Utopia - Utopia

If Rundgren’s The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect was the sound of Todd trying to get out of his record contract, his work on Utopia’s self-titled 1982 release is the sound of him celebrating the arrival of a new label for his democratically minded band.

The eponymous album title is intentional. Despite releasing a half-dozen other records under the very same moniker, Utopia is clearly attempting to wipe the slate clean with lucky seven. And they would love nothing more than to start the relationship with their new label than with a big hit.

Utopia became the band’s only release for Network records, and all of the MTV-schlocking that Todd and company did for this album only got it to #84 on the Billboard charts.

The poor commercial showing has little to do with the music within Utopia, a three-sided exploration of the same kind of pop buzz that Rundgren began with Nazz. The 15 tracks presented here run the gamut to Todd’s attraction to Philly Soul, to the power-pop infatuation of Deface The Music, to the melting walls vibe of his own psychedelic garage origins. Utopia bounces along like an alternate universe top 40 station if it were programmed by four nerdy white guys who just bought a bunch of new wave records at Musicland.

It’s not Rundgren’s best production work, either. That distinction would come with the next Utopia album, Oblivion. Nothing bites and the instruments just kind of belches out of the mix. On one of the album’s best tracks-the tight package of opener “Libertine”-always seemed to sound like the record’s pressing was just a tad off-center, causing the song to have this strange warping effect that was prevalent on each spin or every cassette copy. I’m happy to report that I wasn’t on too much dope and my vinyl copy played just fine; the same effect is noticeable to me on my compressed digital file.

There’s a track like “Libertine” on every side: tight, simple, and enormously catchy. “Princess Of The Universe,” “Call It What You Will,” and the MTV light-rotation lead single “Feet Don’t Fail Me Now” all could have been contenders on a larger scale if this band was marketable beyond the cult of Todd and fans of new wave pop.

The thing is, Utopia is made up of Todd Rundgren and his circle of very seasoned musicians. This stuff should be a cakewalk with these guys, so when things get a bit too goofy, too easy, and too clichéd, there’s not a lot of room to hide from the necessary finger wagging.

“Burn Three Times” takes the entire “love is like cooking in the kitchen” motif a step too far and “There Goes My Inspiration” does the same with art, somehow equating the idea that name-checking notable artists in a song is somehow clever. There’s very little shelf life with a line like “Me and Gaugin used to party down/I was hung in the Louvre, I was Renoir’s pal” after hearing it a few times. Particularly when Rundgren practically wrote the book on cleverness with that incredible “And when we’re through with you/We’ll get me one too” ending to “We Gotta Get You A Woman.”

Utopia stands as the band’s most unified piece of work, sounding like the work of four band members working together instead of the democratic arrangements of records past, where the main contributor had the majority rule on how the final mix would sound.

Gone is the stitched-up running order where the songwriter could be easily identified upon first listen. Utopia gives legs to the entire reinvention motif, impressively putting a lid on Todd’s ego for a moment while the entire band works together at selflessly helping their most notable member achieve one of his best performances of the entire decade.

It’s a pop record of decent proportions, marred only by a few missteps and the creepy marketing ploy where the band members look like over-the-hill relics dressed up in New Wave clothing for the cover shot. Every one of Utopia’s talented line-up should have known that you don’t need to dress anything up when it you tailor a perfectly good two-and-a-half minute long pop song.

Todd vs. Todd Part 2

Monitor owned by Bearsville.

So, as you can probably guess, I’ve been revisiting some of my past history concerning Todd Rundgren, and I can already tell that I’m going to have to revisit his 70’s material, because the garbage from the 80’s has really got me disenchanted with him.

At least the Utopia stuff was spread across a few members so that the bulk of the record wasn’t entirely on Todd’s shoulders.

And maybe that was the problem: Rundgren just spread himself around too thin and then relied on the synthesizer to help him fill out his arrangements. The thing was, the instrument was still in its infancy as a device that could adequately fulfill the tones that Rundgren was trying to achieve.

