The Allman Brothers Band - The Allman Brothers Band

Provenance: I don't know when and where I got this. As with a few other bands I've reviewed on this blog, owning an Allmans platter or two feels a bit like the 'done thing' for anyone who wants to be considered a serious rock guy (which I assuredly do - almost as much as I'd like to one day be considered a 'football man').

A couple of clues though; thanks to an ex-girlfriend I have a Molly Hatchet 'best of', which contains the track 'Dreams'; plus somewhere in my dad's Zappa collection is a live rendition of 'Whipping Post'. My esteem for both of these recordings may very well have tipped the balance when it came to making a purchase.

Review: Approaching the Allman Brothers feels like more than just an appraisal of a single album. For many, they are totemic of a time and a place; a group whose craft and musicianship hauled southern rock - mixing together blues, boogie, soul and country - out of the juke joint and into the arena. The Allmans, more than anyone else, broke ground on a subgenre that would catapult the likes of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Molly Hatchet, Black Oak Arkansas, .38 Special, Blackfoot, the Marshall Tucker Band and the rest into the rock-buying public's consciousness. Despite those they dragged in their wake, the Allmans were also sumthin' else - nobody played a sweeter slide than Duane Allman, or jammed out harder (witness Eat a Peach); and, save for the notable exception of Skynyrd, nobody rivalled the Allmans for the twin tragedies of early deaths and substance abuse.

So, to their debut - and it's easy to hear why they cast such a long shadow. Almost every ingredient that would season the successes of other southern rock acts is present - some took one or two elements, others would port the template across wholesale. There's the gospel organ, swallow-dive guitar runs, white soul vocals and a bedrock of blooze upon which the confection sits. In fact, about the only influence that isn't discernible in these boys from Macon, Georgia, is an overt country influence; certainly not when stacked up against a barroom weepy like Skynyrd's 'Tuesday's Gone', or the backwoods zen of Black Oak Arkansas's 'High 'N' Dry'.

In fact, on opening instrumental 'Don't Want You No More', 'Every Hungry Woman' and 'Black Hearted Woman', there's another flavour that seems incongruous; perhaps my ears are playing up, but I hear a lot of early Santana in The Allman Brothers Band. These songs are essentially interchangeable with cuts from the first two Santana albums, their self-titled debut and Abraxas; both 'Evil Ways' and 'Hope You're Feelin' Better' could grace this album without seeming out of place. You wouldn't blink at a touch of Latin rock or a smattering of congas (indeed, the latter are present on 'Every Hungry Woman'). This certainly sounds more like Abraxas than, say, Strikes or High on the Hog.

Is it good though? Ain't that the point of a review? Yeah, it's good. But fifty years of chesty white guys pumping the blues at megawatt volumes and spooging all over their fretboards has, alas, diluted the impact a little. Greg Allman is a fine vocalist, and his organ work really does take some of these tracks to church in an appealing way. Rhythmically it's all pretty interesting too, a jazz influence discernible in the drumming (the finest example can be found on 'Dreams') and nimble interplay between percussionists Jai Johanny Johanson and Butch Trucks (which doesn't always pay off). Nonetheless, of everything on here, it's the approach taken on 'Trouble No More' which has proved the most enduring - a big ol' sledgehammer that works well enough here but has spawned a thousand more workmanlike, leaden imitators.

At  least the juddery rhythms and soaring glories of 'Whipping Post' are still worth the price of admission alone. Yes, yet another song of a woman who dun him wrong (like, half the tracks here, goddamn - you'd think that stadium rockers playing to full houses of adoring fans never had any luck!) but it's a good'un. Better - it's a reet belter. Overall, worth a look - especially if you like Santana.

The Captain And Me - The Doobie Brothers

Provenance: The Doobie Brothers had long been a shadowy presence in my musical consciousness prior to picking up The Captain and Me. I had vague notions that they were a big deal in the USA, and knew 'Long Train Running' (which is on Captain...) from a variety of dad-rock compilations. Everything else is a little hazy.

