I was a little bitty baby
I was rocked in the cradle
In an old Middle Class-style home
Now that I’m old and broke
I wanna give the rich a poke
In those big places they call home
We’re gonna invite ourselves to dinner
And shoot ‘em in the kisser
And raze their ritzy mansions to the ground
It won’t be very hard
To piss in the front yards
Of all the shiny houses they called homes
We’re gonna pull ‘em out of cars
And dip ‘em in some tar
Then throw ‘em in a hole and have a laugh
We’re gonna find a big ol’ oak
Hang ‘em all ’til they croak
In America, the place that we call home
In America, the place that we call home
In America, the place that we call …
You see the mainstreamed face of extremism, those who hold the central belief that it’s the others — the lazy poor who will take your money, the enemy within which hates the soldiers, those who don’t pray in public — pitted against all the good people, now in rebellion, who believe in guns and the bible.
Skynyrd’s profile now, beyond the Nugent bottom-out-of-sight casino circuit, is boosted only by classic rock radio oldies programming and the involvement of Fox News, in this case — Sean Hannity.
Ironically, it’s their only leg up in the music world. Although revered by every act on country music television, the industry will never play this Lynyrd Skynyrd. With an eye to building a younger audience, one that likes Taylor Swift and Lady Antebellum way more than Toby Keith, they’re atavistic bad news. (Even despite Van Zant’s hit, “Get Right With the Man,” from a few years back.)
Consider the title of the band’s latest album, “God & Guns.” Besides being one word away from being U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe’s platform since 1994, the song contains the following lines:
“There ain’t nobody safe no more
So you say your prayers and you thank the Lord
For that peace maker in the dresser drawer
God and guns keep us strong
That’s what this country was founded on
Well we might as well give up and run
If we let them take our God and guns.”
It’s a long way from the sentiments expressed in the band’s 1975 song, “Saturday Night Special,” which includes the lines “Hand guns are made for killin’/Ain’t no good for nothin’ else.”
A little more than the reporter lets on.
Most of Lynyrd Skynyrd is long dead.
Half of the band was wiped out in the famous plane crash of 1977, one which ended its recording career. Almost all the rest — gone from hard-living and the disease and misadventure associated with it since. The only surviving member actually in the band now is guitarist Gary Rossington.
One could make a discussion about how this band’s writing differs from the subtlety of “Sweet Home Alabama” and the mythology that evolved from the song over the years:
“In Birmingham they love the governor/Boo boo boo”
But it’s probably more logical to attribute the loss in intellect and spirit to the fact that 90 percent of the act is dead. And now they do what they can do for the Nugent circuit. Boo boo boo.
Like so many others, it’s quite something to make the mass delusion — “they’re gonna take my guns and my bible” — your defining world view as well as the backbone of a record by a band with a famous name.
Mass delusion, in fact, may be a little too mild a term.
Shared psychosis is more accurate, a sickness built on group fear in a hard time, nourished and stimulated by cynical and very real villainy, Fox News’ broadcast of barely veiled intolerance, always directed at the others. It’s a search for scapegoats and backstabbers. You’ve tuned into Glenn Beck and one day he’s jabbering about the Weimar Republic and how a video snip of Liza Minelli in Cabaret is sexually decadent, the next — how the country was founded to be a theocracy and that this has been expunged from history books.
It may be cause for alarm in other western nations. Observers can’t help but see that a noticeable portion of the country appears incapable of rational thought, unreachable through reasoned argument.
Ignorance and Fox News alone, for example, do not precisely explain why one in five people believe the president is Muslim, today’s big news.
What’s certain is that this won’t turn around anytime soon. The old journalist structures left in the mainstream media aren’t up to the task. To them, the one-in-five story is just another news item, one to be leavened with a paragraph saying the president does go to church and pray. (Or worse, finding a semi-egghead in 30 minutes to provide a few quotes for something that takes on an air of refinement and reason, blithely putting most of it away to human nature.)
You think the Skynyrd 2.0 or 3.0 guys believe what they read in newspapers? Rhetorical question.
Those who pay attention to these things may have noticed that a good number of modern country artists scurry sub rosa to Fox News when presented with the opportunity. For example, the musically apolitical Trace Adkins — his new album, Cowboy’s Back in Town, is actually quite good — is the latest example.
Another mental inconsistency in the white man’s country music is how so many of the manly guy artists make a big deal out of supporting the troops. They do it in song. They blabber it in interview. God bless ‘em, they even play overseas and publicize it as much as they can. But for all the public devotion to the honor of service, not one single man among them, strapping men of action as they are portrayed by Nashville, took the example of Pat Tillman and ran with it.
DD has it figured this way: It’s overcompensation. As committed as they are to the mythology of their music and reverence to Uncle Sam, they’re subconsciously feeling guilty as hell over not stepping up to be in the war. So they feel they can work it off with penance.
Good news, lads! Good news! The Tea Party does really bad hard rock, too.
I was gonna get into the genre of white folk music “Obama anthems” with Photoshopped Obama Hitlers and ObamaSatans but there were way too many. Your browsers would crash.
