The Amboy Dukes: Call Of The Wild

THE AMBOY DUKES: CALL OF THE WILD (1973)

1) Call Of The Wild; 2) Sweet Revenge; 3) Pony Express; 4) Ain't It The Truth; 5) Renegade; 6) Rot Gut; 7) Below The Belt; 8) Cannon Balls.

Well! Is this already a completely solo Ted Nugent album in all but name? With Andy Solomon out of the band, the Nuge is now officially the only link to any sort of the Amboy Dukes' past — now there is no one but himself to even remember who the heck was a «Steve Farmer» and whe­ther he was a real farmer or just pretended to be one. Actually, with the second wildlife-dedicated album title in a row, Ted drives the last nail into the coffin of the agricultural revolution. From now on and all the way down to eternity, a-hunting we will go.

And yet, the label «Ted Nugent & The Amboy Dukes» still makes some sense. For one thing, Un­cle Ted's limitless libido is still kept under control: the occupation of «looking for meat», as applied to Call Of The Wild, is mostly to be understood in the literal, not figurative, way, with most of the album's rockers celebrating the simple pleasures of enjoying nature and freedom, ra­ther than the self-imposed chains of the sex drive. For another, Ted still requires a full-fledged «band-like» sound — Solomon's replacement, Gabriel Magno, contributes thick keyboard layers that are regularly battling with Ted's guitar runs. (On vocals, by the way, we sometimes find Ted himself, sometimes a certain Andy Jezowski whom I really know nothing about).

But, most importantly, about half of Side B is still turned over to an atmospheric, quasi-psychede­lic instrumental suite ('Below The Belt') — granted, its slow, moody unveiling, with Ted gradual­ly laying on echos, distortion, wobble, phasing, feedback, etc., is probably just supposed to illus­trate a thrilling journey through the jungle, which every brave hunter is expected to undertake in order to feel himself one with the things of nature before killing and eating them. (More nutritious that way, not to mention spiritual.) However, 'Below The Belt's direct musical influence is unque­stionably Pink Floyd's 'Careful With That Axe, Eugene' — same type of relentlessly creeping cre­scendo, culminating in blood-curdling screams. For the classic Ted Nugent style, this is much too artsy-fartsy, and fully justifies still dragging along the «Amboy Dukes» tag.

The real good news is that Call Of The Wild rocks. Right until 'Below The Belt' softens up and colorizes the atmosphere, it is just one energetic rocker after another — truly wild, conveniently fast, and each containing either a decent riff, or a decent chorus, or both, and all of them featuring Mr. Ted in overdrive mode, soloing away like there was no tomorrow, no holds barred at all. The man is just completely unchained — one listen to the solo on 'Sweet Revenge' at 1:56 into the song is enough to witness a happy soul in fully free flight. This is one of those seminal spots where any disgust one might harbor towards Ted Nugent, the sickening human being, must be left behind that door and replaced with admiration for such inspired musicianship.

Obviously, if you are asserting yourself as a major hard-rocking machine as late as 1973, some of your music will be ripped off, and Uncle Ted's listening stand, by that time, must have included quite a bit of Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple — 'Pony Express', as much ass as it kicks, is very much a slightly slowed down, bluesier take on 'Highway Star' (check the beginning of each verse, in particular). But then, one thing Uncle Ted never ever pretended to was trend-setting — other than masterminding an unfortunate association between cock rock and the National Rifle Associ­ation — and his is far from the only brand of derivative hard-rock that is still enjoyable from top to bottom. Who needs historical innovation with the kind of awesome guitar thunderstorm inter­lude Uncle Ted showers on our heads at 2:16 into 'Call Of The Wild'? That's just, like, totally MURDEROUS guitar playing out there! Beats even Mötörhead for sheer headbanging purposes, if you ask me.

To put it short, I can understand how all those «transitional era» Amboy Dukes albums had so little impact — but why an album like Call Of The Wild should so slumpily fall through the cracks of benevolent public attention and reluctant critical recognition, I have no idea. With a bunch of steamin'-hot rockers like the title track and 'Sweet Revenge', and a fun seven-minute at­mospheric romp through the realm of sound like 'Below The Belt', it is the first Nugent-associated record I had the pleasure of enjoying all the way through — and, possibly, my thumbs up might stimulate someone else into sharing that pleasure. This may not yet be the completely print-ready cartoonish version of Uncle Ted with the cat scratch fever, but this is where Nugent truly arrives on the scene as a force in a class of his own. And no Jack London-related jokes, please.