For example, did I know 'China Grove' before playing Grand Theft Auto? I certainly covered it in a band later on, but I can't say whether my virtual capers predated my purchase of this album or not. I knew the song 'Listen To The Music' long ago, but wasn't sure who did it (NB: the Doobie Brothers). Same deal for 'What A Fool Believes', and in any case it doesn't sound much like the Doobies; it's more akin to the unholy prospect of Captain and Tennille fronted by a walrus. No good, man.

So, at the point of buying this album I perhaps thought of the Doobs as a bit southern rocky, slightly funky ("but can you imagine Doobie in your funk? Whooo!") and maybe prone to the odd boogie number. And you know what? I was right.

Review: Everything on The Captain and Me is done tastefully and is in its place. The rocky bits rock out, the mellow bits are nice and serene, the quiet bits are quiet and the loud bits are also quiet. It's well-played, well-sung, goes down smoothly and is about as edgy as a damp cabbage. Keep this one on file for a sun-dappled day suited for ingesting soft drugs and makin' it with your old lady.

Weirdly enough, given the above, I don't hate it. I hate bits of it, sure, but overall The Captain and Me coasts by on just enough charm and finesse that I can't bring myself to condemn it outright. There's a slickness to proceedings that, as a fan of Steely Dan and Christopher Cross, I view largely as a positive. Sure, I've got Crass and Stooges albums tucked away (yet to be reviewed, I remind myself) but the top-down, ease-the-seat-back coolness of American FM rock (always American, as the British flavour always seems a bit desperate) can work a strange magic on me. Take that old warhorse, 'Long Train Running' - a clumsy funker featuring prominent congas; yet it glides by on a sublime vocal hook coasting over the top of attractively itchy guitar work.

That equally hoary slice of highway razzmatazz, 'China Grove', a strange paean about what sounds like an utterly ghastly commune in Texas, wins out with a guitar riff that is kissing cousin to Nazareth's 'Hair of the Dog', but it's infinitely smoother and less clay-footed in execution. I suppose a certain nimbleness and elasticity accounts for the appeal of the Doobie Brothers on this album; high mids, choked-off bass (for the most part) and guitars that cluck and peck, rather than sledgehammer you into acquiescence. Keep it light and airy, give the melodies a bit of breathing space, add a bit of diet bluegrass acoustic guitar and you're onto a winner, baby.

However, the eagle-eyed amongst you will probably gather from "I don't hate it" and "I hate bits of it" that I'm not entirely uncritical of The Captain and Me. And these aren't the small, easily surmountable bugbears such as the hamfisted stab at a multi-part song that makes 'Clear as the Driven Snow' sound like a bargain basement Kansas ft. Roy Harper track, because if I bitch about that I might as well throw out most of my 1970s rawk platters. No, we're back onto women getting a bum deal from these fucking hippies, again.

Thus we have 'Dark Eyed Cajun Woman', a track that hangs off a knotty, stuttering guitar riff which is great, great, great. What could be a witchy little swamp rocker instead gives one a bit of a chill with the lyric "You know, I took you for a small girl / Really not quite seventeen." Admittedly our serenade goes on to state, with some relief I should imagine, that he was wrong and that the object of his ardour was a grown woman. Phew! No need to join the ranks of the Rolling Stones and Faster Pussycat in my hall of shame.

The other lowlight comes in 'South City Midnight Lady', which has a title that makes me want to reflexively puke. It's actually sports one of the prettier melodies on Captain..., a gently yearning thing that the Eagles used to be able to conjure up before they dived into a hillock of fine Colombian. However, come the chorus and we're getting the following being dribbled out:

South city midnight lady
I'm much obliged indeed
You sure have saved this man whose soul was in need

At this point I'm scooping up the vomitus so I can swallow it back down and re-evacuate this shit out of the most fitting orifice. No name, no agency, no nothing about the person this song is addressed to aside from what she can do for the drunkard night owl she's unlucky enough to be lumbered with. Not especially egregious on its own, but as part of the wider Captain... context, women only serve as objects to be desired or discarded. The way this is simpered out pisses me off, and the cherry on top of the turd is that awful faux-Southern gentlemanly "much obliged indeed". I'd haul these guys in front of the Hague for that alone. Incidentally, the next song, on which the Doobies try (and fail) to sound tough, is called 'Evil Woman'. Of course it is. Of course.

