Todd is God

DONNIE MOORHOUSE of the 'Republican' (Springfield, MA) listed his favourite CD's by local artists in 'Live Wire Awards honor top local CDs ' (6 Jan) Included was: "Michael Ferry "Ferry Tales" - With production from Jerry Marotta (Hall and Oates, Elvis Costello) and Ferry's introspective songwriting, this acoustic offering is a treasure. Includes a cover of Todd Rundgren's "The Wheel." Available at cdbaby.com"

From Construction News (3 Feb) "Oslo, Norway: Plumber Todd Rundgren, 44, has been charged with secretly filming his neighbours when they were using the toilet and in the shower.Rundgren told police he had filmed his neighbours through their bathroom windows by mistake, saying his intention was to film the sunset." How could I NOT share this piece of information!

Todd Rundgren's - 'Liars' is one of a host of albums set to be released on dualdisc . Following an impressive debut over Christmas more than 25 additional titles on DualDisc, an exciting new double-sided music entertainment product that combines audio and video content on a single disc, are set to be released: - The first side of every DualDisc containing a full audio album, and the second (DVD side) providing the same album in enhanced sound (such as 5.1 Surround Sound), along with such multimedia features as music videos, documentary footage, photo galleries, web links, and so on, DualDisc was created to bring the fan even closer to the creative artistic process. DualDisc will add an exciting new dimension to the consumer's musical experience. One disc, two experiences.

The St Petersburg Times (23 January) has an interview with Amy Grant where when asked what music she was into growing up says " Jethro Tull's Thick as a Brick was my favourite record for a long time. I loved Todd Rundgren ..." Incidentally, if you don't own Grant's 1988 album 'Lead me On' - why not?!? And saying you're not religious or christian is not an excuse, because neither am I. A classic of singer songwriter girlie folk pop/rock.

Todd Rundgren - Liars Velvet Revolver - Contraband Steve Earle - Revolution Starts Now Brian Wilson - Smile The Ordinary Boys - Over the Counter Culture Morrissey - You are the Quarry Kings of Convenience - Riot on a Quiet Street REM - Around the Sun Jesse Malin - The Heat Sarah McLachlan - Afterglow

MARTY HUGHLEY of The Oregonian (19 December) has Liars as on of his albums of the year: - "Todd Rundgren, "Liars" (Sanctuary): "The truth is like chasing a phantom," Rundgren sings in the opening of this thematic song cycle. But with the veteran pop visionary delivering his most tuneful and cohesive album in years, even phantoms might find themselves drawn to this. Dishonesty -- emotional, political, intellectual, theological -- is his subject here, and he is by turns idealistic, righteously indignant and ruminative. The tracks update his Beatles- esque sound with techno, drum 'n' bass and R&B elements. But he's at his most affecting when he keeps the melodies at the fore and his judgmental eye turned inward". Thad Brown has written a very useful article in Electronic Musician (Volume 20; Number 13) on how to use the internet to promote your music. the article concentrates on telling the reader "how audio is compressed, how to choos...

Tom Cox in Saturday's Times has some interesting things to say about the iPod culture and the 'death' (?) of the album as we know it. " I've been downsizing my record collection recently. Considering that the aim is to make listening a completely fuss-free pleasure, it's been a rather time consuming task so far, involving the jettisoning of superfluous pap and the transferring of my favourite tracks from CD and LP to the iTunes program on my Apple Mac. It's also a somewhat sobering one, as I plough through several thousand albums, coming to the conclusion that a third of their content is either unloved or plain unlistened to ... Some people say iPod culture is killing the beauty of the album format. I see it differently. The DIY editing potential of iTunes rids us of valuable time taken up by filler tracks and, hopefully, will have the knock-on effect of making bands a bit more discerning in the studio. Still, the pruning process is a difficult one, and,...

