Ted Nugent - Cat Scratch Fever

Can we cut the shit and finally admit that maybe, just maybe, Ted Nugent doesn’t deserve the notoriety that he continues to receive some forty-plus years after he dodged his military obligation and chose to become “The Motor City Madman” instead?

The fact is that the Nuge hasn’t produced anything worthwhile in over thirty of those forty years, and his greatest accomplishment-Cat Scratch Fever-isn’t all that it’s stacked up to be.

Come to think of it, this record, and the two preceding it, are only a Ted Nugent solo record in name alone, as the large burst of creativity was just as much a product of the rest of his band as it was to  his own compositional "prowess."

In fact, Nugent enjoyed the attention that Cat Scratch Fever provided him so much that he began acting like a complete asshole. And when he alienated himself so much, the talent left him, the hits stopped coming, his impact turned into caricature, and his political commentary began to outweigh anything else he composed in song.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at his chart performance and sales totals after Cat Scratch Fever. They are as slippery as the notion that trickle-down economics somehow can trigger a robust economy.

But let’s go back and take another look at his 1977 high-water mark, a blistering 10-song set that features fellow Michigan-native Derek St. Holmes as the lead singer of a band fronted by a hairy dude in a loincloth, playing a big ol’ Gibson Birdland.

Originally written by Skunk Tarver, “Cat Scratch Fever” is a strange, minor-key ode to promiscuity and the effects of syphilis on the male mind. To study the title track of Ted’s most notorious song is to squander its precious moment: a riff that is to die for. When you combine the riff along with chorus, essentially a lather-rinse-repeat of the song title, you have a legitimate contender for one of rock ‘n roll’s most awesome songs, even if the content and actual lyrics are completely inane.

Beyond that, the rest of Cat Scratch Fever the album in nothing more than a decent 70’s hard rock collection that undoubtedly served its purpose in every Monte Carlo that cruised Main Street on a Saturday night, but it’s hardly a song that defines the decade or the emotional triggers that stemmed from it. It’s is the musical equivalent of a one night stand, an evening where the parties remember each other’s names for prosperity, but with no emotional connection beyond the orgasm (read: riff), “Cat Scratch Fever” is not the kind of song you’d plan as a wedding song.

Leave it to the Nuge to top this with a song that’s so offensively awesome that it too deserves a tip of the hat to old Ted, “Wang Dang Sweet Poontang.” Again, it’s the riff that matters here, and with the lyricist being sort of a dumb witted misogynist, you tend to allow a wide-birth for the fact that it’s essentially a song about how the female reproductive system can make men do (and write) some pretty stupid things.

These two moments of flawed perfection were released as a single, and even with the content being so questionable, Ted managed to score his only Top 40 hit, sans Damn Yankees, of course.

And if it weren’t for the fact that “Cat Scratch Fever” the single contained a pointless edit that only shaved a half-minute off the album version’s running time, I might be inclined to suggest that everyone save their money and seek out just the single.

But there are a few more enjoyable tracks within the full-length, albeit all of them are riddled with clichés and endless machismo. What makes them the best thing in Uncle Ted’s discography is the fact that Cat Scratch Fever (as well as his debut and Free For All-both recommended for further listening) was the product of a band.

Regardless of the fact that Ted’s name is the primary composer on nearly every song, it doesn’t deter from the fact that these songs were conceived, arranged, and executed with three other men who compliment Nugent’s shortcomings.

When vocalist Derek St. Holmes left (the bassist and drummer followed shortly after), Ted was left to his own isolationist views, taking a “my way or the highway” approach that signaled a serious loss in quality while promoting his asshole opinions ahead of anything he could manage to strangle from his guitar.

A  waste of talent for sure, but Cat Scratch Fever also shows that it was nothing more than a mid-level entry to a very prolific decade, particularly when it came to hard rock entries. It is Nugent’s most notable moment, but given his endless parade of political nonsense and a mouth as loud as any humbucker pickup, listeners who want to distance themselves from any contact with the record’s primary creative force will not be missing much by placing Cat Scratch Fever into quarantine.

Breaking News: Jack Blades Announces That He's A Republican

I noticed that they used a polite (and probably cleared) instrumental version of “The Boys Are Back In Town” last night as they introduced Paul Ryan, the Republican candidate for Vice President at last night’s Republican National Convention.

I wonder why they didn’t use “(You Can Still) Rock In America” instead.

No seriously. Night Rangerian Jack Blades is a big dumb Republican, and I say “dumb” because any real Republican would not be able to support the ass clowns that they have running the party these days.

"You can still rock in America, but only if you vote for Romney!"