(Which is not to say you can't do a song like that; ultimately it's the prerogative of the artist. But ELO can do an 'Evil Woman' with at least some degree of wit and accomplishment, and even Cliff Richard can pull off a 'Devil Woman' by making it a surreal end-of-the-pier chiller, one that he can never perform again because it's too spooky for his religious faith to handle.)

So, what the hell, go listen to The Captain and Me for an undemanding forty minutes or so. There's good singing, good playing and some sweet harmonies to be had. I personally prefer this rotating cast of vocalists than the era where Michael McDonald is thrown into the mix, but whatever. Best enjoyed with a cold beer and an empty brain.

Sheik Yerbouti - Frank Zappa

Provenance: In a not insignificant number of ways I am my father's son, and nowhere is this more evident than my tastes when they edge towards the weirder end of the popular music spectrum. White Noise, Gryphon and today's subject - Frank Zappa - all came into my orbit as a consequence of my dad's listening habits.

In the instance of Sheik Yerbouti, I bought this to signal a small amount of independence. How so? Because dad didn't own this album. I distinctly recall as a youngster being impressed by cover art of both Overnite Sensation and Hot Rats, I thought the guy's name was cool (it sounds like a freakin' laser) and some of the songs made me laugh. Thus when I was older and casting around for my own bit of Zappanalia, I went for an album that was considered one of his more 'hard rock' efforts, as per my own inclinations at the time. Hence Sheik Yerbouti.

May I drift a little here? When it comes to worst fanbases of all time, you have to consider those of the Grateful Dead, Britney Spears and Pantera. They all have their demerits, but for me nothing comes close to being stuck with a Zappa fan when the topic of conversation is Zappa. I've had my head forcibly banged for me watching Iron Maiden, met some Megadeth fans who were happy to show me their Neo-Nazi tattoo collections and saw not one but three fights break out within spitting distance during a Madness gig. I'd happily endure all that again, and then some, if I didn't have to spend another moment in the presence of a Frank Zappa fan (my dad excluded, who is the epitome of the exception that proves the rule).

Review: Well, this is a bit of a disappointment.

I can imagine that, aged sixteen, I found some of this stuff funny. However, I've never found scatalogical humour particularly engaging, and any youthful proclivity I may have had towards it has certainly dimmed with age. In terms of my Zappa listening these days, it tends towards the more instrumental side, Mothers of Invention era cuts or Hot Rats (because 'Willie the Pimp  features the greatest violin riff in rock music). Sheik Yerbouti has slipped to the bottom of the pile, and giving it a listen for this review has done little to rehabilitate it.

You know, 'I Have Been In You' might have elicited the odd yuk back when Peter Frampton was a ubiquitous presence in the homes of Middle America, but pastiche is a dodgy thing to pull off at the best of times. It's saying something that the parodical Bob Dylan harmonica stylings on 'Flakes' is the highlight of 'Flakes'. And revisiting the notion of jokes ageing poorly - whew - 'Jewish Princess' (yep) and 'Bobby Brown (Goes Down)' (a discotheque staple on continental Europe, which is enough to make me a full on Brexiter) would've surely been offensive forty or so years ago. In 2018 they come across as positively Neanderthal with their depictions of Jewish women and homosexuality, respectively. A former English Literature teacher of mine once felt moved to describe Zappa as a 'poet'.

