The Ballot of TODD RUNDGREN: ILM ARTIST POLL #107 Nominations Thread

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Are there really 106 artists more talented than Todd? I’m not sure. But I *am* pretty convinced that there aren’t 107, so I’m gonna try it: my first Artist Poll, for Philadelphia’s own, Todd Harry (Harry?!?) Rundgren. 

Here are the rules as I set them (or actually, as I ripped off WilliamC)

Three Parts:

1. Rank your top 30 Todd tracks. What's eligible is work under Rundgren’s name as solo artist and artists that include Todd as a member of a group (Nazz, Utopia or New Cars, which we all know is gonna take this). Normal scoring: 1:40, 2:36, 3:33, 4:30, 5:28, 6:26, 7:25, 8:24, 9:23, 10:22, 11:21, 12:20, 13:19, 14:18, 15:17, 16:16, 17:15, 18:14, 19:13, 20:12, 21:11, 22:10, 23:9, 24:8, 25:7, 26:6, 27:5, 28:4, 29:3, 30:

2. Albums. Rank your top TEN albums of Todd’s. Same rules as tracks — solo artist, co-artist and groups where he’s a member.

3. Productions. Rank your top TEN albums that are listed as produced or co-produced by Todd. Note that this section is for albums, not tracks. You CAN include Todd or Utopia albums though I encourage you to pick ones by other artists.

Send your ballots to me at matthew DOT weiner AT gmail DOT com. Deadline is midnight Eastern Daylight Time on Sunday, March 14th, 2021. I’ll bump this out a few more days if necessary.

Todd’s page at discogs.com: https://www.discogs.com/artist/138572-Todd-Rundgren

Woot! Let’s do this.

Per Wikipedia, here is a not complete but very extensive discography:

Solo albums

Runt (1970)
Runt. The Ballad of Todd Rundgren (1971)
Something/Anything? (1972)
A Wizard, a True Star (1973)
Todd (1974)
Initiation (1975)
Faithful (1976)
Hermit of Mink Hollow (1978)
Healing (1981)
The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect (1982)
A Cappella (1985)
Nearly Human (1989)
2nd Wind (1991)
No World Order (1993) (TR-I)
The Individualist (1995) (TR-I)
With a Twist... (1997) (remakes album)
One Long Year (2000)
Liars (2004)
Arena (2008)
Todd Rundgren's Johnson (2011)
(re)Production (2011) (covers album)
State (2013)
Global (2015)
White Knight (2017)
Space Force (2021)

Nazz

Nazz (1968)
Nazz Nazz (1969)
Nazz III (1971)

Utopia

Todd Rundgren's Utopia (1974)
Ra (1977)
Oops! Wrong Planet (1977)
Adventures in Utopia (1979)
Deface the Music (1980)
Swing to the Right (1982)
Utopia (1982)
Oblivion (1984)
POV (1985)

Other albums

Up Against It! (1997)
(1980s demos for the musical of the same name)
Disco Jets (2001)
(Utopia album recorded 1976)
It's Alive! (2006)
(The New Cars)
Runddans (2015) (with Lindstrom and Emil Nikolaisen)

Selected productions

Straight Up (1971) – Badfinger
Halfnelson (1971) – Halfnelson
New York Dolls (1973) – New York Dolls
We're an American Band (1973) – Grand Funk Railroad
Shinin' On (1974) – Grand Funk Railroad
War Babies (1974) – Hall & Oates
Bat Out of Hell (1977) – Meat Loaf
Remote Control (1979) – The Tubes
Forever Now (1982) – The Psychedelic Furs
Next Position Please (1983) – Cheap Trick
Love Bomb (1985) – The Tubes
Skylarking (1986) – XTC
The New America (2000) – Bad Religion
Separation Anxieties (2000) – 12 Rods
Cause I Sez So (2009) – New York Dolls

I rate him higher as a producer than as a performer, TBH.

I keep trying to get into him & I find the records are all head and no ass. Like, technically wonderful but eliciting zero emotional response.

I realize this isn’t a CorD thread, but.

Oh hell yeah, I didn't know this was coming up. Any way you could extend the deadline a week so we have two weeks after voting is done for the metal poll? Idk if anyone else is voting in both tbh but it's not impossible.

More complete list of production credits:

Ass - Badfinger
Bad For Good - Jim Steinman
Bat Out of Hell - Meat Loaf
Cause I Sez So - New York Dolls
Dreams of Ordinary Men - Dragon
Felix Cavaliere (s/t)
Forever Now - Psychedelic Furs
Great Speckled Bird (Ian & Sylvia)
Halfway Down The Sky - Splender
Is Nothing Sacred? - Lords of the New Church
L - Steve Hillage
Love Bomb - The Tubes
Love Junk - The Pursuit of Happiness
Mother's Spiritual - Laura Nyro
The New America - Bad Religion
New York Dolls (s/t)
Next Position Please - Cheap Trick
One Sided Story - The Pursuit of Happiness
Party of Two - the Rubinoos
Remote Control - the Tubes
Separation Anxieties - 12 Rods
Shinin' On - Grand Funk Railroad
Skylarking - XTC
Sparks (s/t)
Straight Up - Badfinger
Things Here Are Different - Jill Sobule
War Babies - Hall & Oates
Wasp - Shaun Cassidy
Watch Dog - Jules Shear
Wave - Patti Smith Group
We're an American Band - Grand Funk Railroad
The World's Most Dangerous Party - Paul Shaffer

Whoop - missed

TRB2 - Tom Robinson Band

Ha, I forgot he worked with TPOH.

Thanks for doing this! I would like to note that this should probably count as a "real album", since it is mostly original material:

Another Live (1975) - Utopia

Also, there is no producer credited on the record, but his work was extensive enough to deserve at least a shared credit:

Stage Fright (1970) - The Band

Bourgeois Tagg

Jesse Winchester

for those of you who have merely listened to 10 albums or so I'd like to recommend the following tunes: "Forget All About It" from the 2nd Nazz album, and "God Said" from Liars

whoa! I will be voting for sure

Yeah, “forget about it” is a super cool jazz jam!

Ok who wants to point me to how to do this?

I rate him higher as a producer than as a performer, TBH.

I keep trying to get into him & I find the records are all head and no ass. Like, technically wonderful but eliciting zero emotional response.

I realize this isn’t a CorD thread, but.

Assign points to each song with a VLOOKUP then use a pivot table to get your results.

With the pivot table, drag the song titles to the rows and the points to the value, make sure the value is set to Sum and not Count

Will votes for International Feel and Le Feel Internacionale be combined? I'm sure no-one's likely to vote for the latter so probably irrelevant. Going on a one-Todd-album-per-day kick to stop myself just voting for all of A Wizard, A True Star (minus the soul medley).

Initiation title track will rank highly for me--The psych/prog mysticism that dominated his mid-70s work distilled into 7 high-energy minutes (with Bernard Purdie AND Rick Marotta on drums if you care about that kind of thing)

NTI, I never could comprehend pivot tables so I did it a harder way, but still easier than pen and paper. LMK if you want to look at my working spreadsheets for Enopoll.

Am I missing anything vital, not having heard these records:

Swing to the Right (1982)
The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect (1982)
2nd Wind (1991)

I know "Hideaway", "Bang the Drum" and "Change Myself" from compilations.

