Frontiers [Release date 04.07.14]
Me and Uncle Ted have never been close – I did have a copy of Little Miss Dangerous but don’t now so it couldn’t have been very good. Lemmy croaked through a cover of Cat Scratch Fever on March or Die. Ted did feature in the mighty Damn Yankees as well but as Styx and Night Ranger were two of my favourite bands of the time Ted was grouped as one of the others with drummer Michael Cartellone.
So the motor-mouth is back with his first studio album in seven years and title track and opener ShutUp&Jam! is Ted’s way of telling us that this is about the music and nothing to do with his worldly views…”you know who I am, you know where I stand…now shut up and jam”. Words well spoken (well sung actually).
The aforementioned title track, Fear Itself and Do-Rags & A .45 would not sound out of place on any recent Alice Cooper album with their Detroit garage rock sound.
Ted brings back old pal Derek St. Holmes to lay down some cool vocals for the old style rhythm and blues number Everything Matters. Another pal, namely Sammy Hagar, guests on a typical Red Rocker number She’s Gone…unfortunately though it is instantly forgettable unless you want to try and count how many times “she’s gone” is sung…
Never Stop Believing and I Still Believe are both patriotic all-American rockers and both are extremely catchy numbers if you can stomach the lyrics. The former is re-imagined as a full blown blues number as the final track complete with female backing vocals and it works well.
Ted’s love of hunting comes to the fore in the oddball I Love My BBQ where you are advised that “we like to kill ‘em and grill ‘em” and warned that “the tofu might just kill you” before being invited to “pull up a chair and have a beer”.
An almost Blue Öyster Cult intro kicks off instrumental Throttledown as it means to continue with Ted wringing out chord after screaming chord from his guitar throughout its three minute duration.
I really wasn’t expecting to enjoy this but Ted has actually released a fairly classy album with no duff tracks (apart from maybe Sammy Hagar’s input…). For a guy born in the late 1940’s it’s good to see that Ted shows no signs of mellowing.
Appalling cover by the way…worst so far this year! Come on Frontiers you can do better than this.
Welcome back Uncle Ted…you definitely make the world a more interesting place!! ***½
Review by Phil Berisford
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