I'm happy to say that, amongst the more overtly comedic songs, one still holds up - 'Dancin' Fool' is a stabby little lampoon of the disco scene that works through a combination of splenetic observational humour and metrical tricksiness, the latter effectively turning it into a disco track that can't be danced to. 'Tryin' To Grow a Chin' is also a lot of fun, drummer Terry Bozzio providing a demented vocal. Plus I like false endings, and this song's got one (sorry to spoil it for you, folks - but are you really going to listen to Sheik Yerbouti any time soon?).

Here's the frustrating part; the first track that appears to privilege musicianship above cheap thrills, the instrumental 'Rat Tomago', hits the mark. The push-pull percussion, jazzy keys and wild guitar improvisations afford a glimpse into realms beyond this album's - consciously applied - limitations. Oh, enjoyed that music, did ya? Never mind, here's some wisecracks about fisting. With Sheik Yerbouti we've reached a point in Zappa's career where he needed to do the stoopid stuff (and take it out on tour) to fund his more serious compositions, which had become prohibitively expensive, especially where recording orchestral works were concerned. At least, that was the line trotted out at the time. Who knows? Maybe that was the case, but then again maybe he just got a kick out of stigmatising homosexuality via the medium of comedy song.

As I have intimated, there are hints of a better (and shorter) album here; all the instrumental cuts are great, with 'The Sheik Yerbouti Tango' coming out on top because it sounds just that little bit out of control. Zappa fans might scream that their formalist hero knew exactly what he was doing, but I think it's sometimes pretty neat to hear the seams of the music. (Isn't this where improvisation becomes truly interesting? When instead of falling back on the rock / jazz / blues playbook of licks, they take their instrument on a journey that teeters between inspiration and failure?). Of the 'straighter' rock stuff, 'Broken Hearts Are For Assholes' has a certain appealing mania to it, even if it does descend into a coda about 'poop chutes'. 'Baby Snakes' is here and gone far too quickly, which is a shame because it's a little gem of hard-edged surrealism. 'City of Tiny Lites' really kicks out the jams - a spacey and strangely soulful number that skips along on busy percussion and a rubbery bass line. The guitar solo is fucking badass too.

I will say this - aside from the more objectionable extremes of Zappa's lyric writing, I enjoyed the experience of revisiting Sheik Yerbouti more than I had expected. It's also told me something about myself, and the ageing process. When I was in my teens, I would often skip the 'boring' instrumental tracks so I could get to the next chucklefest. Now, it would be the other way around. Once upon a time, this would've been my favourite Zappa album because it had some rawk 'n' roll on it, but now I gravitate towards his jazzier output (which coincides with a general awakening to jazz as a genre, I guess). Anyway, Sheik Yerbouti certainly treats the ol' lugholes to some interesting snippets of music, but you have to ask yourself whether it's worth wading through all the snark and calculated dumbassery to reach.

Get The Knack - The Knack

Provenance: It's got 'My Sharona' on it.

Review: Hmmm.

Hmmmm.

On the one hand, Get The Knack is a wonderfully hooky power-pop gem, redolent of Cheap Trick, the Raspberries and the first Big Star album. Gorgeous melodies and swooning harmonies wrap around jangly guitar and muscular drumming to superb effect. It's a joy from front to back.

However, it's also incredibly sexist and sleazy. Even the most generous of devil's advocates would struggle to justify the fetishisation of pubescent girls that runs through Get The Knack. I suppose The Knack should be congratulated for their singular ability to take the concept of the male gaze and rendering it in the form of a catchy rock album. It's an uncomfortable listen, and that's coming from someone who owns an album by an artist who calls themselves Mr Yellow Discipline (NSFW, quite obviously).

The apex, or perhaps nadir, of this objectification comes on a jaunty little number titled '(She's So) Selfish.' It's hard to sum up quite how nasty the track is in terms of both a projected fantasy and attitudes towards women, but the lyrics can give you an idea. I've long held an unease at what seems to be a specifically 1970s strain of misogyny in rock music (though not limited to that decade, or the genre for that matter - 1957's 'Boom Boom, Out Go The Lights' by Little Walter is particularly grim) but I can acknowledge that lust is a legitimate and very human feeling, and one which informs a considerable amount of music, art and literature.

