Jeff Lynne is channeled on an energetic version of The Move (and later ELO)’s “Do Ya,” while Rundgren reprises the clattering “Heavy Metal Kids” and appropriately triumphant “Just One Victory.” Bernstein (who had dabbled in rock sounds himself in his concert piece Mass) would have approved. “Something’s Coming,” the Leonard Bernstein/Stephen Sondheim song from West Side Story, gets a true rock makeover, perhaps even something of which the forward-thinking Mr. “The Seven Rays” was on the rock/soul border, less structured than “The Wheel” with more room for instrumental improvisation.Ī couple of well-chosen covers illustrate Rundgren’s restless muse. This laconic track was extended with an audience sing-along. Rundgren anticipates a famed later song with the lyric “Sometimes you just don’t know what to feel” in the quiet, acoustic “The Wheel” while flourishes of trumpet and glockenspiel add a wholly new dimension to the Utopia sound. “Another Life,” “The Wheel” and “The Seven Rays” weren’t exactly standard song forms, but nor were they 15-30 minute suites, either. The first side of the original LP wouldn’t have shocked fans of the first album, with three long pieces. Soon, the band would transform into a tight four-piece unit, but for this concert, the six-man fusion group was augmented by trio of backing vocalists for an eclectic sequence of songs. Frog, and Willie Wilcox replacing Kevin Ellman. Largely recorded in New York’s Central Park in August 1975, the album introduced a modified (but still not final) Utopia line-up, with Roger Powell replacing M. Like TRU, Another Live featured collaborative songs written by band members in various combinations alongside Rundgren solo compositions. Another Live would show another dimension of the band. On the way, “The Ikon” is alternately childlike and futuristic, with even a bit of a country feel in one segment! Clearly Rundgren wasn’t about to be boxed into one style, even with Utopia still more or less a “side project” to his solo career. A prog mini-musical, the suite offers songs in miniature, with some catchy melodies featured over the prog workout as it builds to an intoxicating, swirling finale. The album’s centerpiece is undoubtedly “The Ikon,” which took up the entirety of the original LP’s second side, clocking in at over one half-hour. The likes of “Love is the Answer” would have to wait, though. “Freedom Fighters,” the album’s lone concession to song-oriented rock is a tough, metallic anthem, but the pop-ish backing vocals augur for Utopia’s future. Though its four individual tracks are lengthy (from 15 minutes to 30 minutes only the four-minute “Freedom Fighters” is an exception), Rundgren explains in Paul Myers’ liner notes that there was very little jamming in the studio these pieces were actually intricately structured, and created in the studio from individual segments. With shifting tempi and a sound influenced as much by fusion jazz as by prog rock, TRU might be the place where the Mahavishnu Orchestra meets The Mothers of Invention. Frog” Labat (synthesizers), Ralph Schuckett (keyboards) and John Siegler (bass/cello), Rundgren indulged his wildest sonic fantasies on Todd Rundgren’s Utopia. With Kevin Ellman (drums), Moogy Klingman (keyboards), Jean-Yves “M. (“Mark I” referred to a short-lived touring unit.) Though Rundgren consented that he put his own name above the band’s for “obvious commercial reasons,” the music within its grooves was anything but commercial. The earliest albums in this batch are Todd Rundgren’s Utopia (1974) and Another Live (1975), both recorded with the six-person “Utopia Mark II” line-up and combined as one 2-CD set. Taken individually or a set, these albums represent some of the most restlessly creative, dynamic and just plain odd pop and rock created during the latter half of the 1970s and first half of the 1980s. The most recent batch of titles has just recently hit stores, consisting of nine albums on four CD sets: Rundgren’s The Hermit of Mink Hollow/Healing/The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect and Back to the Bars and Utopia’s Todd Rundgren’s Utopia/Another Live and Adventures in Utopia/Deface the Music/Swing to the Right. The U.K.’s Edsel label has recently completed its catalogue overhaul for Rundgren, including the entirety of his tenures at Bearsville and Warner. Todd Rundgren’s tenure at Albert Grossman’s Bearsville Records label took him from his days as a singer/songwriter/self-described Runt in 1970 through his cutting-edge avant garde experiments, both solo and with his band Utopia, culminating in 1985’s A Cappella, rejected by the label and eventually released on Warner Bros.
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