Loaded for Bear: Best of Ted Nugent & Amboy Dukes [Original recording remastered]

Ted Nugent | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 22, 1999)
• Original Release Date: June 22, 1999
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Label: Sony
• ASIN: B00000JBEH
• In-Print Editions: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #55,756 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

These 18 psychedelic proto-metal tunes introduced Nugent to the world, including the hit Journey to the Center of the Mind , their hard-drivin' cover of Baby Please Don't Go , and more-digitally remastered with new notes and unreleased photos.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ted Nugent with keyboards?, December 10, 2002

By 

Jack Ginnever (St. Louis, MO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Loaded for Bear: Best of Ted Nugent & Amboy Dukes (Audio CD)

I used to own every Amboy Dukes album that there was. So I may be the only reviewer that has this perspective. I watched the band as it slowly went from 'The Amboy Dukes' to 'Ted Nugent and the Amboy Dukes' to finally.... Ted Nugent.

For those of you that are considering this CD because you want more 'Cat Scratch Fever' you might want to preview the songs first. In my opinion this CD is 180 degrees from popular Ted Nugent. But if you want to hear intelligent, thought-provoking, orchestrated, well-mixed studio sessions of a great hard rocking band this is for you.

There are keyboards and there are harmonies - things you won't hear much of in post-Amboy Dukes Nugent. Ted's licks and hollow body guitar sound are still there. I have to say though that I'm disappointed in the lack of space given to the other members of the band in the documentation. It's worded like a tribute to Nugent's early days. Admittedly, Ted became the most well-known of all of them. But this CD is about music and a band. Ted is just a part of it.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No Missionary Mary?, December 11, 2004

By 

Jack B. Nimble (East Coast) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Loaded for Bear: Best of Ted Nugent & Amboy Dukes (Audio CD)

This is a very good compilation of the original Amboy Dukes! The sound quality is excellent and nice packaging as well with the Mainstream logo present on this Sony release. Most of the tunes on their 67' debut and their 68' release "Journey To The Center Of The Mind" are awesome garage/psych rock and are included here on Loaded For Bear. Songs NOT included that I would loved to have had on this CD are: "I Feel Free" and "Missionary Mary". I mainly bought this because it contains "Colors" and "Why Is A Carrot More Orange Than An Orange?" which are omitted on other Dukes' compilations for some reason. Two examples of fine ACID ROCK. Ted Nugent's guitar playing during the Dukes' era is among the best of any guitar player in the country. His conviction and execution is almost flawless and the flaws lend very well too. Check out their 3rd album Migration (CD on Repertoire), Nugent is fantastic. I love the Amboy Dukes' first 4 LP's on Mainstream, but sadly, Mainstream producer Bob Shad did very little to promote the groups on the label. He eventually dropped every group from the label, even sold away Janis and Big Brother to Columbia in 68' for a hefty sum. Consequently, most of the rock groups that released a full length album on the label commands high prices and are sought after collector's items! Mainstream signed some other great psychedelic bands, most notable: Big Brother and The Holding Co., The Tangerine Zoo, The Jellybean Bandits (See my Amazon review of this classic), The Art Of Lovin' and The Stone Circus. My favorite Amboy Dukes' tune without a doubt is D.O.P.E. This music was made to be played LOUD!

21 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Garage Band with Suprisingly Good Songwriting!, July 4, 2002

By 

William J. Lambert (Oklahoma City, OK., USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Loaded for Bear: Best of Ted Nugent & Amboy Dukes (Audio CD)

It would be very easy to write off the Amboy Dukes and say that they were really nothing without Ted Nugent. And while that may be true to a certain extent, this collection of Amboy Dukes songs really shows this group in the best possible light. I know that one reviewer had complained that this collection was incomplete because there was nothing from the Amboy Dukes' 1970-1974 output. And while I would still like to see that later material be released on compact disc, that early 70's version of the Amboy Dukes was really a different group with different members--a power trio stripped of all psychedelic pretension, its music more closely related to Ted's post-Dukes recordings, and Ted Nugent taking full-artistic control. This late 60's version, on the other hand, was really just a Yardbirds-style group, Ted still a fairly-shy youngster willing to share leadership with other members such as Steve Farmer, who had a different vision for the group. And this collection represents that 1967-1969 version of the Amboy Dukes quite well.
As Michigan bands go, they were more melodic than the MC5, wrote better songs than The Stooges, played louder than the Frost, and pretty close in sound to Grand Funk Railroad's first album. Of course, many people wrote them off as "just another psychedlic garage band". And while one could make a case that their songs "sound" somewhat psychedelic, and their music was defintely as "garagey" as it gets, the biggest surprise to me was just how good a songwriting team Steve Farmer and Ted Nugent were together. Unlike most garage bands back then, who just started a riff, and thought up words on-the-spot to go around that riff, these guys actually took the time to write some fairly intelligent and witty lyrics, perhaps before they thought of the music itself, and it shows on songs like "Colors", "Night Time", and "You Talk Sunshine, I Breathe Fire". Now admittedly, some of Steve Farmer's lyrics are kind of "spacey", but they're no more spacey than Jim Morrison's lyrics, and people thought of him as a genius. I think Steve Farmer was as good as lyricist as came out of Michigan-a place not generally known for great songwriters, and probably one of the better ones at expressing himself intelligently.
As far as Ted Nugent's guitar playing with the Amboy Dukes, I think one of his best riffs ever was here on the Dukes' "Dr. Slingshot", my personal favourite of this album. "Dr. Slingshot" is what I call a "classic" Detroit groove--Nugent just drags one funky riff through the mud the entire song until it infects your brain to the point that you can't get it out of your head! He also dominates on "Flight of the Bird", which has some other great Nugent riffs, but the song itself sounds a little like early-Deep Purple, Nugent playing in more of a "dramatic" Ritichie Blackmore vein. I wasn't as impressed with "Migration", as other reviewers were. I think both "Migration" and "Scottish Tea" were Ted's attempts to do the "Jeff Beck self-indulgent guitar instrumental" thing, as both are sort of a variation on "Beck's Bolero", and to me, they kind of bridge a gap between "Beck's Bolero", and the melody Mark Farner plays to open Grand Funk's "Into The Sun". He would also later nick that same "bolero" riff for the instrumental section of "Stranglehold" on his first solo record in the 70's, but by then, I think Ted was having a lot more fun with his music, and didn't take it as seriously as he did with the Amboy Dukes, nor did he sound as stiff as he did here.
As for the rest of the Amboy Dukes besides the songwriting of Steve Farmer and the guitar talents of Ted Nugent, my opinion of them hasn't really changed much--they're still pretty mediocre in my eyes. So these guys might have been just another average garage band without Ted Nugent. But I think Ted could have kept Steve Farmer around as a lyricist in the '70's--a lot of Ted's solo stuff does suffer from a lack of intelligent songwriting. But then again, Ted Nugent wouldn't have been Ted Nugent--guitar riffs taking priority over the song. But you could tell with the Amboy Dukes that the song was top priority, and it shows on this collection. But I definitely think this needs to be repackaged and titled "Best of, Volume 1 (1967-1969)", and come out with another one; "Best of, Volume 2 (1970-1974)" to represent the power trio years that bridge the gap between the early Dukes, and Ted Nugent's solo material.