TED NUGENT - The Music Made Me Do It

Released Nov 9/18 (Round Hill)

Man, this is a tough one to review for a lifelong Nuge fan. Let's look at the negatives first ... of which there are many, unfortunately. There's a dearth of new material here. Of the ten tracks, six(!) are remixes/re-images of tracks that have been previously released, leaving under eleven minutes of new material for the hardcore fan. 'Cocked, Locked & Ready To Rock' is 'Stormtroopin'' with a different bridge section, while 'Backstrap Fever' is a carbon copy of 'Cat Scratch Fever' simply with different lyrics. There's also a throw-away bass-only track closing out the record. Also, the lack of a second singer exposes Ted's less-than-stellar vocals on a couple of the tracks that beg for a clean singer (where's Derek St. Holmes when you need him?).

Okay, now for the positives. The four new tracks are worthy additions to the Motorcity Madman's recorded legacy. Making the biggest impressions are 'Bigfundirtygroovenoize', an appropriately named loud rhythm juggernaut of a track with a cool surf chorus, and 'I Love Ya Too Much Baby', a memorable rockin' blues ditty complete with female vocal backing track. Additionally, the sound here is spot on, instrumental differentiation allowing the hard rhythm section to be clearly discerned while you get your ass kicked by Ted's world class guitar soloing. Further, the versions of 'Fred Bear', 'I Just Wanna Go Huntin' and 'Sunrize' included herein are superior to the original versions, as a result of the strong production job.

So, yeah, there are positives to this outing, but it's hard to shake the fact that there's a significant lack of new material here. The overall feeling is that this seems to have been rushed and underfunded, not enough tracks brought to the studio and not enough time to make up for the lack of same. The beyond simple album cover art doesn't help with this impression either. This would have come across much better if the new material was issued as an EP instead. For those who are not Nugent fanatics, if you want to invest some time and coin on latter-era Ted, check out 2002's Craveman opus instead.

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