Not to suggest that the dumb Democrats are much better, but have you ever noticed that aside from Ted Nugent, there aren’t that many GOP rockers? 

Let’s count ‘em:

The Nuge (dangerously crazy)

Dave Mustaine (crazy ex cokehead)

Blackie Lawless (irrelevantly crazy)

And now Jack Blades.

I don’t think Jack Blades is dumb, just misinformed. I firmly believe that if you or I were in a band with The Nuge and spent an entire tour with him, we’d come out of it partially brainwashed, or at the very least, fearing for our lives if we ever uttered a dissenting opinion toward Uncle Ted’s views. It is my fear that Jack Blades is merely showing the signs of his exposure to Ted Nugent.

Plus, he's the fucking dude from Night Ranger. Plus Damn Yankees. Plus Rubicon, or whatever the name of that shitty band he was in prior to forming Night Ranger with that bald dude from Montrose. I don't see the guy who composed such classics as "Don't Tell Me You Love Me" as someone I look towards as a political commentator.         

Here’s his silly press release advising everyone that he’s a dumb Republican and he’s going to play a shitty little song for dumb Republicans.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                
AUGUST 27, 2012                                                                  

Jack Blades of Night Ranger/Damn Yankees Takes "Rock N' Roll Ride" to 2012 Republican National Convention

Iconic Entertainer Joins GOP in Tampa to Help Show America is "Back in the Game"

TAMPA, FL -- You can still rock in America -- and with his blend of common-sense conservatism and rock n' roll credentials, Jack Blades is out to prove it.  The songwriter, bassist, lead singer and front man of Night Ranger and Damn Yankees is in Tampa, Florida this week to participate in the 2012 Republican National Convention, where he'll perform "Back in the Game," the lead track from his latest solo effort, Rock 'n Roll Ride, and make appearances in support of Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and other GOP candidates.

"This country was built on the hard work of individual Americans who took a chance and pursued a dream," says Blades, who has sold more than 25 million albums throughout his remarkable career and performed in front of millions of fans worldwide.  "Too often today I see that sort of initiative being discouraged and punished.  We can do better.  That's why I'm honored to have been asked to be involved in the convention."

Blades' music has long had a patriotic flavor, evident in Night Ranger's classic 1983 hit "(You Can Still) Rock in America" and emerging more recently in his solo hit "Back in the Game," the video for which made its debut earlier this year on radio and TV host Sean Hannity's website.  Night Ranger also performed for U.S. troops stationed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2008, an experience Blades found deeply inspiring.

With a career spanning three decades, Blades has recorded with, penned songs and produced albums for some of the music industry's biggest names, including Aerosmith, Cher, Ringo Starr, Alice Cooper, Roger Daltrey, Journey, Vince Neil, Ozzy Osbourne, Styx, Ted Nugent, and Motley Crue.

Blades has brought his common-sense conservatism and passion for America to television, appearing as a guest on Fox News' "Hannity" and "Red Eye" programs.

Blades' music has been featured in films such as Armageddon, Oscar-nominated Boogie Nights, Tommy Boy; television shows such as South Park and American Dad, the wildly successful Rock Band and Guitar Hero video games; and the Rock of Ages hit Broadway musical and feature film.

Looking Back At The Orange & Black: Glorious Noise Calls It A Decade

Immediately after announcing their 10th anniversary, the website Glorious Noise stated that the online music magazine (or blog for you cynics) would go on “infinite hiatus” to take a breather.

I wrote some reviews and articles for the website as many of you may be aware of, and you could say that I’m a bit saddened by the news. It has little to do with losing an outlet that’s graciously published my poorly structured prose, but more to do with the declining amount of webspace that’s devoted to meaningful articles to those of us who viewed the internet as a nice place to match up those liner note readers with one another.

A few years ago, Glorious Noise co-founder Jake Brown made some offhanded comment of how the site could become (like so many other sites) just another page of links, publishing the bio sheets that the labels provide and giving viewers a heads up to free MP3s to newly released albums.

“We’d probably get more hits too.” He concluded.

The sarcasm was not lost on me, and it was obvious that the truth in his words stung a little too.

I know there’s a bunch of people like me who are still out there, who still remember the solitude of reading the liner notes to a favorite album-struggling to find a common soul to our fanaticism and then hoping their musical tastes somewhat matched ours.

The internet seemed like a good way to harness those people, but people like me are living among a younger generation of interweb controllers. Those who couldn’t be bored with the endless parade of no-it-alls who talk about music. Just put up a link, for christsakes, and let me judge for myself.

