Mike Riggs of Scum of the Earth
You won't find this in our print edition ...
Rock around the flock tonight
In the face of grace, veteran of Rob Zombie days works his own mission
By Jennifer Chancellor
World Scene Writer
Scum of the Earth founder Mike Riggs will tell everyone: Rock ’n’ roll isn’t supposed to be safe.
It isn’t supposed to be comfortable, either. Especially once you’re inside his head.
Diagnosed schizophrenic, Riggs spent many of his childhood years in mental institutions. As one might imagine, life hasn’t been easy. Now settled in a oversize trailer home in a small community in Arkansas, he reflects that, really, what else could he have become but a guitar-slinging, rock ’n’ roll freak show?
Riggs rose through the rock ranks performing with influential musicians like White Zombie founder Rob Zombie (whom he met at a pro-wrestling event) and bands Prong and Skrew, before forming SOTE and releasing, “Blah… Blah… Blah…: Love Songs for the New Millennium,” in 2004.
The newest, “Sleaze Freak,” is a lusty romp into the red-light districts he so loves, and the music he calls “stripper rock.”
Though he talks about big rock shows with massive skulls and demon-like heads, and plays a clear guitar filled with bovine blood that he often spews onto audiences, he doesn’t cuss even once during a recent telephone interview.
He is an anomaly.
And if people think his live shows are macabre, well, Riggs will also tell them that there are more important things for communities to fear.
“It’s funny that they care about a single word or a phrase or a lyric when all this bad crap is going on around them,” he said.
So, the next time a parent hears about devil horns being pulled from a decorative skull as it’s bounced hand-to-hand over fans’ heads at a Scum of the Earth performance, he reiterated that it’s all done in the name of “a good rock show.”
“Rock isn’t supposed to be ‘safe,’ at least real rock ’n’ roll isn’t,” Riggs said. “But it’s not like we are injuring people.
“The real danger is outside those concert doors,” he said.
“From my bus, I’ve seen people beaten, I’ve seen handguns pulled. It’s so horrible, people shooting up drugs — lots and lots of drugs — just off the main road, in alleys, behind buildings. It’s happening in towns all over the country.
“People ignore what’s real. Reality is more of a threat,” he said, “because it’s harder to accept.”
Even back at home, he believes that if the residents of his small, Arkansas town had things their way, he’d be long gone.
“They said that I needed to be saved or I needed to leave,” he said with a laugh. “Then churches offered to pay me to leave — a lot of money — and even got into a bidding war over it. I guess they’re not used to big devil heads in their back yards,” he said, then chuckled.
But, he admits, the “blanket animosity” that sometimes shrouds him is hard to ignore.
“They put together this ‘prayer group’ in town,” Riggs said, “but it was really a sort of lynch mob. Everywhere I went, they were there, waving an 8-x-10 photo of Jesus in my face.”
But his sense of humor often lends him the respite of perspective.
“I’ve just always wanted to ask ’em where that picture came from.”
THE CHEMICAL ALLIANCE TOUR
featuring Scum of the Earth, Ekotren and Rikets
Doors open at 7 p.m. Monday
Cain’s Ballroom
423 N. Main St.
$14 in advance, $16 day of show. Ticket info available at www.tulsaworld.com/tickets
www.tulsaworld.com/SOTE