My issues here are twofold; one, that this sweaty, glandular lust is so unreflectingly unrelenting. Not only does it never stop, but it never stops to ponder the other side of the coin or to gaze into the mirror. It's wonderfully crafted power-pop, but three-minute cherry bombs are rarely executed with the degree of genius necessary to provide nuance. As I said, this wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that a good three-quarters of Get The Knack wasn't knuckle-dragging objectification. Whilst the sublime 'Oh Tara' shimmers with a rare gentleness, 'Good Girls Don't', 'Frustrated' and 'That's What The Little Girls Do', er, don't.

The other issue is that, even if one attempts to be aware of the anachronism of grafting modern attitudes towards gender relations onto albums from 1979, Get The Knack still fails the sniff test. It is worth bearing in mind that this souffle of sweaty-palmed teenage frottage was written and performed by a band of men all in their mid- or late-twenties. I didn't let Faster Pussycat off the hook for 'Smash Alley', and though I made a glib reference to Lolita it's worth mentioning that Nabokov's work was a sophisticated serio-comic masterpiece in the 'unreliable narrator' vein of writing. For all its merits, and they are legion (in case this review seems overly damning), Get The Knack never aims for anything beyond a pose of arrested development.

Of course, I may well have just tied myself in knots through my inability to engage with Get The Knack through anything other than a contemporary prism of what could be considered 'problematic'. However, I have certainly enjoyed - and continue to enjoy - books, television and film that certainly wouldn't fit anyone's definition of 'woke'. Furthermore, I do so unapologetically. With that in mind, could it be that Get The Knack is, was, and will continue to be merely a squalid little paean to misogyny, albeit one that from a formal point of view sounds absolutely delicious?

What a shame. There's so much good music on Get The Knack that it's entirely deserving of its platinum status on that criterion alone. And viewed in isolation, 'My Sharona' is dangerously close to being the perfect rock song. It's an angsty, propulsive earworm that features one of the catchiest guitar solos committed to magnetic tape. I love it and it still makes me happy, albeit this is tempered somewhat by the knowledge that Quentin Tarantino wanted to use it for the 'gimp' scene in Pulp Fiction. But you know what? Thank goodness, I say, that my aesthetic tastes align with a great cinematic auteur like Tarantino, and not with some sordid, woman-hating trash-purveyor, eh?

Faster Pussycat - Faster Pussycat

Provenance: My brother Richard - a golfer, pugilism enthusiast and Spurs fan - bought me this for my birthday as part of a clutch of glam albums which, if memory serves, included titles by Dokken and Cinderella.

Richard and I are only a year apart in age, so grew up together and developed similar tastes in music. We even played (badly) in the same band together, in a drummer / guitarist configuration like Van Halen. Somehow, we didn't enjoy comparable levels of success with our lumpen Metallica, Diamond Head and Drowning Pool covers.

Review: The glam metal (aka hair metal, aka butt rock) era was, in its first flush, longer lived as a prominent scene than either punk or grunge, but whilst the influence of both the latter movements is enduring, the same cannot be said for the former. Occasional successes such as The Darkness and Steel Panther stick out as anomalies, and it's fair to say that an element of pastiche and lampoon was required in order for both those bands to make their mark. In some parts of Europe glam clings on - walking around Sweden Rock Festival is always an uncanny experience, seeing bronzed young Scandinavians dolled up for a night out on the Sunset Strip - but otherwise it exists largely as a semi-fondly remembered genre fit only for discussion by time-wasting idiots who still use antiquated online message boards.

The scene had its big hitters like Motley Crue, Bon Jovi and Poison. In the second rank, I guess, you'd find Skid Row, Ratt, Cinderella, Quiet Riot, Warrant and the like. Then you get the interesting crap, the also-rans and maybe-could-have-beens, who came a coating of Aquanet away from true stardom, and in my estimation it's here where you'll find Faster Pussycat.