Here. Wait for your WM Player to come up. QuickTime version here.
This country doesn’t make stuff for everyone anymore. No jobs. It’s kaput.
Now — if you can qualify for a gig designing electric cars or high-end custom shop guitars for the super rich (or 3-D blockbuster movies or flying robots for assassinating people in other countries), we can really get somewhere.
Ted Nugent’s summer tour of rib shacks and an astonishing number of casinos is being shot by amateur videographers and posted to YouTube.
Presumably, they’re devoted fans.
Here’s a Ted rant, deployed nightly, just as described by a Houston newspaper reporter days ago.
“All the children get a free machine gun,” roars Ted. The mayor of Chicago is a piece of shit. Is Chicago in Canada? On the president: “I have a love song for the rookie clueless piece of shit.” “This song is for all the motherfuckers that are fucking with me all the time … hey Barack,” etc.
And then he goes into a cursing instrumental he coined at a happier time in 2000, “Klstrfuckme.” Performed with somewhat less vigor than I have on record.
And here is a video, taken from the Pasadena rodeo near Houston, of a biographical short Ted projects behind hisself during shows. At about 1:30 you’ll notice the startling appearance of Martin Luther King amidst the imagery of camo and shooting stuff. You can date the various stills by eyeballing Ted’s middle, which spreads as he nears 2010. It’s like using carbon-14, only easier.
If you disagree with Ted Nugent’s politics, it’s tough to like him. That said, he’s by no means a stupid guy, and his charitable work for military veterans is without a doubt admirable. His opinions are generally well-articulated even if they do often include threats of violence against his critics. But therein lies the rub: Dude’s a fucking prick, and not in that likable-asshole kind of way. No, his general dickishness comes in the way of suggesting Iraq should have been nuked and his frequent suggestions that those occupying the opposite end of the political spectrum should “suck on my machine gun.” Sure, there are plenty of attendees at a Ted Nugent concert who can’t wait for his inevitable mid-set tirade wherein me might fantasize murdering Hillary Clinton or threaten to shoot that commie Obama in his non-American face, but some of us just want to hear “Stranglehold.”
Such previews are proof it’s impossible to defame Nugent. He may complain loudly in columns that he’s been dubbed a race-baiter unjustly and that people better get their facts straight. But his own persona has created a substantial body of opinion that he is precisely what he says he is not.
In mid 2003 Nugent had a big gig lined up at the Muskegon Summer Celebration in Michigan. He then went on a radio show in Denver to do his inimitably Ted thing. The radio hosts pulled the plug on him.
The result — Nugent summarily dropped by the concert. Billboard, at the time:
“Derogatory racial remarks made by veteran rocker Ted Nugent have cost him a gig at the Muskegon Summer Celebration. Festival officials cancelled his concert following an interview last week with two Denver disc jockeys in which the DJs said he used slurs for Asians and blacks.”
Three months later Nugent sued the Muskegon concert officials for defamation. In his complaint, it was linked to a tortured argument about violation of his 14th Amendment rights and breach of contract, which had deprived him of an $80,000 guarantee.
The Billboard image/article is here in a parcel of articles and comes from the case files entered by Nugent’s legal team. (DD has more and may get to them in a future post.)
The lawsuit became a celebrity trial in Michigan during the course of which Nugent’s defamation claim was tossed out. Nugent eventually took the stand, saying the DJs had misinterpreted his use of the n-word in a conversation. Nugent said he had related a story about how an African American had told him, after watching him in performance: “If you keep playing … like that, you’re going to be an ‘n word’ when you grow up.”
Whether this was all Nugent said during the course of the radio appearance was not determined. No tape of it existed, apparently.
“Unmentioned at the trial were news accounts of Nugent’s use of the other words,” reported the Muskegon Chronicle in 2005.
Continued the newspaper:
Asked about it later by a Chronicle reporter, Nugent said he referred to “Jap guitars” in the context of a conversation about how some guitars are soulful, others not. Nugent said one of the disc jockeys then said the word “Jap” is offensive — a point Nugent disagrees with — and that he jokingly responded something to the effect of, “That’s not offensive. g—–’ is offensive. [Apparently gooks.]
I didn’t call anybody a g—,” Nugent added.
Nugent claimed a subsequent Rocky Mountain News story about the radio interview — which generated a wire story that ran in The Muskegon Chronicle, launching the Muskegon uproar — was biased and false, although his own account of his on-air words resembled that given in the newspaper story.
By today’s Nuge-standard, it all reads rather mildly.
While the defamation part of the case was dismissed, Nugent was successful in his breach of contract suit. He was eventually paid his guarantee although Muskegon Summer Celebration lawyers had to prod him into admitting it had been settled.
What had and has been determined is that Nugent was a highly divisive character — and not in any good way, to paraphrase the Nashville Scene — someone always accompanied by maximum ugly controversy.
In a newspaper article after the trial’s conclusion, one read:
Shoppers at The Lakes Mall who had been following the case of rock star Ted Nugent and his lawsuit with the Muskegon Summer Celebration committee weren’t surprised by the outcome. A jury Thursday afternoon returned a quick verdict awarding Nugent … his breach-of-contract suit against the summer festival.