They’re immune to the clutter. They view the internet as something they must tame upon each login. To get to the goal is their task-like an endless version of Super Mario Brothers, they click, close and minimize until they get the advance of the new Decemberist album.

Are we a dying breed? Does anyone feel a sense of panic anymore when faced with the prospect that the album as we know it may have become completely irrelevant? Is the fact that a website that’s devoted to the ambiguous Mission Statement that “Rock & Roll Can Change Your Life” can’t operate as a successful business model?

I use “business model” in the loosest sense of the word, because it was obvious that nobody in Glorious Noise was out to make any money doing all of this, and I have no real data to support the idea that the site was losing readership.

But it certainly was becoming more of a burden, and with contributions decreasing or coming in the form of poorly edited material, the man-hours needed to clean up the shit and make it somewhat coherent and presentable became more like work than passion.

And then there’s the abundance of cynics, critics, and assholes that use the anonymity of the web to, for lack of a better word, just be mean. In a weird bit of synchronicity, a semi-regular troll at Glorious Noise commented on the message board’s White Stripes Announce Breakup topic how they wondered aloud, “You next?”

It was weird but, conspiracy theories aside, it was a perfect example of how the internet has turned from a Utopian platform of culture-bending community to a soapbox designed for assholes with nothing more than divisive words and angry opinions. In the case of the aforementioned troll, I believe his/her biggest gripe was that the contributors had failed to recognize the significance of modern pop music. In short, we were getting old and our fogeyism had clouded the respect that modern music was somehow owed.

While Glorious Noise may indeed have demographics that skewed older, does it make their opinions any less meaningful? I can speak with absolutely honesty that I don’t give a rat’s ass about what the kids are listening to because it’s not meant for me. It’s disposable. It’s there to shade in the memories of their youth, not mine. No matter how I try to convince you of how awesome Shalamar was, there’s little that I’d be able to say to get you to actually believe me. But aren’t I allowed to tell you how “Dead Giveaway” meant something for me during the week-and-a-half that it was the best song ever? I used to love hearing my Mom and Dad talk about how “The Stroll” was a big, high school dance song where everyone got together is a group and, you guessed it, strolled.

And while I cringe and bitch whenever I hear my 7 year old sing “Billionaire,” I know that for every Beatles record in my 7 year old 45 collection, there was also “Seasons In The Sun” or “The Night Chicago Died.” Can you make the argument that those songs were better? Perhaps. But you can’t do it without coming across a bit like an old fuck.

The point I’m trying to make is that, like the album, maybe a website devoted to finding a narrative that eloquently describes the power that rock and roll music can have on a person isn’t what “the kids” are into nowadays.

I look and see a generation of headbud-wearing youth who’ve navigated the web to personally sample what they think they like without considering what others are listening to, experiencing exactly the same feelings, albeit with different chord progressions.

The difference now seems to be that when those others try to intervene with new musical avenues, the dialogue now trends a bit nasty. How dare you tell me what to listen to! Who are you to tell me when you don’t agree with my preferences?! Who the fuck made you so special that you can call yourself a critic?

I’m not, dude. I’m just a father of two kids that writes because a therapist told him to do it (he also told me to go to grad school, but who the fuck made him so special that he could call himself a therapist) and writes primarily about music because that’s where my passion lies.

Ask any “real” friend this, and they’ll confirm it. They’ll tell you that I bring up music in conversation as allowed. They’ll tell you that I can be a dick sometimes, opinionated yes, but occasionally overzealous in my hatred of Kiss, the current state of Album Oriented Rock (what’s that) and why I don’t understand why Royal Trux got so revered. They’ll tell you that I obsess over ridiculously trivial things, like the isolated John Entwhistle tracks on The Kids Are Alright, the missing Hendrix recordings on the night MLK was assassinated, or the suicide fountain drink that Joel Gion conjured up in Dig! I mean, who does this?! Don’t these kinds of freaks deserve a website, too? And don’t suggest the Steve Hoffman forums or some other web corner that caters to those who go beyond liner notes-the completists that check off catalog numbers and who read the script on vinyl record’s run-out grooves.

Glorious Noise rather fit that bill for me. I learned about it from a link a friend sent me once, the article of The Nuge-where Uncle Ted goes off on a ballsy interviewer to the point where the two are yelling at each other, with Ted growing more and more animated as the Q&A progresses.

It was awesome. I appreciated the link and the other articles the web site provided. I enjoyed the comrade that the message board had. I created a username of what was to be a musical project-Worpswede-only to watch it and my marriage crumble at the same time.

They were cordial there. One of the other founders used to use a nom-de-plum that just happened to be the name of my Father.

Clearly, it was a sign.

