Love Grenade

by Ted Nugent

Product Description:

Personnel: Ted Nugent (guitar); Jack 'FunkBrother' Blades, Barry Sparks (bass guitar); Tommy Clufetos (drums); Will Evankovitch, April Grisman, Amber Morris, Eric Martin, Jack Blades, Tommy Shaw (background vocals).

On the surface, LOVE GRENADE was just another Ted Nugent solo record, featuring 13 tracks of blazing guitar, competently structured blues-metal, and hollered choruses about getting crazy. In truth, LOVE GRENADE was the scatterbrained treatise of a true (Motor City) madman, and its titles and lyrics reflect his completely iconoclastic agenda. Equal parts pro-gun lunatic, anti-hippie crusader, and Native-American exploitationist, Nugent comes across as the right-wing's answer to Neil Young on LOVE GRENADE: an aging guitar crank whose heroism is based on playing by no one's rules but his own. When the muses are as weird as the uncomfortably sexualized "Girl Scout Cookies" and a fictitious university called "Funk U.," it's impossible to argue that Nugent's cultural reference points had any relevance whatsoever in 2007. Thankfully, the Nuge can still bring it, and Barry Sparks and Tommy Clufetos act as more than capable sidemen. And just to remind listeners of what put him on top, Nugent covers his most famous song, "Journey To The Center of the Mind," to celebrate its 40th anniversary.