Neocon Nooge Knocks 'Em Dead

Ted Nugent and drummer Mick Brown tore up the fair’s musical performances. MICHAEL DAVIS PHOTO

Alas, when our story’s hero left the Amboy Dukes (a band that saw its 1973 album Call of the Wild
(Bizarre) produced by none other than fellow teetotaler Frank Zappa) in
order to embark upon his solo voyage during the mid-1970s, he was
charged with an impossible quest—to fight the liberal punk-rock
movement of the 1980s, chipped tooth and painted nails—only to leave
Nugent bitterly defeated by the era’s commercial void. But after a
brief stint with Damn Yankees during the late 1980s and early 1990s,
the Nooge again mounted the mighty steed of his rock prowess and
sharpened the blade of his Les Paul axe. He has since pieced together
the epic live collection Full Bluntal Nugity (Spitfire) in 2001, starred in his own reality show, VH1’s Surviving Nugent, in 2003, and has released a new studio album, Love Grenade, (Eagle/Red) last year.

Nugent’s Chevy Court performances
carried all of the momentum that has driven the unstoppable force of
his career to the Central New York masses without missing a beat,
offering two nearly identical sets that painted the Nooge’s purportedly
Motown roots with his maniacal penchant for hunting as well as with his
barely believable social commentary. After launching the patriotic
brunt of a prerequisite, Nugent-esque version of “The Star-Spangled
Banner” into the crowd’s airwaves, the Nooge praised his “hunting
buddies” in the crowd, then launched into “Snakeskin Cowboys,” a
scorcher from his 1975, eponymous solo album. That tune, in turn,
segued into the quixotic, monochromatic bass lines of “Wango Tango” via
Greg Smith, who has recently performed as the four-stringer behind Billy Joel’s Broadway musical, Movin’ Out.

{mospagebreak} 

Unfortunate for whatever sound man had
the unbridled nerve or bare-ass stupidity to piss off Nugent, the
frontman screamed “Fix it!” after apparently encountering some monitor
problems during “Free For All.” Sound problems, alas, continued to be a
problem throughout both the afternoon and evening sets. Still, that
didn’t stop the axe-man from taking a moment to thank U.S. armed forces
for their war efforts (a notion followed by “Raw Dogs and War Hogs”),
nor did it stop him from discussing the scores of semiautomatic weapons
that accompanied the rocker as stage props. Always the generous soul,
Nugent offered to share some of the guns with the children in the front
row.

“You don’t need all these guns, do you?” Nugent asked drummer “Wild” Mick Brown,
the second member of his “Funk Brothers” rhythm section. “Let’s give
all the kids a machine gun, and all the skinny girls, too.”

Nugent’s feelings of kindness led to
reminiscence: “‘Free Machine Guns For All the Children’: I think the
Grateful Dead did that one. Oh, wait! No, that was acid! And that’s why they’re not here tonight. Any questions?” 

Of course, Nugent’s ever-present
anti-drug persona came across as strong as ever, as he cited and
bragged about his sobriety as the leading cause of his good heath and
success after his 60th birthday. Songs like Nugent’s scintillating and
oh-so-suggestive “Wang Dang Sweet Poontang” are just as strong as ever,
and demonstrative of what has led him to father five children (one of
which apparently out of wedlock, according to a 2006 article in the
United Kingdom’s online publication, The Independent, which is reprinted on Nugent’s Web site).

The new tune for Nugent’s latest
spinner, “Love Grenade,” carried all of the gun-totin’ lyrical antics
that have grabbed his fans attention for decades, while covers like Sam
and Dave’s “Soul Man” attempted to rubber-cement the Nooge’s delusion
that he’s an African-American, too. Of course, the classic “Cat Scratch
Fever” and “Stranglehold” (it would be hard to imagine that “Fever
Dog,” a song performed by the fictional band Stillwater in Cameron
Crowe’s Almost Famous, didn’t borrow heavily from this tune) kept the crowd in the loop.

There was nothing particularly new or
revolutionary that seemed to have evolved out of Nugent’s two 90-minute
shows, both of which were witnessed by throngs of State Fair thousands.
But his rock’n’roll savvy, replete with a finale of Indian
headdress-clad Nugent striking his “white buffalo” guitar with a
flaming compound-bow arrow, was knots ahead of the State Fair’s lineup
of much milder concert competition. 

—Matt Mumau