Tortured Artist Effect is a great collection of synthy pop songs almost all the way through, except for a couple novelty songs on side 2 (one of which is "Bang the Drum," obviously iconic in its own way).

I haven't heard Swing to the Right in a long time, but I remember it being similar to Tortured Artist Effect, maybe a bit heavier. "Lysistrata" is a classic.

Never heard 2nd Wind but will probably check it out for this poll...

2nd Wind was kind of received poorly when it came out, as kind of a lesser Nearly Human. I need to give it some time as well.

Agreed about Tortured Artist Effect -- I was listening to it last night and thought the same thing.

WmC -- I would absolutely take you up on best practices. I probably have an uncommon amount of anxiety about this, but also am not great with Excel, so any tips would be mightily appreciated.

Am absolutely digging the title track to Initiation right now. Bernard Purdie! Roger Powell's sitar-y synth solo interludes on this are incredible.

Will "Healing" pts 1-3 count as one track or separate?

Am I missing anything vital, not having heard these records:

Swing to the Right (1982)
The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect (1982)
2nd Wind (1991)

I know "Hideaway", "Bang the Drum" and "Change Myself" from compilations.

shinola

I like "Shinola" a lot. 2nd Wind has "If I Have to be Alone" which is real nice, though I think that's actually from the unreleased musical Up Against It

"Healing" should probably count as one track, it doesn't really make sense otherwise

I remember your nice post about your father's relationship to Rundgren's music. You should get to submit two ballots, one for you and one for him.

:) yeah there are still a bunch of songs in his catalogue which don't sound right because my dad played them different

That’s so awesome. I feel confident the judges would allow a proxy ballot for your dad, if you so chose.

I’ve been thinking about Healing. I think the second part is different enough that some people might vote for it distinctly from 1 or 3. But I’m not sure what to do if people vote for the suite regardless of guidance.

xp I also think Healing makes more sense as one track

These four productions would definitely make my ballot:
Skylarking (1986) – XTC
New York Dolls (1973) – New York Dolls
Forever Now (1982) – The Psychedelic Furs
War Babies (1974) – Hall & Oates

The Dolls album is my favorite of the four, but I'll probably put Skylarking at #1 simply because the Dolls didn't need Rundgren to make a great album. (The studio demos for the same songs "produced" by Paul Nelson are a great LP in itself - they can even be preferable.) Skylarking benefitted from his work immensely, and he was crucial in making it their greatest album IMHO.

War Babies is a must-hear for Rundgren fans (I like some of their other records, but I can't speak for Hall and Oates fans). Some very unusual songs and dramatic performances. In his memoirs, John Oates basically says, "that was Daryl and Todd's thing, don't ask me what it was about".

Halfnelson AKA Sparks is a classic that might appeal to people who don't like their glam or new-wave records.

The Steve Hillage album has some good playing from Utopia under the corny hippie concepts.

I've always thought that GFR's "Shinin' On" (the song) was basically a Todd pastiche, I'll take this chance to hear those two records he produced.

NTI, original spreadsheet provided by user finefinemusic: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-6UZjUc-eioPify1wTOMXe_dSsjOQ6pBu0ZjT0I7CCQ/edit#gid=1

My Eno worksheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HgN0GBtxMq9rIW7SH3bONd9uBTtkROc2ahrjL8rQwrc/edit#gid=0

Save a copy of the first one, or even the second one, to use for your Todd work if you'd like. Copy and paste/repeat the rank (1-30) and score (40-2) columns as many times as you need depending on the number of ballots, then slap ballots into the Tracks column so they line up across. Then you can sort by Tracks A-Z and get a point total for each song. (Don't forget to check the ballots so they all have consistent wording, taking out "A" and "The" at the beginning, etc.) When the voting was closed, I took all my totals to a fresh spreadsheet that I shared in the results thread after the rollout was done. Hope this helps!

War Babies is terrific

I thought I read in Sound on Sound that Todd was barely around for the New York Dolls album... and that the album was barely produced / NYD were in “unproduceable” lol

the Shawn Cassidy album is definitely worth a listen, sounds just like post-prog, pre-network/passport records utopia

xp I mean I love that album immsensely regardless

Todd was definitely around for the Dolls album. This came up in various remembrances after Sylvain Sylvain's death, but they really liked him and thought he did a great job, especially Sylvain. I think Bud Scoppa (another critic turned Mercury label exec) dropped by and later remembered how strange and funny it was to see Rundgren produce the band. Like he'd stop them after a take, run down, adjust/fix something himself (say a cable or a piece of equipment), have them try again and be like "yeah, that's all you really needed, great." I shouldn't be too hard on him - other producers have fucked up really great proto-punk bands, even when they were supposedly on the same wavelength. Look at Jon Landau and the MC5, or the way the Stooges' Raw Power was mixed. Rundgren didn't fuck up anything, he got it right and added a few touches that worked in the music's favor. The studio demos may be preferable as a "truer" and well-recorded document of how the band sounded live (and the performances are just as great as the ones that made the actual album), but I don't think anything Rundgren did to the first album was a real detriment.

I can’t vote in this because I only know two Rundgren albums, although I like both of them — Something/Anything and A Capella. The latter I taped from a friend in high school and was pretty taken with, I thought the production was clever and I liked the songs. For me he’s mostly one of those people who exists on the periphery of my musical knowledge, I am aware of him and feel like I should know more about him but I have never really taken the plunge.

Also, I'm tempted to add Stage Fright in there. He wasn't actually a producer, but he did a fine job and I think his mixes for that album are still my preferred my mixes (not the later ones he labored over with the input of all five members). They were used on the old Capitol CD and the DCC gold CD reissue. They've been labeled as Glyn Johns's work, but it's not too far-fetched that the reels were mislabeled - they sound a lot more like his work rather than Johns's.

Parts of A Capella are incredible. “Lost horizons”, “blue orpheus”

I really like the "Mighty Love" cover

there's an official bootleg of a show from that tour which is definitely worth listening to, I think he had like a dozen backup singers in tow which made him rearrange a bunch of his tunes

also pretty interesting are the 90s TR-i one-man shows where he invites random audience members to play solos and get on the drums. it does not go particularly well. but I can't think of another performer willing to take a risk like that.

Todd's production with Badfinger is also a little fraught. According to the (very depressing) Badfinger biography, Without You, the Harrison songs were a mess by the time he got to them -- so he did a lot of uncredited work on stuff like "Day After Day" as well.

We can glaze over that tho and count it as a Todd production, since he is credited with 8 of the 12 songs anyway.

