short, stubby live track "My Mission", then admonishes the crowd: "Ya get it? You should be ashamed! Man, I hope I make somebody feel uneasy, 'cause that's my mission." No critic could put it more succinctly, although Johnson himself lists critic on his c.v. (he wrote for Creem when Lester Bangs was editor). How's this for uneasy? The virtuously obnoxious "Signify" begins with this confession: "Did you ever get drunk at your daughter's birthday? I have. Ah boy. I got caught, too!" The matter-of-factness of his delivery makes you believe he speaks from personal experience.
That Johnson, a self-described "Southern sissy," has managed to eke out what some might call a career from his hysterical ravings is testament to his onstage charisma, his singularly "sociopathic nerve." Even when he's talking about being ten and seeing his first naked girl (one of the twelve-year-old twins next door, on "Nudist Camp"), he's always funny, charming, dignified-- not to mention a little taken aback at his own self-destructive tendencies. This self-realization makes him ultimately sympathetic and in turn earns him the loyalty of local musicians like Jay Reatard (who mastered this comp) and Monsieur Jeffrey Evans (with whom Johnson currently plays) as well as writers like Robert Gordon (author of the indispensable It Came from Memphis) and Andria Lisle, who recounts booking Johnson as an opening act for unsuspecting groups like Smog and Palace Bros. Wish I could have seen that.
Currently a librarian at the University of Memphis, Johnson is not acting the rock star part, but simulating and satirizing it. He realizes that between his talents and the rock star ideal lies a vast, unbridgeable schism, and whenever he tries to play down his reputation as an object of notoriety, he does so with such grizzled savoir faire that he only feeds the legend. As a rock antihero, what makes Johnson special is precisely his lack of talent-- which impels him to redefine what it means to be a real musician. He challenges our expectations, parodies our need to know the person behind the song by giving us too much of himself, by going waaaaaaaay too far. These chunks of autobiography are as grossly revealing as GG Allin's shit, Sid Vicious' bloody chest, or Iggy Pop's cock, and yet, Johnson doesn't appear to be exaggerating or gratuitously exposing himself. Instead he's storming the castle through a back entrance, a beer bottle in one hand and a spittle-wet mic in the other. He knows he can't bring the fortress down, but he can be better heard shouting from the turrets. Mission accomplished.