“I love Ted Nugent’s music. I understand Nugent has to be taken in context. Everybody don’t see it that way,” said Mike Elijah, 49, who is African-American and a fan of the festival.
“Most people see things as black and white,” Elijah said.
Elijah said he agreed with Summer Celebration’s decision not to allow Nugent to appear at the festival after allegations he made racial slurs during a live Denver radio show.
“Several teenagers asked for comment about the Nugent case were unable to do so without first receiving a briefing that Nugent was once a rock star,” added the newspaper.
At the height of his power, what the Brits would call a performance on sulphate. Even after doing a badly executed jump from the top of amplifiers. No profanity. Deemed a classic from German music television.
More recently:
Keep the shirt buttoned, not like the cartoon on the bass drum head. And that’s “No shit!”
Derek St. Holmes, the black-haired guy to the left of Ted in the “Motor City Madhouse” video from the mid-Seventies, is the more-dapper-than-Ted guy with the shaven head.
How to look, how not to look — when you’re an old rock ‘n roller. No gettin’ around it, deterioration and the depradations of gravity aren’t optional.
Perhaps the Nuge’s record company — Eagle — wasn’t that thrilled about giving it all away for basically free on-line. Or maybe the Nuge himself wasn’t totally happy with the promotion. Given his well-known antipathy toward the idea of stuff on-line for zip.
Or maybe it’s just likely your standard momentary on-line screw-up. Or maybe, as my grandpap used to say, “He’s got things all balled up.” And he’s desperate.
However, Ted is nothing if not an interestingly amusing hypocrite.
PopMatters.com: How much are you bothered by the fact that many people are getting Free-For-All or Double Live Gonzo! without paying for them via illegal downloading and file sharing? Do you have any thoughts on what the music industry will look like as CD sales continue to dwindle?
Nugent: “All thievery is wrong and upsetting to anyone connected to logic and decency. Fortunately, I have such an incredibly diverse and exciting lifestyle that I am able to escape the violations of my fellow man. My professional management team will always optimize my commercial entities.
And nothing says “I’m a mixed-up loser” quite as emphatically than vague doublespeak like “optimizing commercial entities.”
However for the Wall Street Journal, back in 2001, Ted was much more direct:
Hey Napster, get your greasy paws off my intellectual property.
=====
To think a third party should be allowed to give away our product
for zero compensation is brain-dead and un-American.
But perhaps Ted Nugent really has changed. And he really does like the Internet, wanting to give a digital copy of his new anthology away for about free for one whole day.
Whatever the circumstances, Nugent has his job cut out for him. Happyl Defiance Day Everyday (Ted’s lame attempt to get Independence Day renamed) is a grab bag of stuff from his days of fail, stuff that his fans — to steal a phrase — trampled and hurdled.
It contains the greatest hits from albums like “If You Can’t Lick ‘Em … Lick ‘Em,” “Little Miss Dangerous” (from when Ted was into Miami Vice), “Penetrator,” “Spirit of the Wild,” “Love Grenade” and the last couple of live albums, which were a move to consolidate some of Nugent’s classic tunes from the arena-busting days as new live versions on platters the man could actually collect royalties on. If you think you’re getting the originals, you’re not.
Of these records, Little Miss Dangerous is the most interesting. It charted a radical departure in Nugent’s sound. A a little more than half, perhaps almost all, of the record has the Scholz Rockman guitar tone that was on the Eighties hits of Def Leppard and ZZ Top. Nugent never went back to it.
The title cut itself, besides being the theme for an episode of Miami Vice, was inspired by Pele Massa, a girl Nugent met when she was underage. Massa spent ten years raising Nugent’s children, leaving when he started screwing others while out on the road.
In Nugent’s Behind the Music episode, Massa infamously described the Nugent credo: “Bag it, tag it, call a cab for it.”
Number of times Ted Nugent called the Obama administration some variation on the “Mao Tse-Tung fan club” in the last week:
The criminality of the Mao Tse-Tung fan club in the White House will go down as … – Broward/Palm Beach New Times
[But] in these here United States of America with a Mao Tse Tung fan club in the White House, our passion for real America drives our musical celebration to new highs knowing that our “we the people” demand for a return to a real America is catching fire all across this great country and it brings us much energy. — The Monitor
To establish a Mao Tse Tung fanclub in the White House is beyond the pale. — Boston Herald
Americans have had enough of political shysters, lawyer lingo, doublespeak, crooks, liars and frauds in Washington. The Mao Zedong fan club will be looking for new digs by deer season … I would much rather put our country’s future in the hands of Wall Street than in the bumbling hands of Fedzilla. — Washington Times, I
After watching Gen. McChrystal in a “60 Minutes” interview a year or so ago, I had no doubt that he believed then that the Afghanistan war was a total klusterphunk in progress because of the community-organizer-in-chief, Mr. Obama, and the Mao Zedong fan club with whom he had surrounded himself. — Washington Times, II
They are nothing but economic parasites who live off the sweat and hard work of the producers. Mao Zedong would be proud. — Washington Times, III
