A Brooklyn restaurateur, adopted as a baby, was shocked to learn his biological father is none other than “Motor City Madman” Ted Nugent.
Bay Ridge native Ted Mann, 42, got the news about “The Nuge” in an October phone call from a sister he never knew he had. She had reached out to the adoption agency that placed him.
“I’m like, ‘What!?'” laughed Mann, whose newest eatery is Cabana Social in Williamsburg …
Nugent, the “Cat Scratch Fever” rocker known for his pro-gun stance and a VH1 reality show where he made people build outhouses and skin a wild boar, [and had an accident with a chainsaw] immediately welcomed Mann into the family.
“His first words to me were ‘Hello, son,'” Mann said. “Within an hour of knowing him, he said, ‘Let’s go shoot some guns.'”
Nugent had always been open with his other seven children about the fact that he’d given two kids … Nugent has since told Mann a little bit about his biological mom, but Mann has yet to get in touch with her.
Nugent was not yet quite the wealthy rock star of the mid-Seventies when he gave the child up for adoption, an item the stories on this don’t really make clear.
If the reporting on Ted Mann’s age is correct, the adoption occurred in 1969. At the time Nugent was in Amboy Dukes.
The Amboy Dukes had a minor hit with “Journey to the Center of Your Mind” in the late Sixties. The band recorded three pyschedelic hard rock records of no great impression for Mainstream.
Two more Amboy Dukes records came out on Frank Zappa’s Discreet label in ’73 and ’74 — Call of the Wild and Tooth, Fang & Claw. Band-wise, they’re the same group — minus a singer — that would put out Ted Nugent in 1975, the record that issued him into the US arena circuit.
For a limited time only, La Puta — the album, presented by your host.
In a zip-file (80 Mb) with some art. MP3’s for burning to disc or play on whatever you want to play them on. Here. (3/06 in the am. Expired. If you still would like a digital copy, send an e-mail.)
Track list:
1. Don’t Let Your Daddy Know
2. La Puta
3. Needle & Spoon
4. Hump Blues
5. The Pennsy Redneck
6. Ace of Spades
7. The China Shuffle
8. Had No Pills
9. DeCulo
10. That’s Logistics
11. Act Naturally
12. Let’s Lynch Lloyd Blankfein
13. Highway Patrol
14. Central Park Boogie
15. A Moment from ‘Brown Shoes’
16. Fiscal Discipline Rock
17. Heevahava Boogie
An obscurity from 1980, this is Cher fronting a hard rock band with her post-Greg Allman boyfriend, the poor woman’s Greg Allman, Les Dudek.
Remember Allman and Woman? Well, if the answer is no, I’m not sure I like you. Heh.
On Geffen, the Black Rose vinyl packaging worked hard to disguise Cher’s membership until you opened it up.
Unsurprisingly, to me anyway, Cher’s more than acceptable as a hard rock singer although discussion of the album, when it occurs, has never been kind. For “Julie,” a metal torch song with chugging guitar, Cher randomly bends over and shakes her butt, a stagy but always popular move. Note the mysterious co-singer in tight shirt on the right.
Black Rose quickly dropped its petals although the vinyl, which you don’t see in used bins at all here, has been pirated to the web. And TV excerpts of the band for Wolfman Jack are on YouTube after having been disappeared from public consciousness for decades.
A hysterically funny cheap champagne-drenched review of Cher’s Black Rose, perhaps penned by someone familiar with her many drag club diva impersonators, is here.
“The heavy chugging of Julie is borderline embarassing,” it reads. “Julie is definately [sic] an upturned-collar polo-shirt-clad lesbian.”
I’m a sucker for pop rock tunes built off the big jangle (open G’s, C’s and D’s radiant into the sky, if you play guitar).
Thompson Square’s “Are You Gonne Kiss Me Or Not?” is a perfect example. They’re peddled as a modern country group but if you’re my age, you hear classic rock.
Hat tip to CE whose review moved this in front of me.
DD will have a show at Artscape Gallery in Pasadena, Saturday. If you’re in town, you’re welcome to stop by. The show is free, including drinks and food.
Arnold in better times. No more good news, lads! Alles kaput!
After more than half a decade of misery and failure at the state level, via Digby,here:
In 2003 Californians recalled Gray Davis and elected Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now they say oops. 42% of voters in the state say that Davis was the superior Governor to only 32% who remain in Schwarzenegger’s camp. Democrats, at 56%, are a lot more sold on Davis having better than Republicans, at 48%, are on Schwarzenegger. Beyond that independents go for Davis by a 40/33 margin as well. It would be hard to claim that Davis is a popular figure at this point- but he’s certainly not as disliked as Schwarzenegger and his 25/65 favorability rating is.
In 2003, I had the right idea. Make a song, “I Think We Should Make a Carla Sandwich,” with purloined Arnold vocal bits taken from prank phone-call sites.
A couple of MP3 online musical parodies by “Arnold and the Gropinators,” a “Venice Beach garage metal” band, have surfaced … the A-side title, “I Think We Should Make a Carla Sandwich,” is taken from a description in The Times of an alleged movie set incident in which Schwarzenegger and his stand-in trapped stand-in Carla Baron next to a food service table. Schwarzenegger supposedly said, “I think we should make a Carla sandwich,” and the men squeezed her between them. After they released her, Baron said, Schwarzenegger stuck his tongue in her mouth.
It was popular enough to make its way across the country to the Pine Grove, PA, video rental store.
“I Think We Should Make a Carla Sandwich” — is here.
“I vould like to vork you out/Your ass feels to me, very stout!”
DICK DESTINY AND THE HIGHWAY KINGS Arrogance (Destination Records, 1216 W. Cumberland St., Allentown, Pa. 18103 * * * ): It’s less arrogance than devotion that compels Dick Destiny to sing – his howl nearly drowns out the real reason to listen to this record, i.e., the guitar playing, which for all I know may be done by Dick Destiny (lack of credits on the album jacket there, Dick). Anyway, the lead guitarist knows his way around everything from blues to heavy metal and doesn’t condescend to either genre. If the lyrics have no purpose other than to hymn rock cliches – the road, love and rock-and-roll its own bad self – the music convinces me that someone in this band is in it for the passion, not the potential for stardom.
If there were any lyrics on it devoted to love, I’m a monkey’s uncle. But hey!
