Lately I find myself asking, “What’s the most comforting thing I know?” Last night I remembered the Electrifying Mojo.
His voice rumbled through Detroit’s airwaves from the 1970s into the 1990s as he announced b-sides from Parliament, Kraftwerk, Devo, and Cybotron, priming the pump for today’s music. He is a man without biographical detail but his fingerprints are everywhere. He is a concept that requires a definite article: The.
The Electrifying Mojo is a ghost, never photographed yet his spirit runs through almost everything we hear. Each night, he opened his show with a question: Will the members of the Midnight Funk Association please rise?
And the theme from Star Wars would play.
I want you to show some solidarity tonight. If you’re in your car, flash your lights. If you’re sitting on the porch, blink your porch light. And if you’re in bed, then dance on your back. In Technicolor.
He was the first deejay to put Prince on the air. He rocked a twenty-minute version of “Flashlight.” He interrupted songs with social commentary from his “mental machine.” I stayed awake into the small hours with my hear cupped to the speaker, hunched over my cassette player and riding the pause/record buttons to make mixtapes culled from his show.
120-minute Maxell cassettes were best for this.
Every night he signed off with the same message, delivered in a baritone with a grin around the edges.
Whenever you feel like you’re nearing the end of your rope, don’t slide off. Tie a knot. Keep hanging. Keep remembering that ain’t nobody bad like you.
I was fourteen years old.
When I got my driver’s license, I would sneak out and drive down Woodward Avenue into the city.
If you’re in your car...
A white Cadillac in the opposite lane flashed its lights, and I did the same in my beat-to-shit Pontiac. Two strangers responding to a voice on the radio, drawing the city into a brotherhood of sound and light.
The Electrifying Mojo made me a night owl.
