I had intended the Todd 50th anniversary post to be my last for a while-in fact I had written and scheduled that to post almost a year ago.
However, this seemed important enough to share.
Todd Rundgren is on the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame ballot for 2019, and fans get the opportunity to influence the outcome.
From his production work to his signature tunes to the number of RNR Hall of Famers who name him as an influence, Todd certainly has had an impact on rock and roll, and deserved to be enshrined before the hip hop (?) artists that beat him in there.
If you feel the same, then case your vote! You can cast a vote daily HERE from now until December 9.
This month marks Todd Rundgren's fiftieth year as a recording artist, with the self-titled debut album by Nazz being released in October 1968.
The album was not commercially successful and neither was
the first single, "Open My Eyes."
In Boston WMEX Music Director and DJ Ron Robin accidentally
played the flip side, “Hello It’s Me,” liked it, and added it to the station's
playlist. Reaction was strong and "Hello It's Me" became a number one
hit at WMEX in 1968.
Several weeks later it was on the playlist of Boston's other
Top 40 radio station WRKO and eventually at other stations across the country.
The band recorded a follow-up which was intended to be a double album but was later shortened to a single record. Rundgren wrote most of the songs and sang lead vocals on much of the material, although tracks with Stewkey Antoni lead vocals were featured heavily on the album that was released, cleverly titled Nazz Nazz.
Rundgren left the band shortly after the follow up was released, and went to work in record production before finding success as a solo artist, first with "We Gotta Get You A Woman" and then with a cover of his own song from the first Nazz record, "Hello It's Me." A third album (Nazz III) was released without the band's consent, replacing Rundgren's vocals with Antoni's.
File this post under "I am turning into my parents."
As we near the end of the second decade of the new millennium, it occurs to me that many of the songs I grew up on are meaningless to today's young people because they reference technology that has gone the way of the dinosaur.
Here are some that come to mind...
"THE LETTER"
Ah, the love letter. Brought to you by the USPS. Who remembers the last time they saw either of them?
"The Letter" was first recorded by the Box Tops, but it was stolen by English rock and soul singer Joe Cocker whose 1970 rendition
became his first top ten single in the U.S.
“My baby just sent me a text” just doesn’t have the same
ring.
“PHOTOGRAPH”
Remember when photographs cost money to develop and were precious?
"Photograph" was the
lead single from the band's third studio album (Pyromania), it reached No. 1 on
the Billboard Top Tracks chart and No. 12 on the Pop Singles chart.
Now, all the singer has is a .jpg on their phone.
“STAR 69”
Although it seems laughably low-tech these days, the pre-caller-ID world enjoyed a
powerful weapon in the battle against prank callers-the ability
to dial back whoever just called you by typing *69.
The chorus spells out this technological
wonder: “I know you called, I know you called / I know you hung up my line, star
69.”
“WESTERN UNION”
While it may still be possible to send a telegram, it’s
inconvenient and expensive, especially when compared to how cheap it is to give
someone else in the U.S. a call or send them an e-mail (or a Skype, a tweet, a Facebook post).
The Five Americans’ “Western Union” was all about reaching
the singer’s girl when a phone call just wouldn’t do, and was already charmingly
quaint by the early seventies.
“MIXTAPE”
It’s sad to think that today’s emo youth have never known
the joy of making an actual mix-tape (or a burned mix CD).
The tape medium was dead,
and CD’s were starting to gasp for breath, by the time Butch Walker released
this tune in 2005.
“You gave me a playlist” does not really tug at the heart strings the same way.
"BIG TEN INCH RECORD"
Some may argue that the record is alive, but CD's still outsell vinyl records by ten to one and everyone is calling the CD dead....
Of course, we all know this song isn't really about records anyway, right?
“THE ANSWERING MACHINE”
Marillion
released this tune in the late 1990’s, by which time answering machines were
already old news.