If NTI is so inclined… in the late 80s, he had a song that while popular with his cult, huge crowd pleaser, wasn't on a formal record and could not be played on the radio… having just remembered it, it has not aged well at all…but, I dunno, I guess its appropriate for you to consider it…below…

"Hideaway" and "Drive" to me are the highlights of Ever Popular… he did the record under duress as his relationship with Bearsville was on the rocks and he I think has since been dismissive of it, but… he got fellow Woodstock-ite Tony Levin to do a tour with him in the 2000s (I really fucked up and didn't find out about this until too late), and they did "Drive," a fan favorite; man does that tune ever have a bass part that that bald son of bitch could throttle…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7HqqrvMQjg

xpost - (speaking of Straight Up there as I realized he is credited on a few tracks on Ass as well, tho just two)

Re. Jess, yes! Unreleased songs should probably count.

and while I don't have the will to do ballots etc, I will have the time of my goddamn life going over the results with you guys… although I've listened to A Cappella and everything after 2nd wind like once or twice, I pretty much got everything else in my bones…

its kind of funny that the toss off "Bang on the Drum all Day" became a huge hit at the same time he was desperately trying to write one for Utopia

Forgot about Patti Smith's Wave. Not a consistently compelling batch of songs, but Rundgren did a good job.

veronica, I know it can be a little challenging but I’d hope that you find time to put together a ballot. If nothing else, you’d ensure that the list of songs is more varied.

I have never ever made an ILM ballot, and for that matter disliked making top ten lists, only did so when I was obliged to in the course of working for various publications…but I'll think about it cuz you asked so durn nicely!

I’d just like to rep for ‘Hawking’ off ‘Nearly Human’...pure Todd ecstasy...sure Daryl Hall could of killed this

really like “the waiting game” off nearly human

That’s on my list

speaking of his current virtual tour consists of a setlist based on Nearly Human, he really does pull these ideas out of a hat

lmao check this out.. cyberdelic!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibpJ23O9clQ

https://img.discogs.com/teGD5gizVgK48z9lYIDeUeCQwkw=/fit-in/482x500/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-3585136-1336291044.jpeg.jpg

i am totally ditching this screen name and coming back as GROKGAZER, fyi

birdistheword, if you think Skylarking is XTC’s only great record or that they needed Rundgren to make one, you & I are going to have beef.

when I read the accounts of how Skylarking came to be I always come to believe that every decision Todd made was the correct one. which is odd because he was making a lot of bad ones in his solo career.

I don't think anyone's mentioned the Nazz yet. I've already submitted my ballot--easy: my fandom is intense but narrow--and three out of ten songs were by the Nazz. (Actually, one brief mention.) I didn't vote for their "Hello It's Me," not because it's not good, but because one slot for Rundgren's was enough.

They were mentioned. I know bc I listened to "Forget All About It" bc of it.

yeah I'm definitely voting at least three - the two everyone's gonna vote for, and "Meridian Leeward" (which I probably will go it alone on)

I love his instrumentals from the early 70s like "Breathless," "The Spark Of Life," "Sidewalk Cafe," etc. Groovy melodies anchored by primitive drum machines + spacy analog synths--a soundworld I could live in

Flamingo is another great one

there's an unauthorized comp called "Somewhere/Anywhere" which I believe has more stuff like that

What do you instrumental lovers think of "A Treatise on Cosmic Fire"?

first time I heard it, I was on a plane, just had my iPod on shuffle. but I couldn't reach into my pocket so I just let it play. I had no idea what it was, in fact for a while I was convinced it was Conrad Schnitzler. but it was too wild to be him. my mind was blown when I saw it was Todd. now it's not exactly a great track...certainly a lot of it could be edited out...but damn, some parts of it are really neat

I like the first half of it. Initiation is an interesting parallel to Bowie's Low: a rock star exercising no caution in filling up side 2 of his album with electronic instrumentals.

birdistheword, if you think Skylarking is XTC’s only great record or that they needed Rundgren to make one, you & I are going to have beef.

I recently posted about this in Rundgren's own thread. I love XTC, great band, and they've made great albums before. But Rundgren took them even higher.

Your admission that they had made great albums prior to skylarking is enough. I lay down my daggers.

(Probably more suited to the XTC thread, but I think their fluorescence on skylarking after the somewhat muddled post-English Settlement albums owes at least as much to their stint as the Dukes unshackling them from their fear of being seen as retrograde as it does to Rundgren’s production — not to take away from Todd’s contribution!)

I’d like to plump for The Pursuit of Happiness’s Love Junk. It’s got a few clunkers & some very rear-garde sexual politics, but its high points are worth consideration in the power-pop canon such as it is.

Ha, I loved the singles from that in Grade 6. They still sound good to me, esp "She's So Young".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVjifh9eLCk
(Interview was in support of the — as I remember it, execrable — second album, but a little bit in there about TR’s production approach.)

Xp “She’s So Young” & “Hard to Laugh” are pretty ace.

Fun fact: TPoH were the second band I ever saw (first was the Grapes of Wrath, both shows at the Kokanee Bowl in beautiful Westbank BC)

I remember a girl in high school proudly displaying the "Love Junk" LP that had come out that very day.

The problem I had with TPOH is that Moe Berg was trying to write melodic guitar pop that he simply didn't have the voice to put over.

xps re: "A Treatise on Cosmic Fire," it's amazing--the ultimate trip! Though I agree with most that it could use some editing, especially in the "Internal Fire" section. Initiation is a really fascinating record--about as far-out as he ever got, along with the first Utopia album. It's a shame about "Eastern Intrigue" stinking up side one tho. Does anyone actually like that song? I don't think it's musically interesting enough to look past the orientalist stuff

What's strange is that he actually undertook a trip around the world at that time, investigating religious practices and Asian and Middle East cultures, and then he comes up with this song that makes light of his whole quest.

I've probably made this observation on a different thread but one interesting thing about Initiation is that it's 67 minutes long on a single LP, which I think would make it the longest rock LP ever released. It's even longer than his previous LP Todd, which was a double. I'll bet he's the only artist to do that.

When I first got into Todd I noticed he has a penchant for making his music treble-heavy and kaleidoscopic, and in retrospect I wonder how much of that has to do with the fact that he was putting so much music on a single LP (which nerfs your bass sound). Certainly he knew a thing or two about engineering records. Both AWATS & the first Utopia album are about an hour long and even in CD form they have almost no bass on them. "Treatise" generally has a narrow band of sound which is why it sounds okay - Klaus Schulze got away with long LP sides for the same reason, but even he never did anything quite *this* long

Yeah, Todd's productions from the mid 70s have a super-distinctive sonic aesthetic--"kaleidoscopic" OTM. To me it sounds highly compressed, with hard-hitting drums often run through a phaser effect, with layers of electric keyboards, synths, and guitars whooshing in and out of the mix. Basically a swirling psychedelic wall of sound. It's a sound that's very specific to the Todd and Utopia albums from 1973-78, though by Hermit of Mink Hollow he had mostly come back down to Earth. This also includes Hall & Oates War Babies, and Steve Hillage's L.

Even on digital versions of these albums, I feel like there's a warm, dense, less-than-hi-fi haze hanging over them. So Todd cramming 30+ minutes of music per album side definitely exacerbated deficiencies in the sound, but I don't think it's the sole cause. At any rate it's a magical sound, and also the one upon which the first two Tame Impala albums are almost entirely based.

1) how could i have forgotten "one world" as a track to search off of swing to the right?

2) final decision on whether to count "healing" pts 1-3 as one song?

As for Healing, I’m happy to defer to voters here. What would people like?

