The Michigan Daily-Thursday, June 12, 1980-Page 7
HARD ROCK
Breath of ife or a dying gasp?
By TIMOTHY YAGLE
Columbia Records is the'proud owner
of two of the most blaring and abrasive
rock acts in the business: Ted Nugent
and Judas Priest.
What is so amazing about each band
is that both launch an unrelenting and
savage rock and roll attack on your
ears. Song after song on their new
albums Scream Dream and British
Steel, respectively, feature an in-
credibly strong and brash lead guitar,
backed by pounding drums and a num-
bing bass.
"ANYONE CAN put on a loincloth
and buy eight Fender Twins and play
louder than anyone else and act like a
hooligan. But they couldn't do it 24
hours a day for every long. He (Ted
Nugent) does. And one has to come to
the assumption that this is the real
man, the real Ted Nugent." That's
drummer Cliff Davies' description and
defense of the Ted Nugent personna.
Born in the "rapids of rock and roll,"
(Detroit) Ted has been swimming
against the current of convention since
he began playing guitar 25 years ago.
At 31, Ted has six platinum albums and
Motor City Madman doesn't sing
anywhere on the album-he screams
(like the LP title declares) all the sub-
tley lewd lyrics that center around
erotic love and violence. Judging from
them, one gets the feeling Ted woke up
in the middle of a nightmare several
times and the raw and gutsy song sub-
jects just materialized before him. Just
look at the song titles. In this sense,
Scream Dream= is one of Ted's most
honest, straight forward albums to
date-and also his worst. The listener is
given little relief from Ted's incessant
high-pitched raving. The album's
cover tells the whole story here. He is a
ridiculous lunatic on stage as well as on
vinyl. Of course most of the sones
feature loud, blasting and catchy hook-
laden guitar riffs that just blend into
one another after a while.
The same holds true for the British
Steel from Judas Priest. One raunchy
guitar tune follows another interrupted
only by Rob Halford's screechy and
squeaky tough-man vocals.
Judas Priest is a bunch of axe-
grinders trying to revive the almost
mothballed era of Deep Purple/Black
Sabbath heavy-metal that christened
Caught here in an uncharacteristically calm moment is Detroit's own Ted
Nugent. On Terrible Ted's right is backwoods politician C. Purvis Gyp-
sum, just after naming Nugent the vice presidential candidate on his Wild
Boar party ticket. Nugent's acceptance of the offer is pending on Gypsum's
proposals to lower the voting age for men to 14 and to make "Cat Scratch
Fever" the national anthem.
time-honored philosophy of play it
hard, play it fast, and play it loud."
Despite the omnipresent feeling to
the contrary, they don't think hard rock
is dying, citing the steadfast popularity
of old-timer Led Zeppelin and offspring
Van Halen and other young and
established bands trying to keep it
alive. Rock was designed to be played
loud, they say, and their intention is to
stick as close to the original design as
possible.
Aside from their deafening music,
Judas Priest also relies on a realistic
and predictable stage show to convey
their message. One of their antics in-
volves Halford riding on stage on a
giant reved up black motorcycle in ad-
dition to their black-leather-and-chains
outfits.
"With our type of music, sometimes
the presentation is just as important as
the playing," Halford has said. "We've
got to make the audience believe that
we represent all the things we sing
about or much of our effect is lost."
Examining Ted's Scream Dream
from the other perspective, it is the
ultimate Nugent, aside from the man-
datory Double-live Gonzo opus. A real
Terrible Ted enthusiast will gobble
Scream Dream up because Ted is all
over the album and his guitar has never
sounded stronger. Ted is more self-
indulging on this disc and he appears to
be letting it all go and having a good
time with himself. Just what the fans
want, it would seem.
THAT HE DOES to the utmost in con-
cert, too. One has to wonder how he can
sustain such a consistently high energy
level. Many contend he simply loves
what he does. He practices a form of
masochism by beating both his brick
wall-like chest and his rear on stage
like an uncaged animal with a
menacing sneer on his face.
The Ted Nugents and Judas Priests
have their niche somewhere in the rock
world. Ted has found his and exploited
it, by giving his Motor City adolescent-
type crowds exactly what they want.
He's larger than life, a Superman, and
that is what the kids want to see. For
this, he deserves some kind of credit.
Judas Priest, however, will only gain
a larger following by toning down their
sound just a bit to get more of that
crucial air-play. This style of music is
not worth anything unless someone
hears it on the radio and Judas Priest
seems not to have recognized this fact
of life. If they have, they don't care and
then they will really miss the boat.
However, British Steel may be the
record they have been waiting for.
Either way, neither Ted nor Judas
Priest will allow hard rock to die,
because of their absolute intensity, their
need for a livelihood and their instictual
desire and craving to live out this
peculiar fantasy.
SHORT or LONG
Hairstyles for
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DASCOLA STYLISTS
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Do leather jackets-cause bad posture? A recent study has suggested that there
may be a relationship between amount of time spent in such a coat and the
pose of one's torso. Here a group of subjects display some of the observed
effects, from poser's slouch to the Harley hunchback syndrome.
Scream Dream, whether or not it
deserves it, is destined to follow suit.
Ted has accomplished this incredible
feat through an incredible
egomanaiacal belief in his own great-
ness and his irrepressible desire to
prove it-again and again. "No one un-
derstand how driven I am," he has said.
AS A RESULT, Ted has unfor-
tunately driven himself to commandeer
the lead vocal chdres on Scream Dream
and we all pay for it as a result. The
them. Their arsenal of power chord
mayhem is straight out of their roots in
slum and factory-ridden Birmingham,
England. The Hells Angels-like quintet
struck the heavy metal chord to nullify
the problems they faced and it became
the foundation of their blistering ap-
proach to rock and roll.
"I guess there is a bit of hostility in
our music," Halford has said.
JUDAS PRIEST remains one of the
staunchest supporters of the simplistic,
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