Here’s a few nifty things I learned from diving back in to Todd’s body of work from the 80’s:

• He’s admitted that The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect hasn’t aged well, specifically, it was a rush job that now houses some of his least favorite material. Could you imagine being told you’re a genius for a decade and then having people bark “Play Bang On The Drum All Day!” at you for every gig? And Todd seems to have an ego large enough where things like this would seem beneath him. I mean, he once told an audience to shut up between songs because he was recording a “live” album but didn’t want to be pestered with all of those nasty audience noises that happens when you, um, play live.
• Side one of Healing was nearly unlistenable to me. For real: I had to pause the thing and listen to a bunch of heavy metal just to get the gunk out of my ears. It’d been over 20 years since I’d heard that thing, and I thought for a moment that’d I’d been on dope for ever liking that album. Then I played side two and remembered.
• Tortured Artist was even worse than Healing.
• I think Rundgren is a pussy for devoting an entire album to the idea of spirituality and then declares on the shitass song “Chant” on the next album that “I’m not pushing some religion/Don’t get me wrong, I never mess with such things.” Kind of makes the entire credibility of Healing go out the window.
• I was too scared to by whatever album “The Want Of A Nail” was on. The song rocks, but by this point, I’d gotten tired of spending good money on bargain bin Todd Rundgren albums when I could have easily been spending it on things like Human League 12 inchers or imported Yazoo dance remixes.
• I’ve got a Utopia album…Utopia, the one with three sides…signed by all of the members of Utopia that I’ll sell to the highest bidder.
• I read where Rundgren set up a quadraphonic sound system for one of his tours in the mid-70’s where he demanded to be in charge of the nightly audio testing. The crew members would have to work ahead just to get the audio equipment set up. When the other equipment arrived, they’d have to set up and do what’s called a pink noise test before any audience members arrived, then they’d have to do another with the audience members present, because the dynamics of the venue had changed, and they have to readjust the levels. The entire process drove Todd to the brink, never mind the audience who had to endure the annoying pink noise tests while they waited for the show to begin.
• I used to want an equalizer with a pink noise generator when I was younger.  Do they even make equalizers any more?

Todd Rundgren - The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect

By the time Todd Rundgren began work on the follow-up to 1981’s , he had grown disenfranchised with his long-time label Bearsville, even taking the step of moving his band Utopia off the label for another.

The fact that Bearsville still wanted Todd’s solo material as part of their roster led to the tongue-in-cheek album title, but it was Rundgren himself that made the choice to provide the last effort for his label as yet another example of his inability to provide enough material to coat an elpee worth of solid tunes.

The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect is a rushed, choppy, contractual obligation with very little effort and even fewer memorable performances.

How ironic is it that it’s most famous track, “Bang The Drum All Day,” has become ubiquitous at sporting events around the country. Prior to that, it was a “clever” little bit of A.O.R. radio gold that they used to play on Friday afternoons, right alongside Loverboy’s “Working For The Weekend.”

It was a neat little comedic song when Tortured was release, but now it’s become an annoying cliché because some radio programmer equated it with the weekend release mantra of the proletariat.

The song that should have been the hit is the perfect rock radio cut “Drive,” where Todd screams “Don’t sit and cry while the world passes by/Stop tagging after the other guy/Just get a line on that mother…and drive” in a bit of awesome motivational technique.

The rest of Tortured Artist could have used some of that very same motivation, as Todd sleepwalks through cheesy synthesizer-laden tune that have little depth or hooks within them. A telling point is when Todd covers the Small Faces “Tin Soldier,” itself a throwaway move, but the emotion that he delivers the song with is more than double what he can muster for his own material.

Another one of my Todd Rundgren cut-out purchases, The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect came in the form of a cassette that pretty much retained all of its oxide due to lack of playback, except for the one-two punch of “Drum” and “Drive.,”  Both tracks make the highpoint list within the context of this sub-par album while not being anywhere close to what Rundgren was capable of had he put his label politics aside and focused on a delivering a record that compliments his career instead of merely reflecting his business discontent.

Todd Rundgren - Healing

The thing about Todd Rundgren’s seminal Something/Anything is that it is so good…so inspiring…that you immediately begin searching for other records in his catalog that will provide the same rate of return.

Chances are good you’ll never find one.

