Ted Nugent’s new concert DVD is called Sweden Rocks, with footage culled from the Sweden Rock Festival in Norje. While Nugent is one of the foremost authorities on rock, obviously what everybody really wants from him is arrow blasting tips, and this DVD has a bonus feature called “Bow Hunting with the Nuge” that delivers.
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It’s not exactly “hunting,” although somebody’s yellow Labrador retriever momentarily comes into the line of fire before the Nuge shoos the errant beast. It’s the Nuge giving a lesson to his bass player Barry Sparks and his drummer Mick Brown, and the targets are artificial bear and deer.
“For you to be a real primal scream rhythm and blues funk brother devotee, you’ve got to celebrate the mystical flight of the arrow,” the Nuge explains to Sparks. The he unveils the secrets of the “Apache shoot with a recurve bow.”
Ted’s tips on how to:
• Set the arrow for firing: “Snap it on there like a man.”
• Draw the bow: “Put three fingers under.”
• Take aim: “Pull it back to your lips.”
• Shoot: “Smooth and Cochise-like, just roll it off your fingers.”
If you like more volatile projectiles, there’s also “On the Range with the Nuge, which shows him instructing a teen and a woman in the finer points of semi- and full-automatic fire with a 9mm. machine gun. Then he takes a round of target shooting at plates ― he is, of course, a deadeye ― and lets Brown and Sparks have a go. As mere mortals, they score considerably worse.
But all three hit the target on-stage in a raggedly right-on show packed with gill-to-gill hits. Trading off between a white signature Gibson Byrdland and a gorgeous curly maple-topped Les Paul, the Nuge howls while his guitar growls through “Wango Tango,” “Free for All,” “Wang Dang Sweet Poontang,” “Dog Eat Dog,” “Cat Scratch Fever,” “Stranglehold,” and the epic finale “Great White Buffalo,” plus a passel of others. There’s no time for subtlety ― just for kicking a lot of ass as the Nuge rips crunching chords and solo after solo out of his strings.
For the “Great White Buffalo” finale, Mr. Nugent dons a feathered Native American headdress and kicks off with a hot-tubed feedback moan.
It’s hard to believe the Motor City Madman turns 60 on December 13. The drag strip of beard on his chin and the tips of his sideburns are gray and his belly’s a little rounder, but in Sweden Rocks, it’s undeniable that the Nuge still does, too. Full tilt.