TED NUGENT LIVE ROCK CRITIC FOURTEEN

TED NUGENT LIVE AT   PENN'S PEAK, JIM THORPE, PENNSYLVANNIA, AUGUST 2011

Ted Nugent is a great guitar player and he can sing. Dekek St. Holmes likewise. Greg Smith moves along on the Fender Precision Bass. Mick Brown is a good drummer.  I am going to listen again to Ted Nugent Live: I Still Believe.

Ted starts out with a Gibson 335 or maybe it is a 345. (I own a very similar Gibson ES 347 with an acorn head inlay.) I am amazed at what Ted's guitar sounds like, perhaps Ted is really strong, I cannot fly away like Ted does, those hollow body Gibsons are Mack Truck like compared to the solid body Les Pauls which seem fast and sporty. Ted has a collection of custom Gibsons with the Abalone inlay on the fret-boards and the varying head piece inlays. I am not sure which are best I really like the big Turkish Cross on my 1970 Black Beauty. I was watching Ted Nugent's guitars for the Turkish Cross and then I realized I had seen the Turkish Cross head ornament on a blue Gibson SG played by the guitar player for the newly reformed "Cars". The new Cars performed live on Steven Colbert sometime in the first week of August. They didn't sound like the old Cars I remember. Whomsoever was singing cannot sing. The guitar licks were very tasteful and the blue SG with the Turkish Cross sounded a lot better than most of the SG's I hear.

Derek St. Holmes has the acorn on the Gibson hollow body guitar he opens with, which looks like a 175. Ted Nugent has a chalice with flames on several of his Gibson hollow body guitars. Later in the performance Ted plays an American Flag Les Paul and then the speed of the entire band accelerates dramatically. The only flaw I sense is probably not a concern nor even discernible to most of Ted's fans. I could be wrong but Ted sounds slightly flat. Could the Nigerian Rebels" tune some part of a tone flat as Stevie Ray Vaughn is reputed to have done? This is the only flaw I could point to with the music. The composition I don't know what to say, Ted is not trying to be a story teller. The lyrics are dumb and repetitive and the yap might even be worse than rap. With that in mind I took a second look at Niki Minaj trying to appreciate her hip-hop stylings. On careful study, she has some interesting story telling and attitude declaring and she trips out and transcends the ordinary in her portrayals. Ted is on a Ted and his guitar trip. From time to time Ted tonally transcends but generally  it is an electric band stage performance, be in awe.

 The best tightest band? Lynerd Skynerd from 2009 just happened to play after Ted Nugent, oh my, oh my, can those old boys play. Ted is playing the tune I thought the greatest music, Dog Eat Dog. I guess the drummer "Wild Mick Smith" is better than good. Ted Nugent calls his tunes Motown classics but I hear blues and the Excellent Fresh Nugent Noddles may have inspired much bland noodling that I found annoying. I still do not like Ted's noodling that much and there is a lot of noodling.
 I could not end without mentioning the incredible sounds made by St. Holmes' and Nugent's Paul Reid Smith guitars. Just Incredible! Is there some one working effects, as I see neither guitarist working effects. If the guitars are being changed so much simply by how they are played this authentic performance is a tremendous show of musical power.

Part of the review process involves looking and listening to other bands who are reputed to be good. I went and looked at Niki Minaj. Niki portrays strories and declares attitudes in an art form I would classify as hip hop, in that she raps and sings, I reviewd Lupe Fiasco sometime ago and I was accused of being prejudiced  against rap. The comparison between between Niki Minaj and Lupe Fiasco leaves Lupe looking un-artistic uninventive and boring.

My digital recording of Ted Nugent: I Still Believe ran long and I accidentally recorded part of a 2009 Lynerd Skynerd live performance. I thought that every aspect of the Lynerd Skynerd performance was superior to anything Ted Nugent and TheNigerian Rebels performed at Penn"s Peak. I am transported to another place by Lynerd Skynerd, their songs are transcendent. Ronny Van Zant sings so well and so much I simply can't believe that a singer's voice could hold out for most of two and one half hours.

Ted Nugent continually raves about himself and his band. It is strange and gross. The flag raising and machine gun waving at the end of Ted Nugent: I Still Believe at Penn's Peak was truly a low point in Rock and Roll Intellect. I am amazed that such a good guitar player could be so dumb otherwise. Ted says that he is always clean and sober.

