The Amboy Dukes “Journey to the Center of the Mind” / “Mississippi Murderer”

The random ticker finally fell here—don’t remember where this record came from—though there is a bullet hole in it. No, not the hole in the center, but a smaller one, through the label. Could be an arrow hole? Anyway, I’m sure I’d buy anything called “Journey to the Center of the Mind”—who wouldn’t? The song is so pointedly “psychedelic” in style and lyrics (“come along if you dare” and “you might not come back”) that the first thing that came to mind is Spinal Tap’s flower children song—and also, English/German band Nektar’s album, Journey to the Centre of the Eye. (As well as Ray Speen’s unreleased psychedelic homage, “Journey to the Center of Mind’s Eye Delicatessen.”) The nice thing is, I was forced to solve a mystery, here—not that it was something that I had stayed up nights pondering. I knew that The Amboy Dukes was Ted Nugent’s early band, but I always, correctly, associated him with Detroit area Michigan—while I incorrectly associated The Amboy Dukes with Perth Amboy, New Jersey—who wouldn’t? In the meantime, someone invented the internet, so in these last few days before we have to pay through the nose for info, I looked up the band, and what-do-you-know? They were named after a novel—The Amboy Dukes (1947), by Irving Shulman, a NYC writer. The B-side, a hard blues rock train song (“keep on runnin’ down the track”) called “Mississippi Murderer” strikes me as an exercise in using words that you could get lost in an endless loop while spelling them. A more extreme version could be “Mississippi Banana Murderer.” Pretty good record!

2.11.25