Nine Feet Underground

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...

Book Review: A Wizard A True Star: Todd Rundgren in the Studio by Paul Myers For a long time I resisted getting this book.   I’m always wary of books about musicians: they tend to fall into one of two camps, sycophantic fan hagiography or hatchet job. Whilst I am a huge fan of much of Mr. R’s musical output (though equally finding some his songs irritating, ultimately pointless or just plain boring) neither approach appeals to me. Persuaded by some positive reviews and the fact that the book is billed not as a straight biography, but rather as a career history focussing on Todd’s studio work, I decided to give it a go.   Happily, I was not disappointed. Todd Rundgren is not a household name in the UK (nor that well known in America), and his albums are relatively unknown outside of music fans and journalists, even though a very large number of households probably possess at least one album he’s produced, played and sung on.   On that basis alone it’...

…which is probably just as well. Apropos of absolutely nothing, some random misfiring of synapses prompted me to give another airing to “Hermit of Mink Hollow”, Todd Rundgren’s first 100% solo album on which he plays all the instruments and sings all the vocals (1972's "Something/Anything?" fails to qualify as his first 100% solo effort because one of the 4 sides is a live-studio effort featuring assorted musicians and backing singers.) The album was released in 1978 and is named after a valley near Woodstock, New York, where Todd set up a recording studio and recorded this album. Like all of Todd’s solo albums post-1973’s“Todd” double album, there are a couple of seriously duff tracks but in spite of that it’s probably the most consistently good album he’s recorded after the creative peak of the early 1970’s.    The album – at least in its vinyl form – was split into “The Easy Side” and the “The Difficult Side” – though I can’t decide if that’s a joke: tracks on ...