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The Beach Boys: Shut Down Volume 2

THE BEACH BOYS: SHUT DOWN VOLUME 2 (1964)

1) Fun, Fun, Fun; 2) Don't Worry Baby; 3) In The Parkin' Lot; 4) Cassius Love Vs. Sonny Wilson; 5) The Warmth Of The Sun; 6) This Car Of Mine; 7) Why Do Fools Fall In Love; 8) Pom Pom Play Girl; 9) Keep An Eye On Sum­mer; 10) Shut Down, Part II; 11) Louie Louie; 12) Denny's Drums.

WARNING: As a sincerely committed, responsible father, I feel professionally obliged to state that the song 'Fun, Fun, Fun' by the popular American band that surreptitiously calls itself "The Beach Boys" (a highly suspicious fact, considering how few witnesses ever noticed members of this band near an actual beach) is one of the most morally endangering, spiritually corruptive by-products of the pop music industry, intentionally designed to lead the young people of America and the world into the temptation of easy-going pleasures, debauchery, and degradation.

Doubt my words? Armed with concrete evidence, I will prove to you that the song 'Fun, Fun, Fun' was created by the Devil in person — promoting, in one way or another, all of the seven deadly sins AT ONCE. Just look here. First, the protagonist is openly stated as having pilfered her daddy's car — GREED, logically leading to illegal thieving activity. Second, what is her first selected destination? "Cruising through the hamburger stand" — GLUTTONY, bright and clear as the morning sun. Then, of course, "the girls can't stand her 'cause she walks, looks and drives like an ace now" — ENVY, ladies and gentlemen, promoted and stimulated by the young girl's rash, irresponsible activity, poetized by this suspicious band. And on the girl's side? Why, PRIDE, of course: "She makes the Indy 500 look like a Roman chariot race now".

Yet the worst is still ahead. With her thoughtless behaviour, she has provoked her formerly in­telligent and rational parents into the deadly sin of WRATH — "Your dad was gettin' wise to you now, you shouldn't have lied now" is but an indirect hint at the ensuing family scandal that, no doubt, included elements of heavy verbal abuse and, who knows, perhaps even corporeal punishment. Does that, however, stop the unrepenting teenager? Not at all! As she is slowly sin­king into the subtle, but firm sin of ACEDIA — "You've been thinking that your fun is all through now", sing these false prophets, implying that there is little more to life than mindless, shameful hedonism — the final blow is delivered: "You can come along with me 'cause we got a lot of things to do now", says a certain Mr. Michael Edward Love (or should we call him "Mr. Michael Edward Lust?"), clearly implying that the doomed teen is just about to be led into the deadliest sin of them all — FORNICATION.

In the light of this thoroughly irrefutable evidence, I have no choice but to recommend black­listing the song on all family-oriented radio stations and adopting radical measures to prevent mu­sic created by this so-called «pop band» from ever reaching the ears of the young generation of today, whose still developing spirit should instead benefit from the much better pronounced tra­ditional Christian values of such inspired artists as Ms. Taylor Swift, Ms. Selena Gomez, Ms. Anna Margaret, and, of course, Ms. Rebecca Black, whose own attitude on the questionable ac­tivity of «having fun» is far more restrained, healthy, and reflects reasonable, caring, God-loving upbringing on the part of her esteemed parents.

As a sidenote, I would also like to remark that, with the above-mentioned so-called «pop song» 'Fun, Fun, Fun', the alleged «Beach Boys» themselves have demonstrated recidivist criminal be­haviour: less than a year after having been caught red-handed while shamelessly stealing a melo­dy written and copyrighted by Mr. Chuck Berry, they have now gone on record doing it once again, considering that the opening guitar solo on 'Fun, Fun, Fun' is an almost note-for-note re­production of the guitar solo that opens Mr. Chuck Berry's own 'Roll Over Beethoven'. In fact, once I suffered through the misfortune of putting on this record, I first thought that I was going to be treated to a faithful cover of Mr. Chuck Berry's song (a fine piece of work, that, affirming the strong, healthy values of traditional American music over the effeminate sissy-pissy excesses of decadent European composers). One can only imagine my profound disappointment and sense of shock fifteen seconds into the song — of course, I still had to sing along and tap my foot right down to the very last note, but it's the Devil made me do it, swear to God.