Within seconds of listening to anything post S/A, you’ll also discover that Rundgren follows his irreverent muse to places that not only aren’t fulfilling, but nowhere near the caliber of what he’s capable of.

I learned this by acquiring a bunch of Todd Rundgren records in the cutout bins throughout America, discovering firsthand why they ended up in the cheap seats to begin with.

Healing was one of those records, Rundgren’s 1981’s release, which shows him exploring the idea of spirituality, and one that listeners will finally begin to question the artist’s fixation with keyboards and synthesizers.

The reality is that these types of devices generally bring out the laziness in Rundgren, giving him the false sense of security that the record is over when it may actually require a little more time and effort from him.

The case is painfully obvious on Healing, a record plagued with half-baked concepts and woefully inept arrangements that sounded dated the moment they were released.

It wasn’t the first time Todd used his electronic equipment as a crutch again more organic outlets, but it may have been the first time where getting through an entire side of a Todd Rundgren album proves to be such a chore.

Beginning with “Healer,” the record’s mission statement, if you will, that comes a few years too late to qualify as a Peter Gabriel outtake, yet sounds like Todd just discovered him for the first time.

“Flesh” continues the album’s thematic approach, complete with a near a Capella delivery, complete with pointless gaps in between each preachy verse.

“Golden Goose” is completely uncoordinated with the rest of this record, a pointless oom-pah up-tempo novelty that jars the listener out of any holistic qualities the album portends to channel.

The rest of side one flows in and out of mundane MOR flourishes that try to incorporate atmospheric textures and soulful vocal scales in an obvious attempt to fool listeners-particularly in the cult of Todd-which Healing is more than its minimalistic approach suggests.

But before you can get completely cynical on Todd and declare that Healing was the first hint at Rundgren’s incredibly self-centered and ego-driven 80’s decade, side two suggests that this album definitely stood a chance.

Essentially the record’s centerpiece, “Healing” is presented in a three-song suite that takes up the entire second side. It is here that the atmospherics seem to match Rundgren’s intent of blending the power of healing by actually creating music with healing qualities.

As a result, side-two of Healing became an instant favorite, with side one seldom finding any companionship with my turntable’s needle. The original pressing contained a bonus 7” single of “Time Heals” and “Tiny Demons,” two distinctively separate yet enjoyable cuts that probably deserve better than their “bonus single” status. They certainly deserve better than being tacked on at the end of Healing, which is what every edition of the record has done with them since the original vinyl edition fell out of print.

As a Todd Rundgren document, Healing is arguably a release that is deserving of attention beyond the completists, and beyond the loyal faithful that will place it higher than it actually is. It is indicative of Todd’s problem of failing to live up to the expectations that everyone placed on him after his early masterstrokes, by conveniently side-stepping any attempt to try to challenge them.

You could make the argument that Healing is a notable challenge and a worthy attempt at greatness, but the music within it demonstrates otherwise. It is an effort that literally hinges on two sides: one that feels like a simplistic bit of patchwork that barely adheres to the lofty themes that its title suggests.

The other side does manage to reflect something special, but unfortunately, it’s not enough to excuse the inherent frustrations of his career or the reasons why Healing came into my own life through the bargain bins than are already littered with remnants of Rundgren’s fickle muse.