Would they like to vote for parts one, two, three individually? Or would they like it to be the whole thing?

definitely makes more sense to me to have them all as one track - it's way more cohesive than say "The Ikon"

I think "Treatise" should be one track too

ditto

in honor of this thread I'm listening to Todd's (only?) official live album Back to the Bars, a whopping 103+ minutes on 2 LPs

the version of "The Verb 'To Love'" on here is really nice

Forgot all about that record. I don't have it myself, but a double-live from 1978, of course! It was the law then.

Todd should announce he's not pressing Initiation anymore because of "Eastern Intrigue" so I can eBay my copy for $80

I’ve got my ballot down to 35. It’s gonna be a hard cut.

nearly human is a lot better than I remember, “want of a nail” is not good, tho

The open is great tho.

Ok, after great deliberation and consultation with outside counsel, my ruling on Healing and Treatise on Cosmic Fire is that both will be voted on as single pieces. If people vote for multiple parts I will count the highest vote only.

the opening is great, yes. and when he repeats it as a middle eight it’s great, classic Todd chords

call me crazy but I get Real Lies/early Saint Etienne vibes from this one: https://www.streetdirectory.com/lyricadvisor/song/uppewf/espresso_all_jacked_up/

gah I am bad the internet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cTO5RbFkaM

Nearly Human is always better than I remember it - it's late 80's Todd & the songs are all pretty long, so you'd expect a lot of dirges with shitty drum sounds. but it's lively and fun. I remember when I first heard "Fidelity" I thought it was kind of gross, one of those "yeah I sleep around but it doesn't mean I don't love you" kind of songs, but I later read it was actually the opposite

and yea Individualist is pretty decent too, really the only album he made between Nearly Human & Liars worth listening to. call me crazy but I think he's trying to imitate Snoop Dogg on the title track. also as I'm sure I've mentioned before I get very strong John Linnell vibes from "If Not Now, When?" which is something I've never really heard another artist capture.

I haven't heard it since it came out, and I'm pretty sure it won't be coming up in the results, but does anyone have anything nice to say about No World Order? Better rapping than "Roll the Bones", at least?

If I'm being generous I'd say "Worldwide Epiphany" is like a sequel to "International Feel"

it's really not a very good album, but to be fair I think what he was trying to do with the CD-i interactivity kinda forced his hand re: the crappiness of it. I think all the tunes had to be rigid and very easy to change parameters on which means very little interesting can happen. as far as I know no other established artist made another "interactive album" like this for a long time. as for his rapping...I mean, it's not show-stoppingly bad, but you'd think a lyricist of his caliber could write better rhymes than this

you know what’s really good? with a twist. I should put it on.

"You Don't Have to Camp Around" came up on the other thread a week or two ago as a 'problematic' song. I always liked the song but never paid much attention to the lyrics. Now that I have, it's actually not clear to me what the message is. It doesn't really strike me as something that a ca 1973 homophobe would write and if anything reminds me more of Pet Shop Boys or Morrissey lyrics, although it probably makes a difference that TR is not himself gay (to my knowledge) (though he could be p campy). TVTropes says (with no supporting evidence) that it was "lighthearted razzing" of a flamboyant costume designer he knew personally. Have queer listeners found it offensive?

So I may regret asking this, but ... would there be interest in me adding a component to this poll for Todd's Best Prog Epic?

It's not an area I'm an expert in -- and I know not everyone would rank these for their ballot. But as I have been digging through Todd's vast catalogue, I'm realizing that all the epic prog trips that took flight with Utopia are a huge part of his legacy and that this poll is probably the best chance to drive people to weigh in on this subject. As someone who loves digging in the poll results to find new things in an artist, I'm wondering if, like the R&B or Country Billboard charts, there is an appetite for this here to ensure that The Ikons and Singring and the Glass Guitars are ranked for posterity.

Let me know if folks would like to try this. If there is a critical mass, I may officially bump this out more so that people have additional time to get their ballots together.

I will be voting for some of those epics in the songs poll, but I feel they will take care of themselves there.

I don't want to make your tasks harder, but if there were to be a side poll, my preference would be for a Utopia top ten. It's different enough from his solo work to provide a contrast, and that would also allow us to acknowledge those songs of theirs that aren't necessarily Todd-based (since we won't be having a Kasim Sulton or M. Frog Labat poll anytime soon). Just a suggestion!

OK, I just want to make sure these cuts get a robust airing, especially for those who might not know them or have had the patience to sift through them.

Surveying Todd’s catalog is a uniquely challenging proposition. Not only does he have a lot of records and side projects in a gazillion styles but he also has a number of lesser and/or throwaway releases on the back nine of his career that are admittedly a slog. And unlike a lot of other artists, the consensus tracks on those releases aren’t terribly well-known.As a result, I found myself trying to dig in to the 70-78 peak era for album cuts I had missed.

To that end, a few good ones from (the simultaneously over- and underrated) Hermit of Mink Hollow:

“Hurting for You”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DLBm75zatQ

“Determination”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsoHzDV44d8

In 2016, he and Kasim, Prairie, Jesse gress and the keybsman whose name I cannot recall played the Brooklyn Bowl… it was BY FAR his best show I've ever seen. Others were: '91, the Ritz, insists on focusing on 2nd Wind; '96, Irving Plaza for With a Twist, I wasn't into the cocktail culture thing happening; 03 or 04, Town Hall, he played solo which was not satisfying; Utopia show at Town Hall '18, I really enjoyed this; '19 Ridgefield Playhouse, uhhhh I live in CT now and this was full of seated olds more or less signifying "oh music used to be so much better," about as much energy as you would encounter at the Bottom line in the late 90s…

This Brooklyn Bowl show, though: Everyone was on their feet, which I believe is ALWAYS going to result in more energy than a seated one, and thus Todd was inspired to really go for that shit…and then among like 5-10 songs I never thought I would ever hear performed live by a band not involving me and my own preferences…was "Determination." I done lost my shit.

"Hurting for You" is a fine choice, I think the best song on Hermit is "Too Far Gone", a perfectly-elaborated ballad in 2.41.

Hey NTI: the three song suite on side 2 of Runt…I would think that should be one vote for the whole thing…but maybe you have considered this pro or con…

Hermit was my favorite of his for a while, super consistent and full of great melodies.

My experiences of seeing Todd live have been...mixed. I saw him on the ‘State’ tour where he proceeded to play the whole album in sequence and to throw the crowd a bone played a couple of Utopia tunes as an encore...

He then came over and played the Hammersmith Odeon. It was the ‘AWATS’ tour which was great, the only drawback being having to sit through Todd Rundgren’s ‘Johnson’. 35 minutes (trust me I counted them) of bad pub blues rock (is there good?) which didn’t exactly get the crowd fired up.

Imagine my delight then when having booked tickets at Ronnie Scott’s for a supposed intimate greatest hits gig he informed the crowd (it was the 2nd set) after an hour of Interminable blues rock that we’d missed the greatest hits part and this had been advertised as a Todd Rundgren ‘Johnson’ gig. Trust me it hadn’t.