                                                                                                       

SHEEPDOGS on JAY LENO LIVE ROCK CRITIC THIRTEEN

SHEEPDOGS:     LIVE  ROCK CRITIC      THIRTEEN      JAY LENO     Aug 2011

                                                                           
Ray and the boys are performing at the Don Strange Ranch in Boerne Texas. The Sheepdogs performed on Jay Leno's Show and David Letterman hosted Explosion, Dave gets the "Dumhost" award. I have and I apologise, complained, but the David Letterman "Explosions In The Sky" absolutely flabbergasted me at how bad they played, how directionless they were and how nowhere the composition went, lyricless and cacophonic and at the same time the pinch faced freaked out hippies or whatever messy shrubs they were really knew they were bombing. THEN THE AUDIENCE APPLAUDED ! I decided that seeing I had Dave and Jay on the DVR to catch the "Sheepdogs" I had better check up on these Rubes to see if they were as dumb as the "Explosions" who burned as brightly and explosively as a campfire done from very wet wood in a very damp climate.

                                                                           
How dumb are the "The Tonight Show" and "David Letterman" ? Really dumb. The long time TV drones seek out minor embarrassments, stupid unentertaining guests, dumb stuff, as if their shows were not dumb and boring enough and they could not just watch the monitors to see lots of dumb embarrassment punctuated with drum snaps and rolls, the house bands on the NBC Jay Show and CBS  are really good , without the music the dumbness would be even more gross . The stupid lists of ten whatevers. I have to force myself not to fast forward right away . I am going to review them so I have to .

The worst and most boring things I have seen on Jay Leno and David Letterman are the endless mindless meandering and then shamelessly self promoting celebrity interviews. Then they watch and yak and barf about movie trailers, are you entertained ? Some of the cloying mutual fawn fests go on for half an hour !

                                                                        
The Sheepdogs on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine , I won't say much. I learned to play harmonica with many ensembles like the Sheepdogs. I remember the night I thought how boring the bar blues are. I will not ever be able to play this kind of music again. What is the problem with the genre of music ? There is the sameness. With rare exceptions the bar blues are bar boring. Something familiar to orchestrate the drinking. I often observe that the sounds are not those of music with rock blues and jazz bands. There are traditionally associated riffs rolls and ratches but the sounds do not comprise a tune, even if they are cool sounds. What is that special something which makes a tune a tune  ?  I believe that the lyrics and the music should do more than tell a story, protest or profess. The entire performance, live video recorded or animated and set to a musical score, should set the scene, put a feeling in the air and take the viewer and listener somewhere which is transcendent.

The Sheepdogs were not transcendent. I viewed a number of Sheepdogs offerings on Youtube. More of the same and worse they have sycophants uttering false praise. Someone wrote that they had missed out on Zeppelin and the Southern Rockers and now here they back as the Sheepdogs. I am not even reluctant to say that these boys are nothing like the Southern Rock Bands. Those bands soar they fall they flutter and get back up growing. I was at the Fillmore in SF in 1968, I saw Allman Joy, with Paul Butterfield and Nicky Hopkins. For god sake don't think the Sheepdogs are anything like the Allman brothers .  To equate the Sheepdogs with Led Zeppelin is beyond absurd. I was fortunate enough to play harmonica on a number of occasions with well rehearsed Zep Bands. They fly, they are so wild they are so fast and they are so slow and they are so loud. Contrary to popular belief it is not easy to play loud.

I did view an entire concert from the Don Strange Ranch and I saw a band that can play well. The Pariah Dogs are good and they are playing a lot of the types of music I dislike as much as Rap and Hip Hop. It is possible I only really tolerate hard rock, progressive rock, jazz, funk and fusion.

Ray LaMontaigne  plays some creditable Harmonica. Not all of his tones are right, and only one of his songs had good harmonica in it. I would not enjoy playing harmonica with the Sheepdogs. When the Pariah dogs stepped out of character and played a fast moving Jazz number. I would like to have been counted in. I would be really excited to play harmonica with Ray LaMontaingne and his band when they do Jazz. Although a lot of the rest of the performance was too countrified for me I wouldn`t be surprised if a lot of people enjoyed everything that this band played. It`s a really big band, the slide guitar player who also plays guitar is a bit of a star and Ray sings and leads the band. Its hard to play loud buts its also hard to play well with a large group of musicians and everyone in the band plays well. I believe that this is a fairly new band and you might find it interesting to watch for Ray LaMontaingne and the Pariah Dogs.