TED, JUST ADMIT IT…

I’m not inherently suspicious of the drug-free, sober, and straight-edge. True, I regard them as I would a Beta-max, a pager, or a non-fan of Devin Townsend: an anachronistic curiosity whose continued existence defies progress. All the same, when I’m told by, say, the lovely Allyson from BBG! that constant intoxication is not her priority, it seems believable.

Now, Ted Nugent on the other hand, kinda seems like a goddamn liar in his endorsements of a drug-free lifestyle. Now, sure, a lot about Ted screams “repressed homosexuality,” beit his wingnut socio-political beliefs, his mega-masculine urge to kill all that has no ability to counter-attack, and his participation in aesthetically dubious projects like Damn Yankees. Not to mention his entire early canon which casts Ted as history’s most annoying pussy-hound. Talk about over-compensating. But that’s a side issue.

See, some people crow about their finely-calibrated gay-dar, and likewise I’m boastful about my unbeatable high-dar. (Make no mistake, it’s in self-interest that I hasten to determine if anybody anywhere is indulging; with that knowledge, I can then launch mooching operations.) And despite his public opposition to drug-gobbling, Ted regularly sets my Spidey senses a-raging, and especially throughout the above Damn Yankees jam: the darting eyes, the working mouth, the extreme agreeability, the shot-hogging, the intrusive/cruddy guitar soloing. Plus, he came up in hard rock in the ’70s, a time when contracts were signed in nose-blood and tour buses were made of quaaludes. So is Ted‘s he-man act a smokescreen for his real secret shame? Is Ted an Elvis Presley to our Richard Nixon? Is it really plausible that any sober man would agree to spend five years as third fiddle in Damn Yankees? Is there any other explanation for that zebra-striped duster in the “High Enough” video? Have you heard that song “Little Miss Dangerous?”

-ADF