Todd Rundgren: C or D

The last big track of Initiation and his stuff in Utopia seems to me the only thing more proggy than Wizard A True Star (of his work in the 70s)

I think _Todd_ is probably Todd at peak prog. Something like "In and out the chakras we go" is just prog to the wall. "A Treatise on Cosmic Fire", on the other hand, is just too much of a Tales from Topographic Oceans trip for me to listen to.

"A Treatise on Cosmic Fire" sounds like that to me in name only. I can't think of any big prog bands that have a track like that.

I like Todd (1974) by far the best. I do also like Something / Anything? and ...Wizard..., but for me it's like Goldilocks in reverse - those two are Mama Bear and Baby Bear's albums/songs, but Todd is Poppa Bear's and that one works best for me: less bitty / more fleshed out, even more varied - similar effect to Sign Of The Times.

something/anything is a masterpiece huh

like this is what i want from classic 70s studio rock

p much

give or take a few songs on the last side

yea

I'm going to his Brooklyn bowl show on Tuesday: the previous three I've seen ('91 for Nearly Human; '96 for the bullshit cocktail culture cash-in, 03-04 solo) were unsatisfying, but I have the notion looking at set lists and knowing that he's using Prairie, Kasim and Gress that I'll be pleased. Its $35 in that club, which is very good hang, and it seems like a steal for a guy who means so much to me, blah blah, see the giants while you can blah blah they might drop dead tmw blah blah.

Kinda wish I went to see the original utopia reunion or AWTATS or the Healer shows…

I regret missing him a month ago when he came through, only $30 in a club setting, but I just couldn't commit.

Buyer beware...Saw him a few years ago at Ronnie Scott's. It was on a greatest hits tour but Todd decides he's going to treat the crowd to his tribute to Robert Johnson. 2 interminable hours later I decide I shan't be spending £50 on Todd Rundgren tickets again. Even the band looked pissed...

I heard about that, and the EDM shows he did a few years ago. By all accounts he's doing a career-long "best of" this time around.

tracklisting for his new album, dunno whether or not to be excited for this - that's a hell of a guest list

1.Come
2.I Got Your Back (featuring KK Watson with Dam Funk)
3.Chance For Us (featuring Daryl Hall with Bobby Strickland)
4.Fiction
5.Beginning Of The End (featuring John Boutte)
6.Tin Foil Hat (featuring Donald Fagen)
7.Look At Me (featuring Michael Holman)
8.Let's Do This (with Moe Berg)
9.Sleep (with Joe Walsh)
10.That Could Have Been Me (featuring Robyn)
11.Deaf Ears (featuring Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross)
12.Naked & Afraid (featuring Bettye LaVette)
13.Buy My T
14.Wouldn't You Like To Know (featuring Rebop Rundgren)
15.This Is Not A Drill (featuring Joe Satriani with Prairie Prince & Kasim Sulton)

Rebop Rundgren! How did I never know this amazing tidbit before?!

damn not too many folks could unite Bettye LaVette, Joe Satriani, Trent Reznor, and Donald Fagen

Awesome track list

Saw him in NYC at a benefit for his foundation last month – he was amazing. Voice was in incredible shape. I will never underestimate him again.

just gave No World Order a shot, and....oh man. this is wild. maybe not in a good way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxU0O0_MmPU

actually not a bad album despite sounding kinda like a shitty Nitzer Ebb at times. if I try really hard I can see "Worldwide Epiphany" as being cut from the same cloth as "International Feel". I'm actually kinda surprised this album hasn't been drudged up by anyone lately, it's vaporwave as hell.

i've heard that no world order lite is better

damn, he made a ton of cheesy CGI videos in the 90s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHHRF7O9-NM

ok Todd rules

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5rNliIpNtk

Guess who's coming to Sheboygan, Wisconsin tomorrow???

seein him on the 23rd

28th in Pasadena, I should go this time.