As a postscriptum, here is some extra info on this album I've found, written by some Russian guy with an unpronounceable name. I'm not responsible for his opinions, mind you — it's just that I cannot bring myself to providing any further information on this band that is so clearly aiming for a kind of Herostratean fame.

«...another quick cash-in with a small bunch of classics and a large bunch of filler. Approximately half of the album is really good, with 'Fun, Fun, Fun' illustrating the band's rapid progress in wri­ting catchy fast classics (although Carl's ripping off Chuck Berry in the intro is somewhat too ob­vious), and 'Don't Worry Baby' being Brian's first successful attempt at getting a genuine Phil Spec­tor-ish sound with just a few clever vocal overdubs and some nice echo effects — basically, a terrific illusion of a wall of sound without any actual «walling».

These are the two perennial classics, plus you have two gorgeous, but self-derivative ballads in the old style ('The Warmth Of The Sun' and 'Keep An Eye On Summer', written in the same vein as 'Your Summer Dream' etc.), and there is another beautiful cover, that of Frankie Lymon's 'Why Do Fools Fall In Love?' (a song that now seems to have been written almost specially for Brian and the boys' harmonies, despite coming out six years earlier).

Other than that, Shut Down Vol. 2 seems to be the album in the Beach Boys catalog that is just proverbially riddled with stupidities. Stupid is the name itself, sending unsuspecting fans (par­ti­cularly unfortunate for later-day fans) in search of Vol. 1 (which did indeed come out in 1963, but was an all-star hot rod compilation, with only 'Shut Down' and '409' from the Boys themselves).

Stupid are filler tracks like 'In The Parkin' Lot' and 'This Car Of Mine', retrograde Mike Love-fests that would have been alright on Surfin' USA but, by now, were already obsolete in the light of Bri­an's progress (granted, Mike didn't have anything to do with the writing of 'In The Parkin' Lot', but he did sing it, and in singing it, he owned it). Stupid is the decision to cover 'Louie Lo­uie' — the Beach Boys are no Kingsmen, and their inability to carry over the caveman menace of the original leaves them with just the simple dumbness of it all.

Most stupid is the decision to include a separately recorded drum solo from Dennis ('Denny's Drums'), considering the young Wilson's lack of technicality; and stupidest of 'em all is 'Cassius Love Vs. Sonny Wilson', a specially staged piece of «verbal sparring» between Mike and Brian — although, funny enough, in retrospect it does not seem nearly as stupid, sounding now as a slightly ominous preview of the real «pop success vs. artistic integrity» conflict between the two of them that would start taking place in two years' time. At the time, though, it sounded really brainless. (A learner of English could at least hope to teach oneself a thing or two about archaic Californian slang, but "at least I don't sound like my nose is on the critical list" doesn't sound quite like real-life Californian slang, or does it?).

Altogether, a shut down, uh, thumbs down, with salvation guaranteed only for five of the songs and classic status guaranteed only for two. Fortunately, Shut Down also shuts down the «purely singles-oriented» period of the Beach Boys' career — with the British Invasion and its anti-vinyl waste policy around the corner, the Wilsons would be among the first American performers to adopt that policy, and even set an example for others.»

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Big Mama Thornton: The Way It Is

BIG MAMA THORNTON: THE WAY IT IS (1970)

1) Little Red Rooster; 2) One Black Rat; 3) Rock Me Baby; 4) Wade In The Water; 5) Sweet Little Angel; 6) Baby Please / Mojo Workin'; 7) Watermelon Man; 8) Don't Need No Doctor.

Now here is an album title that actually matches the contents. Recorded at some L.A. club with Big Mama's then-current touring band (including Eddie "Bee" Houston on guitar, George "Har­monica" Smith on, oddly enough, harmonica, Flip "They Forgot To Stroke My Ego With A Nick" Graham on bass, and J. D. "Not Jack" Nicholson on piano), it actually had the luck to be remas­tered and put out on CD, just so that everybody could see it as #153,288 on the Amazon Music Bestsellers List, just a tiny bit below Kidz Bop Vol. 20 in Big Mama's amazing post-mortem comeback to rule the musical world.

