Tuesday, April 21, 2015

It's a Goldmine


Goldmine magazine spoke to Todd and have him on the cover of the latest issue (April) . Things he talks about include:

The new album: With "Global," there's a song called "Flesh and Blood," and that's about the phenomenon if you create the right sort atmosphere and the right music and the right place you can turn tens of thousands of people into a single organism. And that's kind of what you need to accomplish the stuff that we need to accomplish. We need to be able to unify people in that way, and music is one of those things that in some way short circuits people's brains (laughs) and makes them stop thinking about other things and focus on the thing that you're dealing with right now. 

The Beatles ( and Deface the Music): The reason why we did that record wasn't really because we had some long standing desire to make a Beatles-style record; we were kind of contrarians. The Knack was really hot at the time with "My Sharona." They dressed like the Beatles and were doing that whole '60s English Invasion thing, so we recorded a power pop song called "I Just Want to Touch You" for laughs and submitted it for the movie soundtrack for a film called "Roadie." I had produced two songs for Alice Cooper for that album and they said to us, "Why don't you put a Utopia song on the soundtrack?" We weren't using Alice's band, so Utopia played on the records and actually appeared in the movie, except for me (laughs). So we gave them that song and they came back and gave us the excuse that it sounds too much like The Beatles. They were afraid The Beatles might take some issues with it and sue them. 

Goldmine also spoke to Record Store Day organizer Michael Kurtz and Todd got a mention when he was asked: What are some exciting releases for Record Store Day in the classic rock genre?

MK: I'm a huge Todd Rundgren fan, and there is a 7-inch coming out that is the first official full single/segment to be heard from "Runddans," the single track /continuous album by Todd Rundgren, Lindstrom and Emil Nikolaisen from Serena-Maneesh. The B-side will be an a cappella version of parts of the album put together by Lindstrom.

Monday, April 20, 2015

Blues Magoo's Peppy Casto shows some Todd love

Asbury Park Press (New Jersey) has an interview with Blues Magoos' Peppy Castro, and Todd gets a mention.

Castro discussed the prospect of revisiting his band's signature song.
"When we were really young, I remember thinking to myself I loved a guy like Todd Rundgren who always re-invented himself and always went on to new things," he recalled. "And I said, 'Oh God, please don't let me have to keep playing "We Ain't Got Nothin' Yet" for the next 40 years and beat it to death and become an imitation of myself. Well, due to circumstances beyond my control and the band being a one-hit wonder, that was never the case." 

Personally the thing that always struck me about the song was how blatant a rip off Deep Purple's Black Night was


Sunday, April 19, 2015

Kasas City review enthralling

Timothy Finn at the Kansas City Star gave the new tour a big thumbs up. In his review

"[H]e concentrated on his 25th solo album, “Global,” and performed against a backdrop of throbbing synthesizers and programmed drums. It could easily have been a mess. It was enthralling."

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/ent-columns-blogs/back-to-rockville/article18849894.html#storylink=cpy