Todd is God

It's taken me 'til March to get my first gig of the year under my belt, and at eight quid, this seemed too good to miss. And if value for money is a good indicator of a good gig, this was it. 3 bands for your cash. First up were Johnny Panic, a London punk-pop band with a host of good - if formulaic - tunes. They were followed by a 9 piece outfit who's name sadly I did not catch, but who were sort of meatloaf meets the darkness, covering jamiriqai, doing the blues brothers. Crazy stuff, 4 different vocalists - one wanna be robbie williams (and destined to be a star) and a great female singer among them. Need to find out who they were. And Powder . what can you say? Ninette doing he ditsy blonde routine; Phil with his mad spiky hair; a monster on stilts (suddenly teenage Iron Maiden gigs came flooding back to me); Dance routines with 2 look-a-likes (apparently not uncommon for their to be 4 on stage in some Powder gigs - and it seems we missed out on the pole dancing...

Today's Miami Herald reviewed Mark Coleman's book - ' Playback: From the Victrola to Mp3, 100 years of music, machine, and Money' , which mentions along the way that "observers such a writer Bob Lefsetz and musicain Todd Rundgren advocate embracing the opportunities created by file-sharing and digital downloads, but industry executives resist". The Herald also links to Todd's commentary from Rolling Stone from october last year

Article on Randy - American Idol 'Dog' - Jackson in latest issue of the Bass player , mentions the fact the Randy has once recorded with Todd.

Two weeks worth of listening to cover today. Stuck with the Avril wanna-bees. Fefe Dobson: Fefe Dobson - This is certainly one of the better pop records of the year so far. Fun record. Kathryn Tickell: The Gathering - Ok, so with the music above, how do we explain an album of Northumbrian pipe music? As genius perhaps. This album, which came out in 1997, is still a favourite of mine. Wonderful folk music, and featuring 'Mr Nelson's Birthday Waltz', which is one of my favourite pieces of music of all time. Beautiful. Katy Rose: Because I can - Whilst Fefe's album is good, Rose's is a much better and more mature record. Sure it does its Avril bits, 'Overdrive' and 'I Like ' for instance, but it also hints at much more with tracks such as 'Snowflakes' and 'Lemon ' reminding me much more of someone like Heather Nova. Apparently Liz Phair - and I'll skip the sell out, or good pop record discussion on Liz's last album f...