I emailed Jake, he replied back and cc’d Derek. They sent vague instructions, assumed I spoke HTML and asked for a few samples. They accepted some reviews, poked for some personal tales, and were genuinely cool about it all.

It was fun, but I was surprised at how little support they received. It seemed that the two of them were doing the bulk of the behind-the-scenes shit, the thankless tasks that really don’t amount to content, but site matenience.

And while they may have thought that they found someone who would be entirely self-sufficient in terms of content and making sure it was ready for publishing, they got someone different.

Imagine a man who gets the kids to bed, provides the wife with a modicum of attention and then retreats to the man cave to write some silly record review.

That was me.

I’d write until I grew tired, sacrificing sleep and sometimes sex for some silly little record review. On occasion, I’d catch a bit of grief from the old lady, but then she got a Kindle. I’d post the review only to have Jake review my sleepy words and point out what sentences didn’t make sense or what other grammatical errors I had made in my late night haze.

What a drag it must have been to clean up that shit, but I figured there was enough passion behind everything that the site professed that it made the shit-work worthwhile.

Clearly, this wasn’t the case.

I have no idea about the technical stuff that Jake was speaking of in his anniversary post, but I can tell you that when it comes down to making time for your family and having to edit content just to make it presentable, you inevitably ask “Is this worth it?”

And when you start to wonder if readers are asking the same question, then the answer becomes easier to find.

I still believe we’re out here, quasi-relevant and stubbornly adhering to the idea that our collective memory deserves to have good music behind it. I honestly believe that we can talk shit about music without having an ulterior motive (unique site hits, ad click revenue, ego, etc.) and merely writing from the same, deep emotional well that makes music so important to us to begin with.

If Glorious Noise ever does manage to come around again, I encourage any real fan of music to embrace and cherish it, because it’s a rare commodity within the stringent confines in this rapid-click world of the internet.

Happy Birthday, Ted Nugent

Ted Nugent turns 60 today, so you can expect two things from him: He’ll probably try to kill something and he’ll probably do something crazy to show everyone that he’s still relevant.
He isn’t, of course, and for me Ted Nugent stopped being relevant the moment he shitcanned Derek St. Holmes from his band in the late 70’s. Nugent didn’t enjoy having to share the stage with a lead singer…never mind that he hogged the spotlight even when St. Holmes was singing some of The Nuge’s most famous hits…and decided to sing everything himself.
I don’t know if you’ve heard Ted Nugent sing, but it’s worse than the mating cry of a great white buffalo.
Ted watched as his sales slipped throughout the 80’s, even to the point where he even started to allow other lead singers take over the vocal duties, but without a decent song to sing, Uncle Ted slipped farther down into irrelevance.
A pair of other musicians with diminishing appeal called up Ted to have him join their “supergroup” called Damn Yankees. Amazingly, Ted’s ego was so large that he couldn’t simply stand around and cash a paycheck. Tommy Shaw and Jack Blades allowed Ted a few songs, endured his pointless soloing on stage and gave him with some time each night to voice his conservative ideology to hordes of drunken males.
But Ted was still restless.
By singlehandedly assisting with the dismantling of Damn Yankees, Ted returned to his original plan of slipping into obscurity. MTV/VH1 gave him a few more opportunities, understanding that more and more people were by then starting to recognize Ted Nugent thanks to his mouth rather than his music.
On both shows (Surviving Nugent and Supergroup), Ted barks like an old man desperate to be heard over the sudden celebrity of retarded nobody’s like Tila Tequila.
It was clear that the spirit of rock that Ted always claimed to have seemed to have been replaced by the spirit for moneymaking. With his ears shot, he appeal diminishing, and his creativity stifled, Nugent decided to focus on the brand of Ted Nugent in the hopes that it would salvage his legacy. While this may be great for him to make enough money to go hunting (his primary passion now, it seems) it does nothing to show future generations that there was something more to this guy than just being a loud-mouthed, right-wing gun nut that is probably one of the most hypocritical douchebags in the business.
Support the troops? Ted shit in his pants (literally) when his number came up in Vietnam.
Right wing values? Ted had a child out of wedlock and pursued a relationship with a teenage girl. Survivalist? Even if you have no experience, Uncle Ted will take your money and let you bag a deer at his ranch.
Rocker? Did I mention that he was in Damn Yankees?
The thing is, those first few albums are good fun. They hint at a wider range than what Ted had with the Amboy Dukes and they’re better than when Ted truly when solo. And like the migration we’ve seen from Michigan for the past thirty years, it’s obvious that even the Motor City Madman has left his old stomping grounds (both literally and metaphorically) with no sign of returning.