You should! I went with my Dad (who 15 years ago asked me, "you're on those Russian MP3 sites right? Can you get an album called A Wizard, a True Star?") and we had a pretty good time. In case you're wondering, the set list is almost all new stuff - like 80% of it was from Liars on, including what I gathered was a big chunk of his new album (which I have not heard). Even when he delves into his back catalogue it's for something like "Love Science", the Utopia single "Secret Society", or "No World Order" (!!!), it's like he's just trying to hit as many genres as possible in two hours. I think it wound up shocking the crowd a bit - this was at a classy theater in a town with a population of 50k, the audience was packed mostly with older locals...I heard a lot of comments like "well THAT was different", particularly on the heavy techno stuff and the songs where he starts rapping. But once it became clear that he wasn't going to play a Vegas-style classic rock show they got pretty into it. I mean...these songs were still pretty dang good, a lot of them felt on par with the stuff he was doing in the 70's. Anyway for the encore he finally threw the audience a bone, playing "One World", a loungey and kinda shit version of "Hello It's Me", then "Just One Victory" which brought the house down. My Dad said it was the weirdest show he's ever been to (for reference the last one he went to was The Eagles), and then said he actually loved the techno stuff and wished he'd done more. This was his third time seeing Todd, he mentioned that he saw Utopia at what must have been the height of their prog phase in like 1977, and that the audience hated it, at least until he started playing stuff like "Love of the Common Man" at the end. He also said that Todd's voice and stage presence were pretty much exactly the same as 40 years ago. Dude can still belt it out, I'm impressed. So yeah. Worth your time!

I like 'Something / Anything?' a lot but '...Wizard...' is one of the most annoying records I've ever heard. What's the best place to go next?

I'd try "Runt: The Ballad of Todd Rundgren", it's heavier on the ballads but probably the closest thing to the SA sound.
Hermit of Mink Hollow might be up your alley too, but be sure to skip "onomatopoeia"

if you think Wizard is annoying then probably nowhere

yeah maybe just buy Tapestry or the first Laura Nyro album

That's a fair answer - my reaction to Wizard was probably coloured by my realisation that I was listening to Year Zero for everything I hate about brightly-coloured modern US indie, whatever his virtues as a songwriter, producer etc.

heh i had the opposite reaction, absolutely love the manic AWATS, bored by everything else he has done (especially the Utopia-era stuff)

You should! I went with my Dad (who 15 years ago asked me, "you're on those Russian MP3 sites right? Can you get an album called A Wizard, a True Star?") and we had a pretty good time. In case you're wondering, the set list is almost all new stuff - like 80% of it was from Liars on, including what I gathered was a big chunk of his new album (which I have not heard). Even when he delves into his back catalogue it's for something like "Love Science", the Utopia single "Secret Society", or "No World Order" (!!!), it's like he's just trying to hit as many genres as possible in two hours. I think it wound up shocking the crowd a bit - this was at a classy theater in a town with a population of 50k, the audience was packed mostly with older locals...I heard a lot of comments like "well THAT was different", particularly on the heavy techno stuff and the songs where he starts rapping. But once it became clear that he wasn't going to play a Vegas-style classic rock show they got pretty into it. I mean...these songs were still pretty dang good, a lot of them felt on par with the stuff he was doing in the 70's. Anyway for the encore he finally threw the audience a bone, playing "One World", a loungey and kinda shit version of "Hello It's Me", then "Just One Victory" which brought the house down. My Dad said it was the weirdest show he's ever been to (for reference the last one he went to was The Eagles), and then said he actually loved the techno stuff and wished he'd done more. This was his third time seeing Todd, he mentioned that he saw Utopia at what must have been the height of their prog phase in like 1977, and that the audience hated it, at least until he started playing stuff like "Love of the Common Man" at the end. He also said that Todd's voice and stage presence were pretty much exactly the same as 40 years ago. Dude can still belt it out, I'm impressed. So yeah. Worth your time!

This is completely different than the benefit show for his foundation that I saw last year -- which was absolutely a Vegas-style classic rock show (with Utopia backing him) and actually a terrific one. I love him for this.

hah I looked at some old setlists and apparently he was doing this all last year. bummer I couldn't take my Dad to that since those are the same songs I hear him play on the piano. he's definitely got a neat way of dealing with the whole "aging rock star" thing.

