Monthly Archives: April 2014

How do I hate Ted Nugent? Let me count the ways. I hate Ted Nugent because he’s a crypto-fascist patriot (dirtiest word in the English language) Cro-Magnon who wears a loincloth. I hate Ted Nugent because he’s a Republican, although I guess I’m repeating myself. I hate Ted Nugent because he’s a symbol of cool to all those straightedge jerks too dumb to know that the road of excess leads to the palace of wino-dom.

I hate Ted Nugent because he said he found man-on-man sex repulsive (although he added he’d never judge another man’s morals) and because he proved he was an idiot by hosting his own reality show, in which he bow hunted humans in Birkenstocks. He also built an outhouse. Presumably so as to have a place more comfortable than a deer stand to write his looney-tunes political diatribes.

Now, let me count the ways I love Ted Nugent. I love Ted Nugent because he has a wife named Shemane. This is so close to Shemale as to be suspicious. I love Ted Nugent because he dodged the Vietnam War, even if this does make him a Grade A hypocrite. I love Ted Nugent because he once said, “I will personally cut off my dick and eat it! I will cut my cock off on The Ed Sullivan Show and chew on it. That is what I’ll do if the new album bombs.” I love Ted Nugent because the lead singer on Ted’s1975 solo debut Ted Nugent bears the hilarious moniker Derek St. Holmes, a name so positively Spın̈al Tap it’s uncanny. Finally, I love Ted Nugent because Ted Nugent is a most excellent record, even if (like me) you consider the Motor City Madman a poltroon.

Nugent, as everybody knows, got his start with The Amboy Dukes, the Detroit band that bequeathed us 1968’s psychedelic Meisterwerk “Journey to the Center of the Mind,” which Nugent later claimed he didn’t know was about drugs. One wonders what he thought it was about–two guys crossing the desert of Ted’s brainpan on a horse with no name? In the mid-seventies he went solo, and a Nuge was born. He began his solo career with a bang and Ted Nugent, which combined wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am sonic assaults (“Stormtroopin’” and “Motor City Madhouse”) with one prolonged guitar exploration of inner space featuring a wrestling metaphor.

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Press Play is our Monday morning recap of the new tracks received last week—provided here to inform your vinyl purchasing power. Click, preview, download.

PUJOL – Pitch Black
Tanner – Where You Go
Rig 1 – Duality
Hundreds – Please Rewind (La Boum Fatale Remix)
IRie Idea – Good On Paper
Porter Robinson, Mat Zo, Marcus Schossow – Sea Of Voices Dilate Summer Nights (Artec & Triarchy Edit)
Bonda Ft. Rich Andruws – Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop (Prod. By Heartbeatz)
Futurecop! – Eyes (feat. Lyon)
Morning Ritual – So Cold
The Valery Trails – Hollywoodland
The Jean Jackets – This Is My Day

TVD SINGLE OF THE WEEK:
Indianapolis Jones – Not Ghosts Yet

The Wonder Revolution – Wonder Lensed
Bad Suns – Salt (Peter Thomas Remix)
Rush Midnight – Closer (Tokyo Police Club Remix)
Angela Perley The Howlin’ Moons – Hurricane
Owenstone – Summer Lane
Japan Soul – War
Frances England – Light Brings Color
The Penelopes – Time To Shine
Bastard Mountain – Meadow Ghosts
Trophy Scars – Gutted
Sye Elaine Spence – Is This Love

Greetings from Laurel Canyon!

Last week I happened to catch the Nightly News. Brian Williams nonchalantly delivered a short report on the discovery of a planet he described as “Earth-like.”

Yes, outer space (along with the music business) is “the final frontier.” We now know there lies a place 3,000 trillion miles away. You don’t have to be an A&R guru to look at Planet Kepler-186f and know something is going down—way out yonder.

This week’s Idelic Hour poses a simple question, “Is anybody out there?” Seeing a photo of this familiar looking world, the thing that came to mind was the first couple of lines of the Bowie classic, “Life on Mars.”

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The Kooks new material seems to be drifting to extremes. While the title track from their new EP Down sounds unbearably derivative of James Brown, the fourth track, “Melody Maker” finds its inspiration in the harmony laden pop of the 1960’s British Invasion.

The intentional low-fi quality of the acoustic guitar sets the demo-esque tone for the track. It is a clever approach to coax the right vibe out of the Kinks influenced songwriting. One song in particular that comes to mind when listening to “Melody Maker” is The Hollies “Bus Stop” with its comparable bouncing melody and perfected harmonies.

The Kooks have always been a definitive UK band, but have never slathered on the retro syrup as thick as this. Above all, it seems to be the distinctly English take on life that allows for such a classifiable sound. With their built-in ear for melody, all the boys had to do was sit down and channel some their forefathers’ riffs.

With the rest of the EP drifting into the realms of funk, garage and Americana, I guess the The Kooks felt it would be only right to pay homage to their homelands history. It just so happens that the songs last-minute, off-the-cuff feeling insures its beauty.