I'm going to be automatically well-disposed towards any band that takes their name from a Russ Meyer film; and the invocation of the mammary-obsessed savant of smut is entirely apt given that Faster Pussycat are every bit as sleazy and priapic as one could expect. Unlike Poison (tough name, wimpy music) or Molly Hatchet (album art suggests heroic power metal; reality is hick southern rock with whistling), Faster Pussycat deliver as a concept. It's just a shame that the singer went and named himself Taime Downe.

I say 'singer', because lead sneerer is more accurate. Mr Downe is never going to play a season at the Met. Not that it matters, because it's perfect for the low-rent sound that Faster Pussycat scrape together on this dirty little debut. It's hard not to crack a smile at a song about getting phone numbers from the wall of the toilet, a song that, aside from a couple of paeans to shitty, superficial (and therefore, awesome) Los Angeles, sets the tone rather ably for everything else on the album. Mired gleefully in a glitter-flecked gutter, you fancy you can not only listen to Faster Pussycat, you can smell it too.

Technically speaking, nobody is pulling up trees on this album. I would give a one-armed human being who's previously neither encountered a guitar nor the concept of music about two hours to learn all the riffs. One suspects, reading between the lines of 'Babylon', that between cruising around in convertibles and inhaling a brave portion of Bolivia's GDP, Faster Pussycat didn't spend too much time at rehearsal.

Not everything holds up, though. 'Smash Alley', a largely unforgettable track, leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth with its references to underage girls. Perhaps this seemed daring and edgy back in 1987, and perhaps sensibilities have changed (for the better), but I can't think of any situation in which statutory rape can be mentioned so callously, approvingly even, and be justified as any kind of artistic statement. We've not written Lolita here, guys. A shame, then, as Faster Pussycat is delightfully tasteless without needing to resort to cheap shock tactics. A damn shame, because by and large this is boneheaded, escapist fun. As a celebration of the seedy side of life Faster Pussycat's debut is for the most part a triumph.

Am I being a prude? Taking this all too seriously? It's certainly not the only song to mentioned liaisons with underage girls - I can think of 'Seventeen' by Winger in the hair metal world, 'Christine Sixteen' by KISS, 'Jailbait' by the ineffable Ted Nugent and 'Stray Cat Blues' by the Rolling Stones (a song I really like). I just can't muster any will or enthusiasm to defend this kind of thing. If attitudes towards the sexualisation of minors have hardened, well, good. I'm not expecting anything halfway progressive from a band called Faster Pussycat (nor would I wish to narrow down the field of music, film or literature I enjoy to solely those works that advance a progressive agenda), but I'm never going to be comfortable with grown men boasting about the sexual availability of minors. Fuck that noise.

Next week: my amazingly well-reasoned, nuanced and considered views on both 'Oliver's Army' by Elvis Costello and 'Rednecks' by Randy Newman!

Craveman - Ted Nugent

Provenance: Back in the day it took a whole night to illegally download a couple of tunes off Napster, and there was literally no guarantee that they file you'd found corresponded to what actually ended up playing from your speakers. We're talking about a time when people would list 'surfing the net' as a hobby.

A lesser remembered feature of Napster was the ability to send messages to other users. One morning I came downstairs to find an American guy was downloading an Alice Cooper track from my account. During a brief exchange he recommended three artists to me - Bob Seger, Molly Hatchet and Ted Nugent.

A couple of evenings later I had a single song by each artist - 'Old Time Rock and Roll' by Seger (eh), 'Flirtin' With Disaster' by Molly Hatchet (cool as hell) and 'Free For All' by the Nuge (ditto). At this point in life I knew not who Ted Nugent was or what he professed the finer things in life to be, and thus felt no compunction in purchasing Cat Scratch Fever. Not long after, I think my parents got me this for Christmas.