Happy Birthday Todd Rundgren

Todd Rundgren turns sixty today, so happy birthday Todd. Awesome first name, by the way. I’ve written about Todd before, so this is kind of a follow-up in regards to that first post. I downloaded the majority of Utopia’s Oblivion before being banned by the uploader, an occurrence which is frustrating, but I think I figured out why it happens to me on a regular basis. At first, I took it personally. But now I realize, thanks to a message from a user who also chose to ban me, that I have been frolicking along, downloading as I please, while letting no-one take a look at my own goods. You see, I had to re-add SLSK several months back and I inadvertently neglected to change my configurations. So when I downloaded whatever I wanted from your files and you attempted to look at mine, you would be met with a big fat no. Sorry about that.
I guess that is what happened with the person I was downloading Oblivion from. The bitch of it is, this seems to be the only person on Earth that actually has Oblivion, so every time I go and look for the remaining tracks I need, and the same dude comes up. I’ve spun the few tracks that I did manage to glean and they were even more uneventful than I remember them. First of all, what the fuck is with the drum sound on that album? It seems that in the process of trying to sound “modern” back in 1983, they actually managed to secure the entire album in ice and, to that point, the album even sounds retarded by 1983 standards.
I’m showing my gayness here, but I still think the song “I Will Wait” is a wonderful slice of love-song pap and I continue to get a kick out of “Winston Smith Takes It On The Jaw.” It seems that everyone circa ’84 was into the whole George Orwell trip.
Both of those songs, by the way, don’t appear to be Todd Rundgren composed tunes.
Yes, it seems that Rundgren has spent the past quarter-century M.I.A., releasing product that isolates him further from the mainstream and fringe fans (like myself) that enjoy his stubbornness but don’t appreciate his apparent laziness at creating an album that’s listenable from start to finish.
I think it came to a head when I received a Todd Rundgren album at the radio station that I was working for that declared it to be a live recording. Upon further examination, I learned that the fans who were allowed into the venue were met with a note that informed them that they needed to shut the fuck up during the performance. That’s right: fans were not allowed to clap, hoot or holler before, during or after each song. What’s the point? I think Rundgren gave some lame ass excuse, but if you’re not interested in creating a true live document, why not forgo the inclusion of an audience? Just rent the fucking venue and record your shit.
More recently, there was the announcement that Rundgren had signed on as a member of The New Cars, a project started by Cars’ guitarist Elliot Easton and keyboardist Greg Hawkes after Ric Ocasek advised them that he would not be interested in a Cars’ reunion. To his credit, Ocasek realized that bassist/vocalist Ben Orr was fucking dead and, therefore, a true Cars reunion would never be possible.
To side-step such a dilemma, Easton and Hawkes then hired Todd Rundgren to fill in for the missing Ocasek, while occasionally allowing him to sing a few of his own songs too. Now, not only is this a pretty shitty thing to do, it doesn’t bode well for Todd that his main motivation for this decision was, as he admitted to, money.
If money is such an important factor, Todd, then why did you release an album created entirely from your voice (A Capella)?
Rundgren is such an unbelievably frustrating artist that you wonder if there’s something in his wiring that has him intentionally sabotaging any chance of consistency in career path. I understand the need to be challenged, but serious, is there any challenge to covering “Just What I Needed?” Where is the challenge is trodding out the hits for another Ringo Star All Star Band tour? What’s the fucking reason why you made those drums sound so retarded on Oblivion?
Happy birthday, Todd. You frustrating and contradictive sell-out.