You really don’t want to see Todd Rundgren ‘Johnson’

I only saw him once, three years ago. He came to Sheboygan, which was amazing. I nearly could've walked to the venue. This was before I got into the later albums, I knew very little of what he was playing, but I thought a lot of it was very good. A lot of the highlights were from Liars. He did a couple songs from Arena which sounded great live but turned out to be pretty mediocre in the studio. All the White Knight tunes were pretty gimmicky but it was pretty hilarious to see him play the video to the anti-Trump tune "Tin Foil Hat" to a crowd of older rural Wisconsinites. I know he was asked in an interview if he thought that was gonna put his audience off and he basically said "fuck 'em", so he'll always have my respect for that.

I've never seen him live, and these sorts of stories are part of the reason why. I appreciate acts who avoid doing greatest hits, and I understand he's interested in his new songs, but an hour of Robert Johnson covers from Todd is just perversity.

lmao this is how he opened a few shows on his 2012 tour. Rivers Cuomo is probably pissed he didn't think of this first

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59Mwk-0GG5o

tbf I would've absolutely geeked out if this happened at the show I went to

the above is a millionty jillionty times better than doing fucking Robert Johnson songs…no question the overwhelming majority of that audience does not know the tune…he has always kept up with whatever is going on the time…

I saw him to Wizard live 10 years or so ago and it was everything I dreamed of and more. I wish I could relive that concert over and over again.

to = do

he did open that show with a Robert’s Johnson set

You really don’t want to see Todd Rundgren ‘Johnson’

Reminds me in a roundabout way of this anecdote I read in piece about Rockefellers, a beloved intimate Houston venue, and a mid-90s Todd show: this couple were celebrating something and Todd was a favorite artist, so they got a table right against the stage, and Todd at the time was going through a 'kilt phase' while performing, and the couple recalled having "a splendid view of Todd's balls all night".

In 2017, I drove down to NYC to see him at a benefit he did for his foundation with Utopia -- my wife had gotten me tickets for Xmas. I imagine I'd have been crushed if he had played Todd Rundgren's 'Johnson' but instead, this was the setlist -- and I was just completely blown away at how good he sounded.

Set 1:
The Ikon
Black and White
Sometimes I Don't Know What to Feel
Real Man
Cliché
I Saw the Light
Heavy Metal Kids
Love of the Common Man

Set 2:
Pretending to Care
Lord Chancellor's Nightmare Song
Play Video
Hello It's Me
Do Ya
Love Is the Answer
Couldn't I Just Tell You
A Dream Goes on Forever
Just One Victory

Encore:
The Wheel

("Play Video" is a typo, not a song from State BTW)

yeah I've heard a lot of great things about that tour. and they did it with a fill-in keyboardist, right? I remember hearing that Powell fell ill so they had to audition keyboardists online.

I've seen a number of aging classic rock acts, it's always cool when someone legitimately sounds just as good as they always did. Todd's voice has deepened a bit but he still sounds great. he ended the show in Sheboygan with "Just One Victory" and I was astounded at how well he could still belt that one out.

btw one album I can recommend is called Runddans, the one he did with Lindstrom and another Norwegian dude. I don't think he's quite in charge there, but the album very much draws on his 70's psychedelic stuff, somewhere between AWATS and Initiation, though it doesn't really have any actual songs. I won't vote for any individual tracks on it because it's really just one 40-minute piece but the album itself will almost certainly make my top 10.

It was that Powell didn't want to tour anymore, so for the 2018 tour they initially got Ralph Shuckett from the first, ultra prog edition of the band (which had played some shows in 2011, a lot of those guys hadn't played much in many years, particularly drummer Kevin Ellman, and so the band sounded geriatric): it was he who got sick, and so indeed todd's youngest son found this argentinean guy who had never heard of Utopia or Todd but aced the audition… I was a little disappointed that Powell wasn't there but it was a blast…I heard never heard "Rock Love" before this show; and so learning about a song that was constitutionally something I would go crazy for from one of my fave artists was every very meaningful…

Runddans is terrific and is def. in my top 10 favorite Todd records. I’m contemplating adding “Put Your Arms Around Me” to my song ballot. While not a song that really lives by itself on the album—it’s alluded to a bunch elsewhere on the album—it’s got a great melody and does have a stand-alone tracklisting.

Also, the remixes of it are pretty good:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TijVHrXvehc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j31aPOR0AZY

His own remix of Lindstrom is good too:

https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/tth1QdGNbNmWKNtj6

In other news, I watched the 2018 Live at the Chicago Theatre Utopia show which is streaming on Prime last night. It’s kind of the complete history of Utopia – over two hours, the first set is all prog and second all pop/new wave stuff. I honestly found it a bit much to take in – but it def. highlights some of the best Utopia pop stuff.

I’m listening to everything in chronological order starting from Runt (well, it remains to be seen how far into the 80s I get). Making a playlist of highlights (strictly one or two max per LP) and that will probably be my tracks ballot. Only way I’m going to realistically narrow things down.

Just got to Hammersmith Odeon ‘75 - wow, what a show, and I didn’t know Luther sang backing on these dates.

Same -- re. Hammersmith, apparently they had just lost Klingman and one of the other guys, so Todd felt they needed some vocal reinforcements. He could've done worse. That show is absolutely incredible.

Oh my, Disco Jets. So much fun. I hope no one thinks I’m trolling when this appears on my ballot.

the title track and "rising sun" are great.

just sent my ballot! there would have been a few more utopia songs but i excluded anything that wasn't 100% todd on lead vocals (not really sure why... the make compiling the ballot easier i guess)... "too much water" and "fix your gaze" are jams, though.

Four ballots so far

oh you're getting mine this week, my good man!

See below…some very informed 'n' insightful poster —was it frogbps?— said at some point that it's clear that Todd really wanted to make Utopia happen as his main thing… the band stuck with prog way way longer than anyone would have suggested they do (and yet, only Rush and maybe Kansas outrank them as the biggest North American prog act, who else comes to mind?) and then they hopped on every mainstream rock trend —corp-rock, new wave, Mutt lange/ Def Lepp pop-metal, and I absolutely love that they did just that— so that they would get as huge as Boston or Styx. and yet… the band slowly deflated, finishing up with a poorly attended tour in '86. Myers' book claims that after a very short while Bearsville didn't have any confidence in Utopia's commercial prospects and wanted him to focus on making pop hits under his own name, and that Willie Wilcox in particular was frustrated by his quixotic course changes…

The 70s were different, and maybe he was considered to have sufficient commercial standing, but it's still hard for me to take account of all the expense involved in the spectacle evidenced in this clip and to not wonder "who the fuck was going to finance a show with all this FX for a guy who didn't sell that many records?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krwnf_VVPQA

Jim Steinmann, that's who!

