Ted Nugent-Scream Dream (1980)
Artist: Ted Nugent
Title: Scream Dream
Year of Release: 1980
Country and Year of Edition: US Coumbia House Terre Haute Pressing
Sell Price: $4.24
Sell Date: 3/11/26
Condition: VG+/VG
Discogs Last Sold: 2/1/26 NM/VG+ $8.00
Low: $0.57
Median: $5.00
Average: $6.50
High: $32.99
Current low price: $2.99 VG/VG
Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 57
Have/Want: 4057/166
Where Sold: Flushing, MI
Time It Took To Sell: 11 years
Where and When Bought: Al Bums Worcester early 80's $3.99
Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: B+
Sad To See It Go: No
My favorite "later" period peak Nuge aka 1980, the third of four with vocalist Charlie Huhn although Ted sings lead on 7 of the 10 tracks including the hits. Scream Dream was the last solo Gold record (Damn Yankees early 90's supergroup run and his best of notwithstanding). Ted could still headline arenas at that point. When my local in Worcester opened in 1982, he was the first headlining Rock act there, although I didn't see him until he opened for Aerosmith there a few years later, I had the first four from the used record store. Scream Dream I got later in the decade in a dollar bin in Boston. I was pretty psyched to get a nice shape copy of the record with "Wango Tango."
Listening to this now, I was impressed with the overall sound. The "Wango" breakdown with The Immaculate Wangettes who remain unidentified I always thought made the perfect first 2/3 of the song a crappy "Land of 1000 Dances" meets Rocky Horror Picture Show way to end it. No surprise the official 1980 video was a tougher sounding live version where this part of the song makes more sense in terms of explaining the subject matter in plain allegorical English. He "kills" his mate then he goes hunting. The other video is the title track where we see the toss and turn dreams of Ted. This is mostly black and white Tarzan and animal clips, no nubile girls here. The record itself overall though has enough guitar balls to compete with a good Priest record of their peak era. AOR productions often cleaned this up, and I'm happy to report on Scream Dream the album, the Rock cuts through. "Scream Dream" the song has moved up to my favorite here on this round of listening down to Ted yellin' and slobberin' over the mic at the end of the song.
So how are the Charlie Huhn songs? "I Gotta Move" (not the Kinks song) is more of a Chuck Berry style punctuation with solo. Charlie sounds like he is in a smoothing echo chamber her or maybe that's just my internal laptop speakers since I shipped the record after the first pass. When Ted comes back for the side closing "Violent Love" his voice sounds dryer. As the second side progresses on can appreciate that the songs really pick up the pace for the most part. This period in 1980 is really a sweet spot where the "hard" aka the guitar in hard rock is emphasised and not glossed over and smoothed out.
Ted's productions would not be deballed until later.
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