Todd not so godlike on first night

The Orlando Sentinel reviewed the first night of the Todd/Joe tour in Melbourne and said:

"After a promising start, the evening moved from the pleasant to the awful. If Ethel and Jackson seemed a tad stiff, they looked positively charismatic compared with Rundgren's uneven performance. Although he delivered a nice acoustic show at House of Blues in recent memory, Rundgren looked unprepared on Wednesday, joking his way through a shoddy set like a schoolboy faking his way through a big presentation."

"It has been a night of extraordinary musicality,'' he said, taking a seat behind the piano after a few lackluster songs on acoustic guitar. "But I'd like you to put that out of your minds.''

Indeed the general opinion all round seems to have been that Todd's performance was sloppy (including it seems Mr Rundgren himself to a degree.

England expects, Todd

The Liverpool Daily Post on Friday (15th) had an interview with Todd about the upcoming UK dates. Speaking about what we can expect in the set list Todd says:"Both Joe and I know we have to satisfy our respective audiences. There will be some new ones but we will showcase some of the older stuff although there"s no set list which we will be sticking to.

"It"s fine for the first week of the show but there"s a drudgery that takes over when you know what"s gonna happen that takes the edge of your performance . You can go into auto pilot and lose the mood of the audience.

"Plus," he adds drily. "There"s this myth that the so called customer is always right. You know, like, I"ve bought my ticket to hear that particular song so if I don"t hear it I want my f------ money back. I never commit myself to doing any one particular song in any show."

What he will teasingly promise the Liverpool audience is that out of the top five of the songs that they would prefer to hear - and that will include the blockbusters I Saw The Light and Hello, It"s Me - they will be guaranteed a performance of three of them.

Over in the Winston-Salem Joural (14th April) Todd was saying:

"People have songs they want to hear, and I can't, or won't, argue with that," Rundgren said. "My set is so short that I really don't have a lot of time to pack it with extras. One of the advantages of being around as long as I have is that your original fans have had kids, and they are bringing their kids - and that's as far as I'm willing to take that analogy."

He laughed. "I've become an institution, the Church of Todd, where members are born into the religion. Maybe it's more like a cult."

"But I have to admit that I have enjoyed continually figuring out ways to drag my career out of the danger zone. See, my life is really too damn normal for career longevity in the rock 'n' roll world. I've never had The Spectacular Drug Overdose or the News-making Suicide Attempt. And at this point, I would honestly rather be respected than be well-known.