The AGE has a review of the Czars new album - Goodbye (****) Sophie Best says: "From the soap-opera prelude - a melodramatic piano intro to the title track, which lurches from trip-hop poise to drama-charged, Todd Rundgren -esque epic and back again - Goodbye is a strange, surprising and lovely trip. There's something decidedly old-fashioned about this album, for all its modernity. In its grandiosity and passionate romanticism, Goodbye is akin to Rufus Wainwright and Richard Hawley's work, with echoes of Roy Orbison, ELO, the Flaming Lips and Grandaddy"

Billboard magazine's inaugural Digital Entertainment Awards taked place 5 November. The Awards will serve as the finale of the Billboard Digital Entertainment Conference , at which Todd Rundgren will deliver a keynote address

New York Times had a piece on the wonderful Jill Sobule (25th Sept) mentioning Todd, who produced her excellent debut ''Things Here Are Different,'' who proclaimed her ''a Joni Mitchell for the 90's.'' Lofty and flattering as such comparisons were, the album sold poorly ( If you don't have it, shame on you - find a copy and buy it, you wont be disappointed ). MCA rejected her follow-up and then released her from her contract. Former Pavement front-man Stephen Malkmus mentioned Todd on Billboard whilst describing making his latest solo album: "I did more of it myself, a little bit like the old Pavement records," Malkmus reveals. "Because the studio was in my basement, I took the helm. I pretty much engineered it myself; punching in with my toe, Todd Rundgren-style. I think it has come out pretty good, but I'm looking for some extra ears to make sure it's as good as I think it is." John Soeder of the The Plain D...

Buffalo News - Jeff Miers - Bjork's new album Medulla has resulted in a few Todd mentions. Jeff Miers in the Buffalo News said "Medulla is far less eccentric than its surface might suggest. Comprised almost in its entirety of voices -- that's right, no instruments, no guitars, no synths, no sequencers, no insistence of drum-driven rhythm -- the album seems at first a minimalist affair, as if Bjork has reduced her art to its barest essentials" "There are precedents for what Bjork has done here; Kate Bush and her work with the Trio Bulgarka, as represented on the classic "The Sensual World" record, and Todd Rundgren, who produced the aptly- titled "A Capella" album by layering and multi-tracking his own voice, are useful semaphores in this potentially disorienting little world. But Bjork goes a step beyond both of these artists. In fact, if one is able to hear the voices as instruments free of the text they are delivering, one begins to...

Warner Bros. Records has announced the release of "What Is Hip: Remix Project Volume 1," an innovative musical marriage of hot young remixers with vintage hits from the label's catalog, including classic tracks from Seals & Croft, Rod Stewart, America, Devo, Doobie Brothers, Todd Rundgren and more. Originally scheduled for a late August release, the album now comes out October 19th. Executive Producer Philip Steir (No Doubt, Lillix, Moby, Rob Zombie, Bush) re-mixes Todd Rundgren's 1973 classic "Hello It's Me."

The Star-Tribune (13 August) had an article on the 12 Rods final gig, and the news they are disbanding - No separation anxieties for 12 Rods. " Not only did V2 leave a lot of promises unkept, according to the band, but so did a big-wig manager, and so did a well-known producer..." Best of all, the two discs that the band made for V2 (i.e., with a big budget) really don't sound any better than the ones it made on its own. Let that be a lesson to you aspiring rock stars. In fact, if you had to pick a weak one in the discography, it would probably be 2000's ``Separation Anxieties,'' the one Todd Rundgren produced. Always quite liked it myself, although it was certainly patchy. But is that a dig at Todd as the 'well-known producer'?

The Observer music magazine (15 August) had a piece by Faithless' Mazi Jazz on just why Todd is God. He waxes lyrical about why we should ALL own 'Something / Anything'. "I can't believe something so wonderful can be so ignored. It's virtually impossible to pick a stand-out track, but if pushed, I'd choose 'It Wouldn't Have Made any Difference'...This record taught me the importance of backing vocals and how they can change a good song into a memorable one. It also showed me how a song is constructed. He wrote beautifully and in a way no other American songwriter, who wasn't black, had done in years. It remains some of the best songwriting I've heard to this day" And so say all of us ...

