Old Enough to Forget

Okay boy howdy hang on to your hat, I'm about to drop the needle on Ted Nugent's 1977 release Cat Scratch Fever . This will be my first time sitting and actually listening to the album. At the risk of repeating myself, something I do a lot, as a kid my love of Ted started and ended with Double Live Gonzo! It was everything I wanted in an album, and with my limited budget it covered all the bases. As the years went by I never really felt the need to go back and revisit his early albums, and that was okay. Over the last couple of years I've managed to snag a couple albums and they've been good fun, but listening to albums now doesn't have the emotional gut punch I used to get in my youth. If there's anything that kind of sucks about getting old (and there are a lot of things that suck, trust me) it's that making deep connections with anything is harder than it used to be. Hearing the studio cuts of some of the songs I only really knew from their live iteration...

Here it is, Ted Nugent's 1978 aural assault Double Live Gonzo! First things first: this is about Ted the monster player. I really couldn't give a shit about his political bent, which has only become more exaggerated over the years, but the guy has his convictions. While I don't agree with many of his views, I'd still have an iced tea with the guy and talk guitars and music. Secondly, see the first thing. This is coming from a guy who leans a little to the left of centre. That's about as political as I get. I'll just quote Forrest Gump: "And that's all I've got to say about that." Recorded between 1976 and 1977, Double Live Gonzo! captures Ted and band (what a band!) at their zenith, and the results aren't for those who can't handle sensory overload. If you were to go by the pictures in the gatefold, you'd think it was all Ted all the time. My first experience with Ted's music was in my cousin's pickup truck with an 8-track (...

Continuing my trip through 1978, here's Prism's second album, See Forever Eyes . I remember going with my cousin to a hole-in-the-wall record store to pick up an 8-track copy he'd special ordered. Yeah, it was like that once upon a time in smaller towns and suburbs. Like any good Canadian kid, I thought "Spaceship Superstar" was as close to a perfect song as there ever was. Here was the follow-up, and I was finally going to hear more than one song. After ejecting the ever-present Double Live Gonzo! from the truck's player, this one got a fair amount of play over the summer, and I liked what I heard - especially the rockers where Lindsay tore it up. The early Prism albums were driven as much by the interplay between guitar and keyboards as they were by Ron Tabak's soaring vocals - a pattern some of my favourite bands employ, much to my delight (Saga, I'm looking at you). When the album launches into "Flyin'," arguably one of its best track...

1978 was probably one of the more formative years for me musically. At the time I didn't really think much about it, but looking back, holy cow and boy howdy, it was a banner year. It was the year "Baker Street" made the saxophone sexy, and the guitar solo in that song still makes me smile. It was also the year my cousin introduced me to Ted Nugent through his incendiary Double Live Gonzo and Prism's sophomore album, See Forever Eyes . The number of bands I waited patiently to hear on the radio or at a friend's house was just mind-boggling. I started making a list of the bands and songs I could hardly wait to hear, but it got so long that it just looked silly. It's a great list. I didn't have much in the way of vinyl, so it was up to friends and spotty AM radio to supply my favourite songs. One of the coolest songs from my youth was "Action." And no, it wasn't by The Sweet (although that's an awesome song, and I did actually own the 45 a...