Review: I'd love to be able to sit here and put aside the fact that Ted Nugent is one of the more choice individuals out there, and instead focus exclusively on the merits and demerits of the album. I really wanted to do it, because (whisper it) I quite like some of his early stuff. You could, if you're a desperate guy trying to cling onto the tatters of your fandom, try to argue that the rampant machismo and unabashed objectification of women were merely poses, or the facets of a hyper-real performative entity like an Alice Cooper or the guys in KISS (who weren't actually demons or space aliens, I was surprised to read). The problem here is that many have accused Nugent directly of worse things than reductive and sexist portrayals of women within the context of musical performances.

The second problem is that on Craveman the two public faces of Ted Nugent - the one who writes literary masterpieces such as 'Wang Dang Sweet Poontang' and 'Motor City Madhouse' - and the one that rants almost incoherently on conservative talk radio about hunting, immigrants and firearms, have come together in unholy confederacy. His rancid and retrograde views pollute almost every corner and crevice of this album. Here's a sample lyric from (shit) opening track 'Klstrphnky':

Look at all the dirty nookie!
Keep that shit away from me!
Do you think I'm kinda kooky? (I can't even stand to looky)
It's all infected HIV!

If that's not tasteless enough for you, don't worry - Ted signs off from 'Klstrphnky' with the immortal line "Well I'm the world's biggest nigga, and all you dirty whiteys suk!" (sic). Nothing else reaches quite that level of offensiveness; nevertheless, here are a few couplets that somehow eluded Shakespeare:

"My ballz drip catnip / No shit bullshit" ('Pussywhipped')
"I wasn't afraid of your lightning baby, your thunder was a part of me / I'd dance with the devil at midnight maybe, your threat is a catastrophe" ('I Won't Go Away')
"My baby likes my frosting on her cake / I put the caffeine back in her beans" ('My Baby Likes My Butter On Her Gritz', an entire track of sub-'Sex Farm' metaphor salad)

Then we've got the big boy braggadocio of 'Rawdogs & Warhogs' which is all pathetic flag waving and how "I'm ready to fight, just pick a night, here I come!" - except that when the US draft in effect during the Vietnam War did 'pick a night', Nugent may have taken some fairly drastic measures to ensure he stayed out of that particular pagga. Whether or not Nugent did soil himself in public to avoid Vietnam, the fact remains that he exclusively shoots at things that are unable to fire back. Bravery comes in many guises, I guess.

The real frustration is that behind the blather (the lyrics are either moronic or incoherent) there is a kernel of a good hard rock album. Nugent is a good guitarist with a keen ear for a tasty hook, exemplified best by 'Crave', an exhilarating head-rush with a spiralling riff to rival Motley Crue's 'Girls, Girls, Girls'. Elsewhere, subtract the lyrics and 'Rawdogs & Warhogs' is a fine update of Nugent's own 'Workin' Hard, Playin' Hard'. Once again, mute the singing and 'Pussywhipped' is a rollicking stomper of a tune. There are bits and pieces throughout Craveman that remind you of why Ted Nugent was able to sell millions and pack out stadiums, but much else to make you wish it was he, and not Frank Zappa, who released an album titled Shut Up and Play Yer Guitar. Doubly so because the instrumental 'Earthtones' is quite lovely.

However, in a business where success can be fleeting, you could suggest that Nugent has been shrewd enough to parlay his simplistic, ignorant and inconsistent worldview into a second career as a conservative talking head. Thanks to his pungent and frequently expressed views the chickens may be coming home to roost on his performing career, but that's not likely to unduly trouble a man of his stripe. It's a real shame that Craveman is so imbued with Nugent's sub-Pithecanthropoid politics that the experience becomes something close to unpalatable. I wasn't expecting the lyrical embodiment William F Buckley, but this crap is just insulting. Then again, ol' Bill Buckley never could crank out 'Stranglehold' in front of thousands at the Cobo Hall, so I'll give that one to the Nuge.