I definitely hear “don’t look back”-style vocal harmonies in some post-bearsville utopia stuff

thanks to you fellas mentioning the Hammersmith record, I was reminded to look on Spotify for all Todd/Utopia shit, which I hadn't done in a couple of years…

1. there's this thing which I forgot about called Box o' Todd which is Something/Ballad era performances… this is fairly different, in that the mid 70s onwards had been very well documented for live shows… I'm gonna listen to a lot of this stuff in the next couple days, but I doubt it's gonna change my ballot (my first ever as such for ILM)…

2. I really don't think there's any chance that the post 2nd wind shit could land on my ballot last minute…but if anyone would like to recommend a post 91 "Studio" record where he appears to be making an effort (other than the robert johnson one), please do… in the Myers book, he talks about how, being that he has been an early adopter way way way before anyone else, he has no nostalgia for the recording process of the 70s-80s, and is more than OK with recording his music on his laptop and I like that he's not a moldy fig, but that manner of recording is concurrent with him not putting much of himself into it, in my view…

3. as for Hammersmith thing, which does indeed sound fantastic, I wonder what Luther made of working with Todd or Bowie…he never struck me as someone who had much interest or curiosity in music beyond the rhythm and blues/soul canon… was it a paycheck, or was it "these guys might be weird but they know their Gamble and Huff up and down…"

I'm a huge Todd fan, and I consider "Liars" to be more than worthy of inclusion in the Rundgren Canon. Much of the album has a Balearic vibe, and the lyrics, particularly "God Said", are as cutting as ever. I've probably listened to this as much as Hermit or Healing over the years.

veronica, I will second the love for Liars, which is one of my favorite Todd records and absolutely his best post-Nearly Human release (tho Runddans isn’t too distant of a second). Those two releases have great (tho very different) electronic productions. Liars also has a number of classic Todd songs.

Here are two of my favorites:

Afterlife:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA5P4PAf1XM

God Said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkOIcCpVBZY

Also, I reviewed it here long ago.

that's a nice review. I think I might have read that back in the day and gotten very motivated to check it out but I never found a copy. I wish he'd reissue it.

I'll also rep for his 2013 album, State - not *quite* as good but it hits a lot of the same buttons. The songwriting on it is pretty strong. Didn't make my ballot but it would've been #11 (of course). Ultimately I think Todd's major issue post-2nd Wind is this insistence on doing everything himself...I guess that works when the trends of the time hit all your strong points (as they did in the 70's) but when he's using Logic to make dance music you really wish he'd just bring in a pro. All the preset drum patterns and synth effects make nearly all his output in the last 30 years sound like demos. Most confounding is on Arena, maybe his only honest-to-God rock album (?) which nevertheless insists on using canned drum and bass sounds, which just nerfs the entire thing. These tracks were great live, I could not believe what the album itself actually sounded like. It irritates me because I wanna rep for his late career stuff but it's hard to when he insists on kneecapping himself like this.

xp "Forget All About It" is one of the greatest of all time and probably my #1 Todd

xp Holy shit, the "Friday" cover is A+

I don't know enough Todd to pit in a ballot (Just AWATS and a few singles) but I taped this from the radio when I was a kid and listened to it a lot over the years without knowing what it was, just thinking it sounded awesome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bSaJ1KqqMA

Non-ILMer who I am leaning on to submit a ballot points me to this nugget from A Capella:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gC2bYtyGAWI

"you really wish he'd just bring in a pro."

I am listening to Runddans for the first time since 2015, and is the above not what he has done there? Don't really know of those guys, but they help him make what absolutely is a successor to A treatise on Cosmic Fire, it is replete with his harmonic signatures of that time… as such, on yr guys' recommendation I have listened to Liars —it just doesn't work for me— and I'm going to try to get to State, Arena, One Long Year and Global after listening to them once a few years ago, but I have no confidence that any other than Runddans is going to make any difference re: my ballot, for the reasons you guys have elucidated. Which is to say: he has always engaged with newer iterations of music after his peak era, and he's open to shit in ways that I penalize his close-minded peers for not being, it's expensive to make records the way they done in the 70-80s… but I just can't get with his shit in the last 30 years… and then there's all this archival live shit too! arrgh!

on yr guys' recommendation I have listened to Liars —it just doesn't work for me

NP, I appreciate the effort! And yes, Runddans is absolutely the successor to Treatise. Love that about him.

FWIW, this probably won't make my ballot from that record, but I love how XTC-ish the production and vocal arrangement on this one are:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pMhk8-lSNM

Eight ballots so far, including my own not-yet-submitted one.

Let me know if you need a little more time -- between getting my taxes done and other stuff, I'm more than happy to bump this out a little bit.

I would appreciate some more time!

since tuesday, my intention has been to listen to every record that I'm not familiar with…that's every Utopia record after Adventures and every solo record since 2nd Wind… I am not going to bother with Johnson, the Individualist, No World Order, With a Twist, and Reproduction, and am probably not going to get to POV… while this is due diligence and I strongly doubt that my ballot is gonna change, I am oddly enjoying listening to nothing but his unloved productions that he has done himself and his unloved records with his band that he wanted to so bad to happen but never quite did… I really thought that I would say "fuck, all this synth-y, Logic-enabled dad rock is too much, gotta check out Freddie Gibbs or something…" but I'm enjoying these records! He tried to respond to whatever was in the air at a particular time and was resolutely un-Keith richards/AC/DC-ish in so doing (although "Strike" on Arena is his AC/DC homage) … you'd think he would be the last person to say the dumb shit he said about Dionne Warwick and Fela…

Nothing from it made my ballot, but POV is worth hearing sooner or later, especially "Style" and "Stand for Something", good songs that make the most of what could be unsympathetic production.

never really liked anything on it (mostly due to the production, it sounds custom made for tape decks on a shitty car stereo) but I still bought it for a couple bucks because of the cover, featuring both a short-haired Todd (or is it in a ponytail you can't see?) and the awesome vintage Macintosh graphics on the back cover

I love/grew up with Trivia which really does combine the best tracks from their final years imo.

Yeah its a ponytail, frogbs, think he might have sported one in the “crybaby” video too? Too scared to look.

Veronica, with a twist is really great if you like sumptuous humid bossanova

I saw the "Crybaby" video late one night, probably in the 90s, and assumed that I had dreamed it. Especially Willie Wilcox's sci-fi drum setup.

xp I just listened to With A Twist for the first time today and I loved it. Can't believe I slept on it for so long. He really commits to the bossa nova practice of singing way behind/in front of the beat, and I think he pulls it off convincingly

Tho the picture on the (thankfully inner-)sleeve of him standing naked in the water is uhhhh

When people talk about "cursed" aesthetics I automatically think of Todd Rundgren album artwork post-1990

The artwork of Nearly Human in 1989 was actually banned in Japan for breaking a taboo about six-fingered hands!

dunno if I want to listen to it more than twice but I do appreciate him going all out on the concept. there's sort of a surreal atmosphere there and I don't know if it was intentional or if it's just Todd not quite knowing what he's doing

yeah, his visual aesthetic is dubious, regrettable… his album covers are indeed dreadful since 1991, but he also, never in his life really, cannot fucking dress well for any situation ever…

here's my hot take: every single one of his album covers are bad. some of the Utopia ones are alright.

Faithful is pretty good.

It is certainly minimal.

Not sure if anyone else feels this way but before deciding to run this poll, I was thinking that the biggest challenge was the sheer breadth of Todd’s catalogue – ie, that he’s written a ton of songs on a shit ton of records.

Now that I’m compiling a ballot, I’m finding that the challenge isn’t just the volume of material he has – but the volume of really good material.

For instance, if you submitted a whole ballot comprised exclusively of the Rhino Anthology tracks, you’d have a killer collection of super catchy but also super diverse material ...

Or if you submitted 3/4 of Something/Anything, you’d have an unbelievable collection of first-rate 70s confessional piano ballads, with a handful of acid rock, power pop and music hall tracks thrown in ...

