You all probably know the old saying, “The third time’s the
\ncharm.” In the case of rocker Ted Nugent, that’s kind of a
\nmisnomer. After all, his self-titled debut and
\nFree-For-All<\/i> were hardly failures, both creatively and
\ncommercially. If anything,
\nCat Scratch Fever<\/i> continued in the vein of success for
\nNugent, capping what quite possibly was the best period of his
\ncareer.<\/p>\n
What’s interesting about this particular disc is that it’s only
\nknown for two songs, the title track and “Wang Dang Sweet
\nPoontang,” a song which sometimes I’m still surprised gets
\nany<\/i> airplay for the use of that one word. (No, I’m not
\noffended by it, but there are people who could find something
\nsexually suggestive in a dial tone who probably could organize a
\nbunch of like-minded closed-minded people to boycott a station who
\nplayed it.) Granted, there’s some filler on this album – but the
\nsame could be said for Nugent’s two previous releases. But there’s
\nsome strong material on
\nCat Scratch Fever<\/i> that’s just as worthy of your attention as
\nthe two hits.<\/p>\n
Take “Death By Misadventure,” a track featuring the lead vocals
\nof Derek St. Holmes. (By this time, Nugent was the unquestioned
\nleader of the band, in both guitar work and vocals.) If this track
\nproved anything, it’s that sometimes a different singer was perfect
\nfor the material, giving the Nuge the opportunity to grab his
\nGibson Byrdland and shred the absolute daylights out of it. While I
\nadmit I’m still in the process of re-educating myself in all things
\nNugent, this could possibly be his most underrated song and
\nperformance.<\/p>\n
Likewise, tracks such as “A Thousand Knives” and “Home Bound”
\n(the latter an instrumental) show off the songwriting skills of
\nNugent strongly. You can think what you want of the man, his
\npolitics and his sexual bravado, but it’s songs like these that
\nprove Nugent to be a songsmith.<\/p>\n
With claims like that, it’s a shame that
\nCat Scratch Fever<\/i> has any filler… but it indeed does.
\nTracks like “Live It Up,” “Fist Fightin’ Son Of A Gun” and “Workin’
\nHard, Playin’ Hard” are okay, but hardly measure up to the
\ngreatness encased on this disc. “Sweet Sally” is cut from the exact
\nsame musical pattern as “Wang Dang Sweet Poontang” – if you’re
\ngonna copy your own licks, fine, just don’t do it on the same
\nalbum.<\/p>\n
Still, on
\nCat Scratch Fever<\/i>, the positives outweigh the negatives, and
\nstands as one of Nugent’s best albums in his career. If you can
\nonly own one of Nugent’s platters, at this stage in my exploration
\nof his work, I’d gladly take this one in a heartbeat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25922,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5798],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-37128","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-ted-nugent","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37128"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37128"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}