Todd vs. Todd

A guy told me once that every town has a Frank Zappa fan. If that’s a true statement, then let me add that every other town has a Todd Rundgren fan in it. My old hometown was no exception, except it took car trouble to learn about it.
Now I had a couple of Todd Rundgren albums before my MGB convertible decided not to start one Saturday night. It was a great, unreliable two-seater that was a joy to drive in the summer and a freezing, rear-wheel drive nuisance during the winter months. There always seemed to be something wrong with it, alternating between major repair and minor issues. One of those minor issues was that it sometimes wouldn’t start. And when I mean “wouldn’t start,” I mean the engine gave no indication that you were turning the ignition at all.
The guy that would fix the car happened to be the only guy in town that fixed MG’s. He didn’t really even have a car shop; I swear to God that his primary source of income was fixing golf carts, which probably doesn’t bode well for MG enthusiasts, but nonetheless, he would agree to tinker around with my car and it frequently would run after he looked at it. He explained why my car wouldn’t turn over and showed me how to fix it, probably because he was tired of dealing with me, and after being armed with such mechanical knowledge, I was able to figure out how to start it from that point forward.
But until that time I, and the girl that I was making out with, were stranded.
I parked the MG on a dark side street and leaned over the stick shift for a kiss and when we both decided to move to a more comfortable location, I discovered that the car wouldn’t start. We walked down the street to a stop sign and flagged down a car, a pedestrian Oldsmobile station wagon, with hopes that they could drive us to my companion’s working vehicle.
The rescuers were two girls a few years older than we were and one of them, the driver, was the older sister of a friend of mine. I didn’t know her and she didn’t know me, but after a brief introduction, we both acknowledged that we had heard of one another. This made the car ride a little more relaxed as the two girls continued to converse while we rode in the back seat. Apparently, they were returning from some drama of their own where my friend’s sister had just broken up with her boyfriend. The soundtrack for the breakup was an album by Todd Rundgren’s Utopia.
Both girls seemed familiar with Rundgren, which was unusual since Utopia was not the type of band that was played at all on radio stations in Southeast Iowa. After professing their love for Todd, I made it my mission to learn more about this dude that shared my first name.
While the older girl’s love was apparent, it seemed that not many other people loved them. Every Todd Rundgren and Utopia album that I found and eventually purchased always seemed to be lodged in the cutout bin.
Oh well. There’s nothing wrong with saving money.
I didn’t start where I needed. I started with Back To The Bars, a double album that I picked up next to nothing. When I opened it, I discovered that one disc was warped to the point of being unplayable. The other sides were good enough for me to purchase Healing, a much more electronic effort than what I expected. The second side is pretty good to get high to.
I moved on to the Utopia output.
The first was Swing To The Right, a fairly unremarkable effort with one good side and the other a fairly mundane one.
And then I was offered the chance to borrow Utopia’s eponymous-titled 1982 effort that happened to be autographed by all of the members of the band including Todd himself.
I forgot to return that album and still have it today. One of the lessons I followed was to never, NEVER, loan out my albums to anyone. Give me a tape and I’ll make a copy for you. It was a practice that I later learned true collectors always followed. It appears that the sap who loaned out an autographed Utopia album didn’t follow this creed. Don’t worry; the dude got it with a bunch of other free shit from an Uncle or someone who happened to work at a radio station. In other words, he didn’t appreciate it as I did. Plus, he loaned it to another friend who, in turn, loaned it to me after he made a copy. Plus, the rightful owner later slashed one of my tired at a high school dance (unrelated and unknowingly) with a pair of other douche bags who thought it would be a riot to slash everyone’s tires.
Utopia was a good record, three sides in length (yes, three) and chocked full of two-and-a-half-minute pop jems that hinted at Rundgren’s power pop heights.
I later got Oblivion from the cutout bin at a Tower Records store in California that miraculously survived the trip back to Iowa in a car during the hot summer months. I love this record and there’s a good chance that you’ll hate it. First of all, the production values are horrific. Every song is covered in an 80’s glean that sounds silly. And it’s not just the sound; it’s the way the whole thing was mixed. It blows my mind that Rundgren allowed his name on a record with such a shitty production.
Nonetheless, I liked it enough to pick up……Something/Anything. Yes, the album that I should have started with was the last one I purchased. Was it an epiphany? Pretty much. I discovered that I wasted a lot of time with those other records, Utopia and otherwise, and my fixation with Todd ended. I mean, once you get to the top of the mountain, there’s not a lot of point in continuing to climb it. And Something/Anything is the top of Todd’s mountain.
Besides, Rundgren never returned to the power-pop masterstroke of that album again, so why would I be obligated to follow him down into paths that merely avoid those characteristics that brought him so much success to begin with?
The album that prompted this entire discovery was The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect. It was playing in that girl’s station wagon and I later got a cassette copy for myself. It’s the record that features the song that most people recognize for: “Bang On The Drum All Day.” It’s a throwaway (and most of Effect is, in fact, a bunch of throwaways) and shamefully overshadows “Drive,” the best song on this effort. “Drum’s” resilience amazes me; there are at least three or four teams in the NFL that use it when their team scores a touchdown and it remains a perennial favorite on rock station’s Friday afternoon playlists. In both cases, I’m positive that there are better choices available, but for some reason, this knock-off Rundgren track gets all the airplay,
Nonetheless, Effect was poor enough for me to stop looking to my namesake for anything remotely consistent and, at the risk of offending someone in every other city in America, to stop looking to him for something, anything, better.



Todd Rundgren & Bebe Buell Photograph by Bob Gruen