I was a bit disappointed that "Bang on the Drum All Day" wasn't played. I know it's lame as hell but that song in particular means a lot to us Wisconsinites :P

Yeah, I actually want a "run through of the hits" type show and should have gone last year.

To Matt DC: I love the first Runt album, more poppy, fewer ballads than the second one.

Just noticed this nugget of trivia in the Something/Anything liner notes: Edward James Olmos is a backup singer on "Slut".
Huh.

I have a colleague who’s an enormous Todd fan – like lifelong obsessed – has seen him numerous times, met him more than once, sends me (unsolicited) articles/reviews, etc.

I tried listening to a few early albums once, and they sort of sounded like weird demos to me; never got any further...

touring with Utopia now

been looking at the setlists and...whoa. I might have to go see this after all.

i'm going to see 'em at the Town Hall, a venue I have 0 interest in going to. Ralph Shuckett from the 1st, none-more-prog version of the band, was sposed to stand in for Roger Powell, who doesn't wanna tour anymore. Yet Shuckett can't do it for health reasons, so apparently Rebop, the third Rundgren son who does not play minor league baseball unlike the two older sons Todd had with karen "bean" darvin, found this guy from Argentina who while evidently had never heard of Utopia and Todd, got the gig.

Todd and Willie Wilcox could not stand each other for many many years but evidently have agreed to tolerate one another.

i guess willie wilcox does sound design for video games and stuff these days

wait Rundgren has two sons in the minors? that's pretty awesome

yeah, name of rex and randy. think one or both were but no longer in the minors.

Saw this thread, then a couple things on Twitter
(me:)
In radio interview on @BigStarBand's Live at Lafayette's Music Room, AC worries that forthcoming #1 Record is too much like Rundgren, reminding me not to overemph Beatles influences; also T.Rex v. favorably mentioned; both covered here, as on several other live recordings.

Underground Jukebox
‏@clevelandbeyond
Nazz seems to have had big impact on Birmingham: “Open My Eyes” and “Under The Ice” were covered by The Move and Nazz riffs turn up in Black Sabbath songs (ie “Under The Ice” in the chorus of “Rock N Roll Doctor”). And despite everything else Rundgren was one HELL of a guitarist.
Which was a response to this:
Johnnie Johnstone
‏@tnpcollection

Original nugget, Top Todd, extremely cool vid.
Nazz - Open My Eyes
https://youtu.be/PjKx-yLOGEY

Oh yeah, and The Bangles recorded a killer "Open My Eyes" a few years ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctc0oMioqPA

I've always loved the brief diversion into sunshine-pop harmonies on the bridge of "Open My Eyes", which is played up even further in the Nazz video.

"Open My Eyes" b/w "Hello It's Me" is an all-time-great first single

"Forget All about It" is another great slammin Nazz rocker (1st cut on the 2nd lp iirc)

utopia was terrific at the town hall tonight. They shoulda acknowledged the guy who came in without knowing the band, much less the keyb parts, until a month ago…

Chiefly, i would like to say the following to all the todd people on ILM… I have every TR record from '70 to '91, Ra, oops, the first Utopia album (prog opus), disco jets, have seen him now 6 times, read the book by Mike Myers brother…

yet I never heard "rock love" until tonight. Its the platonic ideal of shit that I like, by one of my favorite artists. and I never heard it before, because I did not feel like listening to every album by the band that Albert/bearsville would have preferred that he discontinue, the band that jumped every white pee-poh music trend like prog, power-pop, new wave, corp-rock, mutt lange-style shit, etc

I love it.

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/todd-rundgren/2018/kelburn-castle-largs-scotland-33ea405d.html

must admit I really hope there's a recording of this

There is video when you click the play button on the right, and some are live, though I don't know if it's from that show. I'm at work and can't play the sound. Some seem to be the album version.

he does basically this same set at every "an unpredictable night" show. it's so cringy when he does hash pipe and puffs away on his vape pen smh.

finally listened to the Runddans album and holy shit, it really is like Wizard/Initiation-era Todd in the 21st century

really starting to think that Todd's insistence on turning every album into a one-man band record deprived us of a lot of great stuff