OR if you even chose the majority of songs from a record like Hermit, or my personal hobby horse, Liars, you’d have a really strong ballot with incredible vocal performances, Philly soul tunes and other great things.

Yes he’s barfed out a lot of shit, especially since 1991. But I can’t think of too many other artists that have so many super quality songs and so little consensus on which are the “best.”

I think my ballot is going to lean toward diversity but there really are no wrong answers here, which is what makes this poll so exciting. But also really, really hard.

I would be a Rundgren fan even if he never recorded the 30 songs that made it to my ballot. I had to admit, though, that the richness of the classic era won out over the outlier songs for me. Still, I'm excited for the results, because I think we'll have a good mix of ballots from super-fans to those who just know the "hits".

he really does have a ton of top tunes, but the top 1/3-1/2 of my ballot is seriously transcendent for me

Hope to get my ballot in by Monday latest. Still going through everything chronologically. Latest curveball I’m going wow/wtf at: Deface The Music

Funny that I consider myself a Todd freak the highest order, yet I've not yet seriously dived into the catalogues of Utopia or the Nazz. I do find that I tend to prefer the Utopia of the early 80's to the 70's, Deface The Music and on, where the songs I am familiar with are more power pop and less prog.

Deface is an album only Todd could have made. Follows Utopia’s best selling release with a Beatles pastiche record released two months before Lennon is killed. His career in a nutshell.

Why don’t I start by extending the deadline to midnight Eastern Daylight Time on Wednesday, March 17th. If we need more, we can do that. I probably won’t be able to get things tallied and results started for a little bit anyway.

Does "Always Late" on Deface the Music remind anyone of a particular Beatles song? Since they're both sung by the drummer and have some lyrical ties, I always thought "Don't Pass Me By", but the music is more like a "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" type where Paul gets cute.

That would be great, NTI.

Even before John died Deface the Music was considered poor taste but afterwards it practically killed Utopias career

What’s even worse is that Mark David Chapman apparently flipped a coin to determine which of his two idols he should kill first. One was John Lennon and the other...was Todd Rundgren.

So the whole situation was basically an episode of Curb really

jesus

Ugh.

Came to post: No love for Woody's Truck Stop?

Eleven ballots so far. No spoilers and I haven’t calculated them as of yet but some nice diversity in these submissions. Let’s keep it going, Todd-o-philes!

Trying to get mine in by tomorrow. Revisiting Something/Anything, I'm reminded how much I love "One More Day (No Word)." It kind of gets lost in the shuffle of side 3 among some heavy hitters, but it's one of my favorites and feels very poignant these days

"Black Maria", "One More Day" and "Couldn't I Just Tell You" is a really strong run, even better than the first 3 songs on the album in my opinion

Recording a song like "Slut" would be a potential career-killer nowadays, but it's still a bangin' album closer.

“one more day” is great, beautiful middle 8

Can we talk about A Cappella some more? Even by Todd’s standards this is a singular record. It’s also very good. Particularly interested in its reception, which Wikipedia is silent on. It marks the start of a period of (relative) inactivity after, like, two albums a year including Utopia records. So I’m wondering if he was disappointed by the lack of reaction? Viewed from 2021, I can imagine a legit expectation that this would have been well regarded given there were plenty of records featuring voices sampled by Emulator around this time and shortly after. Maybe if Bearsville had let it come out in ‘84 it would be seen differently?

He writes lovingly about A Cappella in his memoir The Individualist, citing his frustration with Grossman sitting on it for a time then refusing to release it, but letting Todd out of his contract proving he (Grossman) gets a percentage on Todd's subsequent 3 albums. I think the next few years saw Rundgren getting more and more preoccupied with computers/software/coding, which would explain the relative dearth of musical output during that time.

yeah a capella is wild... like, the semi-industrial feel of eg blue orpheus / lockjaw... “miracle in the bazaar” into “lockjaw” used to scare the crap out of me as a kid.

"Slut" is a bilingual pun; as Bergman fans know, it means "End" in Swedish, Todd's heritage.

Like the end of Finding Nemo

Any chance we could have until the end of the week. After the metal poll and Xenakis listening, I'm just starting to dig into Todd listening. Finding Something/Anything enervating as a whole album but Wizard is even better than I remembered. I want to vote for every track.

I don't really know enough to vote but could cram if the deadline were extended a bit.

Is there an, um, playlist?

The time changes in "Is It My Name?"

Is "Can We Still Be Friends" supposed to sound like Carole King?

Ah, there is too much here. I will just have to rubberneck.

Ride shotgun.

Kibitz

Happy to extend this further. How about Deadline is midnight Eastern Daylight Time on Sunday, March 21st, 2021?

Sounds good to me

Can try. Still a lot of stuff to even make a dent in.

Is "Can We Still Be Friends" supposed to sound like Carole King?

Probably. In the S/A liner notes he says "I Saw The Light" is a Carole homage.

Ah, there is too much here. I will just have to rubberneck.

The Very Best of will be well-represented on my ballot.

Okay, thanks for the encouragement, NTI. Think I will try to do this, this is exactly the kind of poll I like. Will elaborate in a bit

If and when I emerge from this rabbit hole.

“Never Never Land”?

TIC TIC TIC

now that I've been mainlining Todd for a week I kinda want to re-do my poll, damn he's got a lot of great tracks

A lot of those great tracks I felt I was taking care of in my album rankings. "This song is very good, but it's best in the album context."

The Very Best of will be well-represented on my ballot.

It's as good as a single CD can be. The two-CD Rhino Anthology is excellent, but unlike Very Best of, there's no Utopia tracks - just a handful (and there should be space on those discs) would have made it a perfect compilation.

I had a hard time going deep into the catalogue and selecting tracks that aren't on the Go Ahead. Ignore Me. comp.

Anyone stanning for Todd’s Johnson, or whatever it’s called?

Oh I see a lot of negative comments about it upthread

TS: Todd's Johnson vs. Clapton's Mr. Johnson

Just got to the R&B medley that is the penultimate song on A Wizard, a True Star

Wait not penultimate sorry

"Cool Jerk" arranged in 7/4 time makes that medley for me.

Listening to that medley now reminds me that Todd needs to revisit that record in 5.1. Liars was awesome in surround, but I think my mind might explode hearing AWOTS come out of surround speakers.

Fourteen ballots so far, BTW ...

frogbs, if you want to re-do your poll, go ahead. I had a friend (and sometime ILM-er) Save The Robot school me in the ways of spreadsheets and am feeling ahead of the game -- and I have everybody's ballots filled in by name, so it wouldn't be difficult to swap it out.

real underrated tune on that LP is "I Don't Want to Tie You Down" which has some pretty weird astral synth going off in the background, makes it sound like the walls are moving or something

oh damn alright I might do that

OMG, I was just writing this:

Ok, since we all love Todd and the piano, here's a song from a classic album of his that I still somehow managed to completely whiff on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXr2zrnEJ6I

Assuming that's Moogy Klingman on piano, as it sounds like Never Never Land, which he also did. But holy shit, what a song.

One thing I think gets overlooked with Todd is what a wonderful lyricist he is. Never obvious but simply and directly, he manages to pull off that rare feat of being soulful and uplifting but never mawkish. He also does ambivalence and self doubt which I can’t recall many other writers doing. I’m sure there a few missteps lurking but in the main one of my lyrical heroes.

