Florida warms to Todd

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel has an article on Todd "THE TRUTH IS, HE'S BACK TODD RUNDGREN EXPLORES DECEIT IN 18TH SOLO ALBUM" . Most interesting parts were answers to a couple of questions. On 'The Wondering' and the 2000 elections. "Yeah, it was something that seemed so ultimately inexplicable -- that more or less a single Supreme Court justice winds up appointing the president of the United States. It seems so antithetical to everything you're brought up to believe about American democracy that you just wake up one day and say, what are we supposed to think now?"
And on will the music industry will embrace Internet music sharing and sales? "I doubt it, based on the industry's behavior so far. They're fully committed, live or die, to the commoditized music model. They like the idea of "iTunes" because you can buy one song at a time for 99 cents, confounding the actual reality that some songs are priceless and some songs are worthless. Few songs are worth exactly 99 cents. What you have to do is completely disconnect that calculation and adopt a subscription model that's like cable television".

Florida Today claims Todd as a un-sung genius and some one who could have been a hit making machine. Todd's reason it never happened? "Some people are less easily bored than I am," Rundgren said. "And I get bored with myself. I get bored if I have to do the same thing over and over, just like anyone would if they were working on a factory floor, just like inspecting donuts or whatever. The repetition for some people is comforting. For me it's discomforting."

The Tallahassee Democrat looks forward to the new tour dates as well as digging back for gems such as Todd saying "My best friend and I loved Gilbert and Sullivan operas. It's something I just grew up with," he said in a 2003 interview with the Democrat.
"We learned all of the parts of all of the songs and would do them even when people didn't want us to. Especially when people didn't want us to. It was our way of entertaining each other. There wasn't much else for smart kids to do. ... We were sort of like those Columbine kids - smart and outcast. Except we found a more creative outlet for our frustrations."

He points to the radio play the album has been picking up in the uk. "I've long since given up on radio," Rundgren said. "It ('Liars') has taken off in Great Britain but nothing here yet."

And finally, in perhaps the funniest moment of the interview reveals "The only problem is that I wrote and recorded a lot of these songs with the intention of never playing them live," Rundgren said. "But the response has been so positive that we've gone back and are teaching ourselves how to play them. 'Stood Up' is the last one we're learning because it's the hardest. There are parts of it where I'm singing at the bottom of my register and then it goes way back into the high register. It's a (expletive) to sing."

Not to be left out the Florida Times Union previews last weekend's Florida gigs too.