The Scottish Daily Record today reviewed the Glasgow gig calling it "self-indulgent" saying "the music might have taken second stage to the theatrics, but that was no excuse for Rundgren's egotistical showboating. From Eighties-tinged cover versions to electronic shenanigans and lengthy jazz improvisations, some songs lasted longer than a set by the Jesus & Mary Chain" and that Todd " delivered a performance so OTT not even Derren Brown could predict if he was serious or not, though the fans lapped it up" Glasgow's Evening Times reviewer also felt Todd was "self-indulgent" saying " for all the on-stage theatrics (multiple costume change and choreographed movements) something was missing - good, old-fashioned songs. The songs, taken from his rich back catalogue of 18 solo albums including his latest effort, Liars, ran into each other with little distinction. Even when he swayed between prog rock, rap and metal, it failed to ...

The Miami Herald today has a wonderful short review of 'Liars': "Todd Rundgren, Liars (Silverline). Singer-songwriter plays all the instruments in his attempt to explain the concept of ''truth'' using chilly electro pop instrumentation. Strange. Available as a surround sound DVD-Audio."

Martin Townsend in The Sunday Express could not have been happier about the London gig (Frankly about time someone was). He says "Rundgren is a superb performer. His frenzied but melodic guitar-playing reminds you why you fell in love with electric guitars in the first place and, at 56, his passionate, soulful voice has scarcely sounded better ... Rundgren re-worked arcane tracks such as Born To Synthesize into cheesy lounge jazz, stormed through The Want Of A Nail and performed vocal gymnastics on tracks from Liars, his new CD. He finished with Hello, It's Me and the anthemic Just One Victory. The capacity crowd - including Tom Robinson, Joe Jackson and Tony Banks from Genesis - were on their feet in sheer admiration. So moved was Rundgren that he even, briefly, removed his shades. Awesome" Meanwhile, Campbell Stevenson in the Observer said of the Bristol Academy gig that things such as the WMGGW cover "break a set that is touched by brilliance"

Fiona Shepherd in the Scotsman, while giving the Glasgow gig a three out of five star rating commented "Rundgren may be ahead of the game with his hardware, but his music is stuck in a time when rock dinosaurs and bass solos stalked the Earth"     Peter Aspden in the Financial Times meanwhile felt of the London Gig: "There were times during the show's first half hour when his attitude towards his devoted audience seemed to border on contempt: no chat, no smiles, no oldies, just a blitz of material mostly from the latest (very good) album, Liars, played at a pitch and volume that were anything but soothing to the unconverted. It struck me, and much of the restless audience, as perverse. When you have such gems - mostly unknown to today's wider rock audience - as "I Saw the Light" and "Hello It's Me" in your back catalogue, why not hook the crowd in early? Rundgren finally conceded the latter number as an encore, and the delirious re...

Bob Renstrom in yesterday's (13th) Calgary Herald , in the now obligatory 4 star review, describes 'Liars' as "an album of creamy melodiousness that clinches his status as a genius singer-song writer of the Wilson/Wonder/McCartney level. More than a return to form, this effort marks a real breakthrough for Rundgren"

Ahead of Tonight's gig in Birmingham (can't wait!) the Independent has an interview by Anthony Quinn conducted in Amsterdam last week. Interesting on 'Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect' ... described by the author as "truly the piece of Rundgren that passeth all understanding"... 'Would it be fair to say that he didn't exercise a great measure of quality control? "Well, the quality of what got released was exactly as I intended - and what I intended was to do something nobody else was doing. From that point of view my lack of commercial success was inevitable." So: better to have been a cult pioneer than a rich nonentity who sold out. "It's better to know and fulfil your purpose in life," he says, "whatever that may be. It's somebody else's assumption that I was supposed to be a big pop star. I don't think I've ever done anything to sabotage my career. We did the shows, we made the records, and at one...