Is Ted Nugent Underrated? (NO Politics or Lifestyle discussion)!

I have three of his albums. The S/T, Free For All, and Cat Scratch Fever. Of those three albums...the only tracks I really like are the ones that are sung by Derek St. Holmes. I just find Nugent's voice pretty annoying for whatever reason. They're three pretty good Raunch n Roll albums of their time....the S/T being the best by far, but nothing groundbreaking, and I don't even think of Ted Nugent when thinking about great guitar players. When I was 14 I thought Terrible Ted was pretty much a bad ass (in attitude). But, even just a couple years later I thought he had become a complete parody of himself. And since Derek St. Holmes was ousted from the band, I just completely lost interest. I was in the record retail business for some of those following albums, so I was given promos...which I promptly passed on to customers who wanted them. I just didn't like anything at all about them. So, I'd say if anything, he's more likely a bit overrated IMO.

 

Since I am a happy new owner of State Of Shock, would you all like to give a top 5 Ted Nugent records list? I would like to get a few more if I come across them.

 

I believe that he was playing a Paul Reed Smith at that time.

 

I started 3 perfectly innocent Ted Nugent threads in 2016 -MUSIC only- and they were locked within 2 min, no warning, no explanations, no answers from the gorts.

 

The only one I like in that list is Aerosmith (and I'll take Free over Bad Company).

 

I have the Amboy Dukes and a bit of early stuff. Excellent guitarist regardless of being a character.

Might rank him with Joe Walsh?

 

I can pretty much do that with any music, though, and so should anyone be able to do that with enough knowledge and experience. Not only are there musical trends that clue one in to era within a handful of years, but there are technological, production, etc. trends that clue one in.

 

Since a lot of people are commenting on vocals and Derek St. Holmes, I'm surprised that no one is commenting on Meat Loaf's vocals on Free-for-All. I'm not a fan of Meat Loaf's own albums--primarily because I usually dislike Jim Steinman's songwriting, but I love Meat Loaf singing with Nugent. I wish he would have stayed with Nugent longer.

 

I can definitely understand someone not liking Nugent if that style of music isn't generally their bag.

 

Ted? Mmmm......I know he's been around for a long time but I have never listened to him yet, I hope he's not underrated. Cat Scratch Fever ?

 

At some point in high school (late 70s - early 80s) it was a common conception in my circle of friends who liked rock music that the ones considered as the best guitarists at the moment were Ted Nugent and Carlos Santana. And Nugent's LP covers (particularly "Weekend Warriors") were impressive.

 

Amboy Dukes, the first couple of solo albums and the live Double Live Gonzo are really good, after that he kind of turned in to a cartoon of himself. Still a really good guitarist, but my god what an ego.

When I lived in Michigan, they were giving away a Corvette at a radio station and Nugent was the one they said owned it so he was at the giveaway. My Wife and I were there and had a key to try. He was really ticking off my Wife, she hated the hair flipping. He was constantly flipping his hair.

Recently, there's a video on YouTube from one of the NAAM shows where he's playing Stranglehold, really good guitar playing. Worth looking up.

 

No, Uncle Ted is not underrated. He represents everything that is wrong with generic blues rock.

 

I usually like to listen to someone's entire discography from start to finish at least 2-3 times in a row with ranking in mind before I rank their albums, and I haven't done that for Nugent, but a tentative top 10 for me would probably be something like:

Free-for-All
Ted Nugent (1975)
Double Live Gonzo
Weekend Warriors
State of Shock
Cat Scratch Fever
Live at Hammersmith '79
Scream Dream
Craveman
Intensities in 10 Cities

This would likely be shifted around a bit and probably some of the later albums would wind up higher than I'm guessing if I were to go through them more systematically for the purpose of ranking them, but that's a least a rough idea of how I'd probably rank them.

 

I loved his work up to and including Scream Dream. Most stuff after that was disappointing to awful. Say what you want about Ted, but he is a good guitarist. Not as good as he thinks he is, but he's good.

 

No, he wasn't in the same league as Hendrix, Van Halen, Clapton, Beck, and his albums don't compare to Who's Next or Pet Sounds. But he doesn't need to be that. For me, this goes back to when certain critics in the 1970s, who in most cases know nothing about playing an instrument or how to objectively measure a musician's skill level, hated Nugent's onstage wildman gimmick, hated that he shouted "Anybody wants to get mellow you can turn around and get the f--- out of here!!!", they just despised his stage persona. As result of this, these critics would, without knowing the first thing about playing a guitar, slag him as a guitarist, which was utter nonsense.

You can be repulsed by his lyrics, turned-off by the fake macho bravado and posturing, believe his style of dress crass, find his songwriting to be uninteresting, fine. But those things do not add up to him being a substandard guitarist, which is how a lot of his critics in the 70s unfairly tried to portray him because they were so appalled that he actually had fans.

 

Of course, but beyond that, that style of music doesn't enjoy anywhere near the prominence it did at that time. Countless threads about "the death of rock " here based on that very premise. Any band that dips into that well today gets labelled as either derivative or retro PDQ. I'm not just referring to production style or how snare drums sounded on records in 1978. I'm talking about an entire genre that has largely shuffled off into the tar after being dominant in it's time.

D.D.

 

High-water mark for sure. And still enjoyable. I would rather stick my head into a printing press than listen to Wango Tango again, though.

D.D.

 

I'd say that Walsh's albums under his own name are pretty underrated, too.

 

Joe Walsh is a million times better as a guitarist.

 

Tough one Gary, as they kind of go hand in hand. I was a Junior in High School when the Damn Yankees debut was released. I was in Mcbain and he had property in Marion the next small town over. As kids we all loved him, he was a rebel of sorts, and of course we were all hunters also. In our area, he was one of us. rednecks, trucks, rock, bonfire party's and plenty of beer

 

A lot of that is because of younger generations, and a lot of it has to do with a combination of a changing political climate (which we're not allowed to get into) and "anxiety of influence" in the vein of Harold Bloom. Re the latter, there's a very understandable desire (because they want to have their own thing) to revolt against an older generation's dominating preferences, especially since that generation still has such a hold on popular media--radio, magazines like Rolling Stone, etc . Thus the vast majority of "classic rock" gets written off by younger generations as "dad rock" and other terms with a disparaging connotation.

 

Untrue. They are pretty much equals.