Now everyone
has multiple voice mail accounts (home, cellular, work), and pretty much does
all communicating via text or Twitter, so the concept of “my words were
absorbed
Into the
answering machine” is lost on today’s young people.
”UHF”
Here’s a history lesson, kids. The television dial used to
only have channels 2 to 13. Then, we got the mysterious “U” and explored the
wilderness of numbers from 14 through 69.
For most people, the
UHF band of the TV dial had only a handful of local stations, but for kids it meant going from three to seven channels AND cartoons after school.
And most of us were happy….continued below
“57 CHANNELS AND NOTHIN’
ON”
Most were happy but not Bruce.
Most would agree that the Boss lost his way with this one-can you
believe this was a single?
The lyric uses cable TV as a metaphor for the
emptiness of his newfound Hollywood lifestyle, although a cable package with
only 57 channels hardly seems luxurious enough for a man who “bought a
bourgeois house in the Hollywood hills with a truckload of
hundred-thousand-dollar bills.”
These days, you can scroll through 57 channels in less than ten
seconds, and you’d be able to upgrade your digital television package in about
the same amount of time.
“KODACHROME”
This song was an examination of the fallibility of memory, and
now Kodachrome is itself merely a memory, a relic of the era before hi-res cell phones.
I am getting nostalgic for the days when my view at a
concert was not blocked by a tapestry of iPhones.
“VIDEO KILLED THE RADIO STAR”
And it did. This was the first video ever played on MTV, and radio started to die right about then.
For the next decade, we went from talking about records to talking about videos.
And then twenty years of generic music killed
the video star, and now streaming rules and it’s all pretty much electronica that’s being streamed.
“HANGING ON THE TELEPHONE”
I felt this Blondie tune was worth an honorable mention
since I always thought she was on a pay phone in this one…and when is the last
time you saw a pay phone?
"OLD RECORDS NEVER DIE"
It seemed appropriate to wrap it up with this Ian Hunter tune-since the title is correct-if it was a good song then, it's a good song now.
Spock’s Beard
have announced that their 13th studio album, Noise Floor will be released on May 25.
The lineup of
Ted Leonard, Alan Morse, Dave Meros and Ryo Okumoto will be joined by drummer
and original band member Nick D’Virgilio, who left the band in 2011.
Vocalist and
guitarist Ted Leonard, says: “We are always about evolution, not revolution.
But what we have done this time is make the songs more melodic.
“We still
love our crazy prog, but now appreciate how important it is to grab people's
attention early on.”
As for the
recording process behind Noise Floor, Leonard says: “We all do this type of
thing in our home studios. So, by the time they reach the stage where the
entire band get to judge them, they are really developed, and therefore
everyone can make a reasoned judgement.”
The album
will also feature two violinists, a cello player, a viola player and an English
horn, which is said to give Noise Floor a “slightly more evocative and
persuasive twist.”
The album
will be released on CD, LP, and on digital platforms.
Specifically his ’70s progressive rock group Utopia, for a spring tour.
The band started as a larger ensemble and ended up as a four piece from 1977 through 1985, and the four piece incarnation achieved the greatest exposure, including their sole top 40 hit, “Set Me Free.”
Fans have been asking for a reunion since the band’s last tour in 1985, but save for a few shows in Japan in 1992, the fans have had to wait.
The wait is over!
The lineup this time features bassist Kasim Sulton, drummer Willie Wilcox and keyboardist Ralph Shuckett.
Friday Music is reissuing the band's material in a box set complete with bonus tracks-available in the Friday Music store.
Rock Ignition is a hard rock band from Germany founded in
2006 by professional dancer and ex-Kamelot background vocalist Heather Shockley
and Silent Force/Sons of Seasons/Headstone Epitaph bassist Jürgen Steinmetz.
Influenced by hard rock acts like Skid Row, Whitesnake, and Vixen, their 2007 debut EP,
"I Can't Resist". is not hard to find and a collector's item for fans of the AOR genre.