Other than Big Mama's, or the record label's, strange fascination with either clipping song names ('Baby Please' is 'Baby Please Don't Go', of course) or completely changing them ('Don't Need No Doctor' is really 'Goin' Down Slow') — probably for cash reasons, so that «Willie Mae Thornton» could appear on the songwriting credits without too much of a hassle — The Way It Is is really an excellent screenshot of the lady's state of affairs in 1970. And the lady was certainly in much better shape than her best student: around the same time that the teacher was belting it out like there was no tomorrow among enthusiastic L.A. clubgoing crowds, just a few miles away the Pierce Brothers West­wood Village Mortuary was busy flame-consuming the drug-soaked body of the student. Ironic, isn't it.

Anyway, this whole thing is mostly in the slow blues vein, only 'One Black Rat' breaks up the mood with a fast, classic R&B-ish beat and wild harmonica solos to remind the listener of what it used to be like on Peacock Records. But Big Mama always does slow blues the Big Mama way — the tempos may be slow, but the adrenaline level never drops below the one required for the craziest boogie. For the sakes of diversity, she includes a gospel number ('Wade In The Water') and a jazz standard (the lyricized version of Herbie Hancock's 'Watermelon Man', replete with a semi-improvised «street brawn» with the watermelon man in question), both of which are done fine — she's got enough sense not to butcher the original killer melody of 'Watermelon Man' like she did with some stuff on Stronger Than Dirt — but that's just diversity of source material for you, not diversity of approach. If there's one person in this world who'd always be talking to God in the same tone she'd be addressing a watermelon man, that's Willie Mae.

The medley of 'Baby Please Don't Go' and 'Got My Mojo Workin' is interesting in that the former is taken at a super-slow, creeping tempo (in stark contrast to the then-popular rock version), slow­er even than the original Big Joe Williams version — then, midway through, blam, we launch in­to the tribal jungle dance of 'Mojo', almost in consolatory compensation for the lull. As for longer out­standing moments, well, "Bee" Houston has a couple of fine, fluent, very «contemporary» blues solos on 'Little Red Rooster' and 'Sweet Little Angel': he was clearly the most up-to-date player in Big Mama's band, and not only is his playing here every bit as good as the notes one hears on concurrent B. B. King records, some of the climactic trills actually go well over King's technical threshold. Where is this guy's solo career?

A fun record, in general, not at all let down even by Big Mama's pompous bits of Vegas-y banter, typical side effects as they are of an overtly proud to be overtly polite black performer before an overtly proud to be overtly receptive white audience (well, that's more or less how it used to be in those still somewhat racially tense old times). Thumbs up.

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The Antlers: Hospice

THE ANTLERS: HOSPICE (2009)

1) Prologue; 2) Kettering; 3) Sylvia; 4) Atrophy; 5) Bear; 6) Thirteen; 7) Two; 8) Shiva; 9) Wake; 10) Epilogue.

The big breakthrough — a brave gamble on Silberman's part that paid off quite nicely. Having proven to himself that he had style and vision, Peter decided that, for all it's worth, it was high time he interfered in the battle between the light and the dark. To do that, he expanded «The Ant­lers» to real-life band size, recruiting Darby Cicci on brass, keyboards and «bowed banjo», and Michael Lerner on drums — and channelled his powers into the creation of a concept album. Two EPs were released first, mostly consisting of soundbites, previews, and indie rock covers; then the final result broke through in March 2009.

Hospice is generally described as a musical description of an abusive emotional relationship in terms of a metaphor — relations between a hospice-abiding dying bone cancer patient and her nurse. The concept sounds pretty bleak on paper, conjuring up smoke-filled visions of Lou Reed­ian blackness (everything from Berlin to Magic & Loss), but if you apply color vision to music, Silberman is always closer to white than to black, so even if he wanted to make Hospice a «de­pressed» album in the traditional sense, he wouldn't have the proper brain mechanism to do it.

Speaking of brain mechanisms, Hospice has also been called a major tear-jerker. This is one as­pect of it that I did not get AT ALL — and I am definitely not above having a tear jerked out of me by a real pro jerk (actually, a music reviewer who has never once shed a tear over a musical piece should probably just get a job loading and unloading musical equipment, if, for some rea­son, he so fanatically yearns for a music-related occupation). Although the lyrics are, in a certain man­ner, sung from the nurse's point of view, by no means does Hospice have anything to do with the gritty realities of a true hospice, and, what's even more important, by no means does the emotio­nal content of the album have anything to do with the actual emotions that one might be feeling towards a dying person — loved, unloved, caring, frustrating, whatever.

