Artist: Amboy Dukes
Genre(s):
Rock
Discography:
The Amboy Dukes
Year: 1967
Tracks: 13
Best remembered for their 1968 psychedelic rock classical "Journey to the Center of the Mind," Detroit's Amboy Dukes besides introduced the world to the Motor City Madman, guitarist Ted Nugent. The group's roots particular date to 1965, a period when a teenaged Nugent was living in Chicago; there he formed the first-class honours degree incarnation of the Amboy Dukes, borrowing the sobriquet from a recently-disbanded Detroit dance orchestra wHO themselves took the name from an infamous explotiation novel of the period. When Nugent returned to southeastern Michigan in 1967, he assembled a new Dukes line up including vocaliser John Drake, his other bandmate in the Lourds, as well as rhythm guitar player Steve Farmer, bassist Bill White, keyboardist Rick Lober and drummer Dave Palmer. Quickly the group emerged as one of the hottest attractions on the Detroit clubhouse circuit, famous for their snarling closer, an incendiary compensate of Them's "Baby Please Don't Go."
Still, when the Amboy Dukes' self-titled debut LP appeared on the Mainstream label in 1967, it was the group's originals that became the focus -- patch Nugent handled the music, Farmer penned the drug-fixated lyrics, adding a psychedelic sensibility to an otherwise proto-metal healthy. After a series of find shifts which saw White and Lober exit in favour of bassist Greg Arama and keyboardist Andy Solomon, in 1968 the Dukes issued Journey to the Center of the Mind, riding the title running into the U.S. Top 20. Vocalist Rusty Day replaced Drake in time for 1969's Migrations, which failed to equal the success of its predecessor; Marriage on the Rocks, issued later that same yr, was besides a letdown, and after 1971's Survival of the Fittest Nugent discharged Day and Solomon after Palmer left the group to accept an technology gig. After recording a fistful of albums as Ted Nugent and the Amboy Dukes, he last dropped the group's name in all and mounted a solo calling.
