Todd Rundgren

[miltric]

Not one of his best songs, and not a great performance, but I've never seen TR with a Rick, so it's worth posting for that reason, I guess . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYdaZX40duU

[kiramdear]

Now this song will be stuck in my head all day. That's what Todd does best. Very cool to see him with a Rick. When is this? Mid-Eighties? His camo period.

[jps]

Now this song will be stuck in my head all day. That's what Todd does best.

No Rick, but here is another one to get stuck in your head, Kira.

[kiramdear]

Love the production style on that one - sort of Carole King meets Motown. What a genius!

I saw him do a solo show at the Old Waldorf way back when. Great charisma, great showman.

And Utopia was an awesome band. I saw them in Berkeley in 1980. They were over the top.

Here's a real old one:

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[jps]

I saw Utopia in '75 at a concert a friend of mine back then produced, so I got to meet Todd. It was on July 4th ; Todd flew to the site (Nelson Ledges) in a helicopter and brought out a case full of fireworks that he proceeded to fire off. On the bill with Todd were Buzzy Lindhart, The Hello People, and Pure Prairie League. A great time was had by all.

[indianation65]

He produced The Lords of the New Church, XTC-Skylarking and The Psychedelic Furs-Forever Now...beyond greatness!

Addendum: The members of XTC weren't 100 % pleased with him, but the result, again, greatness...

...wisdom

[miltric]

The members of XTC weren't 100 % pleased with him, but the result, again, greatness...

Right. IIRC, though, later on Andy Partridge acknowledged that Todd's near-megalomaniacal approach resulted in a better record. There are, by the way, some nice Ric sounds on Skylarking, as there are on many XTC albums.

[kiramdear]

"Wave" is one of my favorite records from the Seventies. Here's Patti Smith talking about "Wave" and Todd:

[Wave] was a difficult record to make because we were out of the city, in the middle of winter in Bearsville, pretty much snowed in and I thought it might be the last album I did. I felt it was time for me to evolve as a human being. I hadn't ever really planned to make records. I came to that organically, and I felt that I had really expressed everything that I knew how to express. So there I had a lot of thoughts doing that record: both joyful thoughts and….

Todd's an old friend of mine, I thought that it would be nice to work with a friend and also he's a great musician and I knew that he would contribute to the musical sense of the record. He was very good with using keyboards, he was a pianist himself and a lot of those songs evolved around that. It was not an easy record to make and Todd works very quickly - I work quickly too but not as quickly as Todd, but I think the sound of that record is beautiful.

[kiramdear]

Oh, and here's an interesting review from Crawdaddy of The Tubes' "Remote Control", another favorite production from Todd:

http://www.crawdaddy.com/index.php/2008 ... e-control/

[longhouse]

So nice to see Todd with a Ric -and a three pickup model at that. Looks like the aforementioned p'ups are not stock though. Wonder what he has in place of the HGs? Or am I seeing it incorrectly?

[kiramdear]

So nice to see Todd with a Ric -and a three pickup model at that. Looks like the aforementioned p'ups are not stock though. Wonder what he has in place of the HGs? Or am I seeing it incorrectly?

Looks like Gibson chrome covered humbuckers to me (maybe minis?). This is the best grab I could get.



And that darn song is still stuck in my head. Now that is talent.

[woodyng]

todd is the greatest! i got to see the original "todd rundgren's utopia" featuring different players in the memphis auditorium south hall way back in the 70's-doing a little 20 minute long number called "the ikon" among other things-incredible! also his solo song,'don't you ever listen?" is still one of my favorite songs ever.....

[kiramdear]

Woody, let's start a Todd tribute band!

[woodyng]

i would do it! one of the guys i am playing with now is doing a really nice slower version of 'i saw the light". i have always wanted to play "when the sh*t hits the fan" with a band,i think that should be our theme song!

[atomic_punk]

He also produced one of my favorite albums of the late 80's (and power pop miesterwerk), Love Junk by the Pursuit of Happiness. LOVE Todd.