To tell the truth, the mood set by Hospice is almost every bit the same as was the mood set on Silberman's first two albums — and those albums had nothing to do with bone cancer patients. It's almost as if the underlying logic here was: «Hmm... don't I sound sad on these records? As in, really really fucking sad? Doesn't that, like, call for a really really sad theme? Say there — a girl is dying from cancer, and a boy has only just fallen in love with the girl, and they both know it's hopeless but they go along with it anyway... how's that for sad?»

But you know what — it's not that sad. It is certainly very pretty, just as pretty as Pete's pre­vious mu­sings. 'Bear' and, later, its reprise on 'Epilogue' is a convincingly solitary piece of melancholic brooding. 'Kettering' and 'Shiva' are competent mood pieces. 'Two' helps you not to fall asleep with a faster, more ironically upbeat melody. 'Sylvia' builds up to a nice climax. Silberman's voice is always attractive (unless your ideal for male vocalization is Lemmy), and his musical mi­ni­malism is never annoying, at least not to the point where you start thinking «gee, would ha­ving just one more chord in this song really kill this guy?» and spoil yourself all the fun.

It's all fine and dandy, but then: «The power of the album lies in the album's ability to destroy hope», a hype-stricken reviewer writes. Really? «A heartbreaking aural experience that hits us on a deeper level», writes another. Oh God. What have I missed here?

See, there are two problems. First, the guy is 22 years old. Just as a simple matter of fact, Count Tolstoy, being 22 years of age, had not yet written anything, let alone those of his works that were truly committed to exploring life-and-death issues. On a simpler scale of things, Mr. George Harrison, at 22 years of age, was mostly known for writing poetry along the lines of "You don't realize how much I need you / Love you all the time, I'll never leave you" rather than "Nothing in this life that I've been trying / Could equal or surpass the art of dying".

Sorry, folks, but that's just the way it goes. In various interviews, Silberman kept dropping hints that Hospice was specifical­ly based on a particular «life-shaking» incident in his own life — that's as fine as can be, terrible or terrifying impressions can start haunting one from age three, but being able to transpose them into high-reaching, philosophical, serious conceptual art is a capacity that comes with experience. Biting off more than one can chew is not a pretty sight.

Second, these songs are merely okay. Merely OKAY. When a reviewer writes about the «flouri­shing acoustics» of 'Two', you'd think this were some new kind of Nick Drake, freshly landed off the clouds. Well — take a listen and decide for yourself. The song's not bad — that primitive strum merely serves as background attenuation for the vocals, which constitute the essential part — but in purely musical terms, Hospice is almost sheer nothing; it would, perhaps, have been more honest for Silberman to just come out and sing everything completely a cappella. (Now that would be a novel approach).

I have also seen comparisons to Arcade Fire's Funeral — well, both bands begin with an A, and both bands sing about death, and both bands are straightfaced and pretentious, but that's where the similarities end, since, behind all of their sky-high bombast, Arcade Fire actually set them­selves much more modest goals than Silberman pretends to here. Arcade Fire are, above all, a rock band, and they go for big, brawny, blunt blows to the balls, creating catchy and memorable anthems for their generation. This smart little guy aspires towards much finer strokes and subtler senti­ments — that's fine if it works, but in the case of Hospice, it doesn't work quite the way it is supposed to. Fail, fail, fail. Not one tear shed for Sylvia.

As vitriolic as these comments may sound, I would still invite everyone to make their own judge­ment — emotions are tricky sons of bitches — and I'd still give the album a thumbs up, on the condition that I can simply forget everything about the concept and the lyrics and just take it as a natural, modest expansion on the sounds of The Antlers' two previous records. After all, the guy is still a masterful singer, and there are two or three nicely composed themes here, and the ambi­ent arrangements weren't too bad. But, for proper punishment, what I'd really like for this guy to do is record a duet with Ke$ha. Come on, Mr. Silberman. One for the kids. You know you can do it. You're a genius. Sky's the limit for geniuses.

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