TS: 'Ted Nugent' vs. 'Cat Scratch Fever'

'CSF' - loads of great tracks beyond the title classic. "Death by Misadventure" is fonkay! If Ted is such a dope howcum he knows all those Jimmy Nolen 6ths and 9ths then? "Thousand Knives" is a brooding ballady chug that's like 'Nuggets' gone Krautrock. (Ted was ON the original 'Nuggets', right? Listen to his stuff as turbo-charged garage-punk and it makes all the sense in the world immediately. Especially the endless variations of you-broke-my-heart-I'm-gonna-kill-you lyrics - pure Chocolate Watch Band. Plus, Ted never did anything as bad as "Hey Joe"!!)

'Ted Nugent' (1st album), however, has "Stranglehold" on it.

'CSF' as you might imagine has quite a bit of lead gtr playing, and if you're into that sort of thing you may be surprised at some of the jazzy Reinhardt-esque fluidity, that DOESN'T compromise the energy at all! This guy definitely knows his shit, McLaughlin speed + BB King tone? As encyclopedias of blues/r'n'r styles of the preceding decades Ted incorporated them into his own playing with far more assurance than Page did. The 'traditionalism' comes from the tone tho - I have this theory about the relationship between 'timbre' and (mainstream)crit-perception of genre 'progress' - i.e., 'early' [in relation to NOW of course] instrumentalists (Armstrong, Berry) had thick'n'rich fluid (gtr - 'humming, warm') tones, then (Parker/Clapton/Beck) flattened and thinned the tone somehwat so they could get more notes and scales in there ('content' over 'form'?), then (Coltrane/Van Halen) placed this deluge of notes at the CENTRE of their approach, relying timbrally on a thin perfunctory squeak, except when they were adding groans and vomit noises and explosions on top of the by-now-ridiculous amount of notes. (Of course, the emergence of Coltrane/Van Halen was contemporaneous with their respective fields finally leaving the sphere of ANY 'outside relevance' and ascended to the rarefied heights of the academy never to be seen again. Think - have any of the followers of Coltrane or Van Halen reached wider out-of-genre-aficionado-circles acclaim? And if not, does that mean that 'instrumental revolutionaries' unwittingly stop the development of respective instrument's technique, freezing it forever? ALL populare sax playing sounds like it could come straight from 1956 - for guitar playing, 1978)

This is getting one-sided. I should mention, the debut has "Stranglehold" on it.

'CSF' though, is drummer Cliff Davies' album. The guy used to be in Curved Air but again, his tricky-shitness ("Workin' Hard, Playin' Hard" has the weirdest rhythm I ever heard, try rapping over that! But point is, you COULD!) never gets in the way of the forward motion, and even the weaker tracks ("Live It Up", "Out of Control") have some snaky skins to keep you listening!

However, it must be said, the debut DOES have "Stranglehold" on it. And "Stormtroopin'" is good too!