Nine Feet Underground

This is the first in a series of playlists charting a musical course through the days, weeks, months, years – you get the picture ;-) The foundation of the playlists are in Spotify, but often, that’s not enough because many of the things I hear can’t be found there for a whole host of reasons. So the Spotify playlist is the core of this “project”, but it will be augmented with music from other sources only to be found here.   The first playlist omits two songs that shout out to be heard, more of which below… Here’s the first list in Spotify… Two songs that were planned for this list didn’t make the Spotify version as neither album, at the time of compilation and writing, is available there... The first is Sir Reality from Todd Rundgren's 2013 album 'State' released on the Esoteric Antenna label:    The other is from an album originally released in March 1975, made available by Esoteric / Atomhenge on it's first official CD release this ye...

I’ve been a fan of Todd Rundgren’s music since I first heard a track from ‘Initiation’ on Alan Freeman’s Saturday afternoon Radio 1 rock show way back when. Nevertheless I’ve never seen him play live, so when I heard he was going to play the UK in support of his new album ‘State’, I knew I had to get tickets. Better still the London gig was to be at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire which has been a favourite venue of mine after seeing quite a few memorable gigs there over the years.   Best of all this was an opportunity to take my teenage sons to their first gig, even if the choice of artist was mine rather than theirs.   ‘State’ is an album of electronic, dance-music/DJ inspired songs, so it was probably the best way into Todd’s music for them. There was no support act, at a little after 8pm Prairie Prince (drums) and Jesse Gress (guitar) took to the stage setting up the intro to Imagination the first track from ‘State’. Moments later Todd entered the stage, pick...