I like it when Rundgren imitates Brian Wilson, like 'Marlene' from Something/Anything or Fade Away from Hermit of Mink Hollow.

"Love between the ugly is the most beautiful love of all"

"Marlene" is getting a vote from me.

alright here's another song I'm gonna rep for. as I've mentioned my Dad used to play Todd songs on the piano all the time when I was a kid...of course I didn't realize until 20 years later what they were (I kinda thought he wrote them all?). so this song always sends a little shiver down my back. but I think it really is great, one of the prettiest songs in his catalogue. I've since learned to play it myself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8zEhIH86Ps

Just missed the cut on my poll but I agree it’s gorgeous

I can’t seem to draw a bead on this guy.

Boat on the Charles is my favourite Todd song on my favourite Todd album.

So, my travels yesterday took me to a small hamlet in the Catskills, and without even realizing it, the GPS directions sent me right through Woodstock, where the Bearsville logo was all over the place, identifying a cluster of buildings (the largest one said "Utopia" on it.) Seems like maybe there are studio tours and such? I wasn't able to stop, but will definitely do so next time I'm in that neck of the woods.

There’s a ton of stuff about Todd and, of course, Albert Grossman in a book Barney Hoskyns wrote about Woodstock and its environs, Small Town Talk.

Yes! I read that book and wished I had that inside-the-cover map in it yesterday.

totally forgot Robert Palmer had done a cover of Can We Still Be Friends when i put on his Secrets lp today. nice version of it too... and now wikipedia is telling me i have a Rod Stewart version to listen to as well... which is totally synthtastic and on which he sounds like... Tina Turner?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y93R-Ddbl4

Hey, all ... the deadline is Sunday. Who else is planning on sending in a ballot? Just trying to get a sense of how many more to expect.

For anyone even thinking of listening to the Rod Stewart cover...just don’t...I’ve now taken to my bed for a few days

Just was thinking about listening to a Rod Stewart cover of something else, some standard, "My One and Only Love" maybe, but didn't.

I am going to try to put together some kind of ballot *crosses fingers*

I could put together a very short ballot -- 5 to 10 places.

Guys, while you are here, hope I am not interrupting but is there any interest in doing a POLL on Loudon Wainwright III one of these days?

Ballots of all shapes and sizes are welcome!

(as are polls for LW3 -- I would absolutely do a ballot for that)

(Thanks. Please remind me, is there a meta-thread where I can get in the queue for that? Maybe I can run it)

I won't participate but I'm here to aver that Forever Now is wonderful.

XP ILM Ballot Polls for 2020 and beyond -- the ordering, timing, "I would have voted if I'd known about it," etc

Thanks!

Wow, I think I only listened to Runt. The Ballad... once a long time ago. It's really solid.

I haven't got as much listening time in as I hoped I would this week but I will also revisit the first Utopia album before making my ballot.

I'm doing one, will send it tomorrow if not tonight

My ballot will be sent today (def this time)

Voted my little vote.

Anyone read the book by Mike Myers’s brother?

I did, and there are a couple of posts that reference it above. It's probably a better read than Rundgren's own book from a couple of years ago. I think Paul Myers' blog has "outtakes" and extra interview material from the book if you want a sample of his style.

I really enjoyed the Myers book. Todd participated in it as did a number of artists he worked with, which gives you a really good sense of what it was like to work with him. Perhaps understandably Myers rushed a bit more through the post-Nearly Human era but the details on the productions like Skylarking were awesome.

Did you know about his Emitt Rhodes connection?

No. What is it?

Not 100% sure. He wrote an article about him, maybe about Rainbow Ends and then became pals with him at some level. There are various photos of them together and he sang backup on some latter day recording, maybe Emitt’s cover of “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart.”

The man has good taste, I’ll say that.

All right, I'm giving a final listen to "The Ikon" and then hammering this out.

sent

I’m still racing through the discography like something... something very fast... can’t seem to think of a handy metaphor for that.

Except for familiar or obvious hits and the Robert Johnson material nothing is particularly outstanding or bad. If I had heard this stuff on the radio or had bought the physical media back in the day and absorbed it properly might think differently.

GFR version of “The Loco-Motion” certainly burned in some recess of my brain, though.

^^^one of the first records I ever bought, I guess Todd was worming his way into my brain years before I knew who he was.

tic, tic, tic

The Vanilla Sky soundtrack is showing up in Wikipedia under its Albums Produced By Todd Rundgren rubric but presumably that’s just because one of his songs is on it, “Can We Still Be Friends,” I think.

Paul Myers also had a hand in some book about Power Pop which looks interesting. I recently joined a somewhat fractious private group on a social media which discusses Power Pop, maybe one other ILX0r is on it along with a few other people I know. I ignore most of the discussion but every once in a while something interesting pops up.

Okay, trying to finalize my ballot

Will votes for International Feel and Le Feel Internacionale be combined? I'm sure no-one's likely to vote for the latter so probably irrelevant. Going on a one-Todd-album-per-day kick to stop myself just voting for all of A Wizard, A True Star (minus the soul medley).

Finally sent *phew* Please let me know if you received or not.

I sort of took my approach to my Replacements ballot and turbocharged it.

Received!

Who else is thinking of submitting one?

Hmm. Paul Myers identifies himself as a songwriter in the intro to the Power Pop book but I am unfamiliar with his work in that line.

Oh, a Canadian alternative band. Perhaps a few of you remember this number:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpTrRAsAJvY

Sent

Not sure how the Dumb & Dumber soundtrack could potentially fit into this but it probably does

blessed image pic.twitter.com/Ipx8z0Lt5M

— Nate Rogers (@Nate_Rgrs) March 22, 2021

that part with the wordless vocals in “can we still be friends” is amazing

I'm positive I first heard that song in D&D.

Too bad, I mean good thing I already submitted my ballot.

Dumb And Dumber is how I got into Todd Rundgren

.

I watched that film a lot with my sister and "Can We Still Be friends" grew on me enough that I really wanted whatever album it was on.

I know I had heard "I Saw the Light" and "Hello It's Me" on AM radio, but I got into Rundgren when I bought Something/Anything not long after it was in the Rolling Stone Best of 1967-1987 issue.

Has everyone gotten their ballot in? There was a nice rush at the end, which should make things fun.

I am done and don't want to tinker.

Still room for me to do one in the next hour?

My lady and I had I Saw The Light playing as the final song at our wedding :D

sent, apologies if it's too late

Nope, all good.

almost voted for this, but ultimately didn't because it's not really that great a cover. still it's the sort of thing that makes Todd forever cool in my book.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VdoGbeG3JI

actually here's something even better - a cover of a fairly obscure Yukihiro Takahashi song. "Technopolis" is pretty well known but doing a YT tune from 1990 has to mean you're a real fan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNP72efeZk8

Whoa cool!!!!

Tic, tic, tic....

Boom:

Sometimes I Don't Know What to Poll: ILM Artist Poll #107 - Todd Rundgren - RESULTS

(rollout should start sometime tomorrow morning)

"Not Tonight"

Results for productions rolling out now ...