Yeah, just saw the Nuge play in Pozo last Friday night. He was pretty much a complete shredder the whole time, and he was super proud of the fact that he’s going to be turning sixty this year. Wow! But yeah, one of the first things he said when he got on was “it’s good to be here in the REAL California.” Then he riffed on and on about all the pigs and black tail deer he was going to hunt up in the hills around Pozo and what not. I thought this statement and label itself was pretty funny, but also his rantings were a nice contrast to all the short-sighted liberal rhetoric circulating around California these days. One thing that the obviously republican Nuge never does, at least openly, is support the big business agenda common to the republican modus. He’s an outdoors man, probably blissfully ignorant of the bigger picture of nature conservatism, who truly loves nature, not to reap as much from it for his own monetary gain as he can, but to enjoy and commune with it. He’s the white Buffalo!

I’m not so sure how I can quickly sum up how his extremist politics translate over to his music, but it does add to the guys personability. He’s an aging rocker, not an “elitist” entertainer who expects to sell tickets for big money. He was there to entertain, to talk about his views, to laugh, and to have a good time himself. Anyway, the show was great.

I think I anticipated hearing “Cat Scratch Fever” the most before the show, but as it turned out, I was expecting an extended version of the song, but he played it pretty par for course, without any flourishes and what not. The real gem of the night, I thought, was “Stranglehold.” I’ve always been a fan of the song, and he probably played it exactly how he has for the last twenty-odd years, but however he played it Friday night was sublime. See the Nuge before he’s dead!