Todd Rundgren live!
Todd Rundgren
Park West, Chicago
Thursday, January 31, 2008
It has been four years since Todd Rundgren’s last proper studio CD, Liars, but he has been far from inactive during the gap. Outside of embarking on an extensive solo tour (which spawned the Liars Live DVD in 2005) he became the unlikely though fairly well-fitting replacement for Ric Ocasek in The New Cars. Throughout 2006, the power poppers revved its engines alongside Blondie on the road, while turning in the subsequent concert CD It’s Alive (comprising the group’s greatest hits in concert, a handful of Rundgren solo tracks, and three new tunes).
Though it’s unclear if The New Cars collaboration was just a one-off, its frontman re-entered the solo ranks late last year, promoting a lean (though not at the expense of loud) rock ‘n’ roll show. By stripping down to bassist Kasim Sulton (Utopia, The New Cars), drummer Prairie Prince (The Tubes, Jefferson Starship, The New Cars), and guitarist Jesse Gress (Tony Levin Band), it meant no keyboards or ballads in favor of more experimental selections from Rundgren’s three-and-a-half-decade career.
After opening with relatively recent, glossy alt-rockers “Buffalo Grass” and “I Hate My Frickin’ ISP” (both from 2000’s One Year Long), the four players tipped their compasses toward yesteryear. The psychedelic singer-songwriter centering of “Black Maria” provided a blissful time warp to his 1972 breakthrough Something/Anything?, while a pair of Liars tunes, “Soul Brother” and “Mammon,” showed off his electricity-doused evolution through today.
Despite the detour of a laborious “Mystified”/”Broke Down And Busted” medley, Rundgren’s recollection of the Utopia days for “One World” was particularly potent and stood up as a timeless, melodic anthem of unity. The group’s “Trapped” also adapted favorably (thanks to a little help on lead vocals from Sulton), followed by a remarkably revved-up, distortion-filtered “Worldwide Epiphany.”
Turning toward the craftier side of his catalog thankfully excluded the stupidity of “Bang The Drum All Day,” but that double-edge sword sliced much sharper with the exclusion of radio staple “Hello It’s Me.” Rundgren even taunted the crowd at one point with the admission “it’s probably 50/50 that we don’t even know how to play a song you want to hear, but odds are if you shout out something obscure that we’ll know how to play it.” Even so, he humored the more commercially minded in the crowd with a joyous version of “I Saw The Light” and an unexpected though raucous cover of The Call’s “The Walls Came Down.”
No matter what side of the dial he presented, Rundgren showed no signs of slowing even while knocking at the door of 60. His guitar playing was remarkably fierce without over indulging and vocals ripe with enthusiasm and strength throughout all of the hearty 19-song set. Though the innovator’s consistency rang true on stage, the real point of curiosity comes in his next studio endeavor, which, based on Rundgren’s unpredictable track record, could come in any songwriting format or sonic swath.
— Andy Argyrakis
Category: Live Reviews, Weekly
