Motor City Madman slashes Aspen.
July 12, 2011 
My ears will never be the same.
It was 1972 or 73, Ted Nugent was scheduled to play a gig at my high school gym. Somehow... our teacher Senor Muratsky arranged for a rock and roll show at the school as a fund raiser for the Spanish Club. What?? Tickets were $3. The Nuge already had a huge hit a few years previously with the Amboy Dukes (Journey to the Center of the Mind) but he had not yet reached R & R stardom. Hey it was a pay day...in the lilly white suburbs of Detroit. Click TED NUGENT for the wiki. The Wango Tango is still going strong as evidenced by his recent show in Aspen.
For those of you who were not yet born in 72 or 73 things were different then. While I was pretty much straight as an arrow--- many of the kids at school were on drugs as evidenced by the almost daily OD's. My classmates typically would head out to "the field" in front of the school to toke up or do mesc. in between classes. Everybody had long hair then (even me) and we jammed to the quadraphonic stylings of WWWW (W4) or WABX. The Viet Nam War was raging, the Detroit riots had forced whitey out to the burbs and Ted was just starting to refine his act into the Motor City Mad Man. Bob Seger, Grand Funk Railroad and Iggy were other popular local acts.
Since I was not yet driving, my folks dropped my friends and I off at the school. "Yeah...its for the Spanish Club...we might get extra credit" I explained to my Mom. "Have fun" she said as we piled out of the Buick. About 300 people showed up, and Nuge did not disappoint. It was loud as f#*K. Ted said it "i'm the only black guy here". After the show, we walked over to ShortStop, the local "party store" where we hung out, drank pop and watched the other kids doing their drugs. It was sort of an almost famous moment. My ears are still ringing from Ted's riffs more than 35 years ago.
Monday night, Uncle Ted hit the stage in Aspen. AspenSpin missed the show due to our extended stint in ski-hab, but our correspondent Raifie Bass snapped a few pix for us. Ted played all his hits...and the crowd went wild.
We last saw Ted in SF in 2008. Read the story DOG EAT DOG.
Thanks to RAIFIE BASS for the pix.
Our 5 favorite Ted Nugent Jams of all Time.
1) Cat Scratch Fever
2) Weekend Warriors
3) Motor City Madhouse
4) Stranglehold
5) Journey to the Center of the Mind
Reader Comments (1)
No doubt others felt different, but for me it was AWFUL.
The sound was way too loud and distorted. I miss Ralph at the mixing helm and it HAD to be above the BUA's standard Db limits.
The guitars were so muddy and the bass was overdriven to constant distortion. Even with earplugs, on the floor I had to hold my ears. The low IQ crowd was in force with almost four fist fights on the floor alone. Although Ted is anti-intoxication, far be it for him to criticize the crowd of BUA's profit needs but I felt endangered more than once. Ted's politics drew a lot of YEAHs from the down valley and out of town crowd, but I care not. The sound was brutal. And it was just too much for me. I saw Ted in the 70s w/ The Amboy Dukes and a few of his '70s glory tours, last was in 1978. I forgot the crowd he draws. But my God, for these ears, the sound was crushingly excessive.