The countdown has drawn to a close, and the annual M3 Rock Festival, the late Spring celebration of the hair metal glory days of the ’80s, begins this evening with the “Kix-Off Party” at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD.

Leading up to M3, we spoke first with Lita Ford, Sebastian Bach, and Brian Wheat of Tesla. Next, we had a chance to talk to Michael Wilton of Queensryche and Michael Sweet of Stryper.

For our final M3 interview, we to talk to former Ozzy Osbourne and Badlands guitar hero Jake E. Lee. Jake has been laying low for a while, but has returned in a big way with his new band, Red Dragon Cartel. We talked to Jake about Hendrix, sampling, M3, and of course, vinyl.

See you tonight at M3!

What have you been up to lately?

I just finished a leg of the American tour. We hit the east coast, down to Florida, did the Monsters of Rock Cruise, on the road for about five weeks. We get a week off, then start back up with the M3 Festival. Then over to Europe.

Give us your thoughts on playing the M3 Rock Festival.

I really don’t know anything about festivals. We’re doing some over in Europe too, and I’ve had people come up and congratulate me for getting on these festivals. I am completely unaware of what any of this is. I haven’t really followed what bands do. So, playing the festival—I don’t know. I’m not even sure…how many people is it?

It’s an amphitheater, typical summer “shed” venue. I’m not sure of how many it holds.

Hmm…yeah, see, I wouldn’t even know. It looks like it’s the same bands that were on Monsters of Rock, a lot of whom I know, so that will make it fun. I’m assuming it will be to a fairly decent-sized audience. That will be different, especially for the rest of the band. Me, it’s a festival, which is different from playing a club. A club is more intimate, and maybe is more conducive to musical exploration onstage, whereas at a festival it’s more a physical expression, I guess you could say. When you play festivals, it’s more of a bigger-than-life scenario.

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I loved Cap’n Crunch with Crunchberries as a kid. I especially loved the Crunchberries, those red carcinogenic balls of pure goodness that I always saved for last. But when I became a man I put away childish things—except for my GI Joe, of course; you’ve got to draw the line somewhere—and I now begin every day with a heaping earful of Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake. It sounds better than Cap’n C.—bigger, bouncier, crunchier, and far more Mod—and it’s more nutritious too. I pour the LP from its round cereal box sleeve onto my turntable, drop the needle on the first savory helping, and exclaim, “Here comes the Nice!”

In my ‘umble opinion the Small Faces were the most versatile of the great Mod bands. The quartet had it all; they could kick out the jams like The Yardbirds; were as fixated on British mores and bourgy social life as the Kinks; as Mod and in-your-boat-race (when they felt the yen) as the Who; and as psychedelic (on such cuts as “Afterglow” and “The Journey”) as Pink Floyd. And they combined all of these trappings—wrapping the whole shebang in some thick English accents, and even adding a weird uncle of a narrator, Stanley Unwin, to contribute some “looney links” between tracks—on their undisputed masterpiece, 1968’s concept LP Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake.

Odgen’s Nut Gone Flake is both the Small Faces’ greatest and final statement, for they broke up shortly thereafter, Marriott departing to form the long-stemmed heavy blues/soul/boogie band Humble Pie, and the rest of the crew joining Jeff Beck ex-pats Rod “The Mod” Stewart and Ron Wood to form The Faces. (Notice, if you will, how it took two rooster-haired personages to fill Steve Marriott’s swank Chelsea boots.) But what a last hurrah! Unless you count 1969’s posthumously released The Autumn Stone, which you shouldn’t, as it’s a sub-par mish-mash of odds and sods that Andrew Loog Oldham cobbled together to siphon every last shilling he could from the Small Faces.

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The frost is gone (well, mostly), the warm weather is coming, and with it comes another season of outdoor music festivals and amphitheater shows. As if wagging a defiant middle finger at the Fireflys and Coachellas, the annual M3 Rock Festival at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD has become the late Spring celebration of the hair metal glory days of the ’80s.

Now in its 6th year, the M3 Rock Festival will feature two days of music on two stages, with artists such as Tesla, Kix, Lita Ford, Night Ranger, Extreme, and Stryper among others.

Earlier this week, we spoke with 3 M3 artists and we had a chance to talk to 2 more M3 artists just this week leading up to M3 on Friday—Michael Wilton of Queensryche and Michael Sweet of Stryper. We got their take on M3, vinyl, and quite a bit more.

What have you been up to lately?

Queensryche has been up to a lot of new developments. We’ve been touring for the last year on a very successful release of the self-titled Queensryche CD. It’s garnered very great reviews all over the world, and we’ve toured n that all over the world and the U.S., and right now we are still continuing that through this year, and going into the studio later this year in between touring to begin the next album.

Give us your thoughts on playing M3 Rockfest.

Well, I have lots of mixed thoughts on M3, but it’s always been a great situation for me, personally. I think with this new rebirth of Queensryche, we will prove to the fans that the high energy Queensryche is back, and we are very grateful for the chance to revisit the M3 festival.

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