A new album from Uncle Theodore used to be the very thing – there was a ringing in your ears and you knew it was the call of the wild. And to be fair to the preposterous Nuge, he hasn’t altered his template a jot. He was as adept at this stuff with the Amboy Dukes, as he proves here on the flag-waving Screaming Eagles or the instrumental Throttledown.
Surprisingly nostalgic in his liner notes, Nugent wastes less lyrical sympathy on his enemies – ie the human race in general. Commie vegans need not loiter here. It’s hard to tell whether he’s just a wind-up merchant when you come across I Love My BBQ, a song that won’t figure on Morrissey’s end-of-year ‘best of’. This is the weirdest track here, and it sounds like it crawled off Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart’s Bongo Fury.
Old mate Derek St. Holmes (a one-man Spinal Tap) turns up on Everything Matters and Sammy Hagar guests on She’s Gone. Neither is great. Do-Rags & A.45, wherein the Motor City of Ted’s birth burns, is a guitar-fest, however, and so’s the MC5-flavoured title track. Imagine being his therapist.
