Todd Rundgren 6: Todd

What do you do when you’re a critic’s darling with a rabid fan base and multicolored hair? Put out another two-record set, your second in two years, loaded with a baffling combination of power pop, pretty ballads and total mindwarps. Todd is certainly overindulgent (67 minutes on four sides, but there’s still muddy sound and sure, some of the instrumentals could have been edited) but with a little more variety than A Wizard, A True Star. His synthesizer use is much more advanced, and as something of a thank you to those who met the challenge “I just want to see if you’ll put up with me”, not only does the closing track sport full audience participation, but thousands of people who sent in postcards included in the previous album could find their names on the enclosed poster. What a guy.

“How About A Little Fanfare?” is just that—a brief intro to the next song, with synth and the plane effects from “International Feel”. “I Think You Know” is a spacey song on a lot of levels, with nods to Electric Ladyland, going right into “The Spark Of Life”, a long but worthy instrumental that works, especially in the Hendrix context. The lead instrument seems to be a combination of a synth, a guitar and a voice, a sound soon to be appropriated by Prince. Some call “An Elpee’s Worth Of Toons” a Gilbert & Sullivan pastiche; we compare it to “Surrey With The Fringe On Top”, and unfortunately any redeeming qualities are sunk by the “what’s the problem sonny” section. “A Dream Goes On Forever” is the token pop song people were hoping for right in the middle of side one, while the overdramatic “Lord Chancellor’s Nightmare Song” is a bona fide Gilbert & Sullivan song.

Side two begins with “Drunken Blue Rooster”, another classical-inspired instrumental that doesn’t seem like much, but gains points compared to some of the experiments to come. “The Last Ride” is an actual song, slow and pretty with a big epic sound. “Everybody’s Going to Heaven/King Kong Reggae” is a multi-part rocker with lots of guitar, punctured by the stupid ending.

The third side kicks off with “No. 1 Lowest Common Denominator”, an overblown Hendrix-style song about sex, with a stupid “poem” section, but again, we hear hints of Prince’s psychedelic period. Luckily it’s redeemed by the suite from the pretty “Useless Begging” through “Sidewalk Café”, an unnecessary but effective instrumental link to “Izzat Love?”, a bouncy pop song that sounds like it’s speeding up and slowing down within each bar. A glorious tape effect ends the track to go into “Heavy Metal Kids”, a snotty cross between “Little Red Lights” and “Slut”, and not far from “Cat Scratch Fever”.

Side four truly tries your patience with a long Moog experiment, with indecipherable vocals halfway through, before an intro right out of The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway heralds “Don’t You Ever Learn?” (We hear foreshadowings of Prince here too.) If you’re looking for a beautiful song about karma slash reincarnation, look no further. But wait! The grand finale “Sons Of 1984” was recorded mostly live with one audience singing along in one speaker, and another audience overdubbed in another speaker. An inspirational album closer on par with “Just One Victory”.

Once again, with just a little objective editing, Todd could have been an amazing single LP, but the guy just had too many ideas he needed to get out. Perhaps those less-than-satisfying moments help us appreciate those moments of musical gold all the more. Soon enough he’d find other outlets on which his expanding mind could splatter itself, yet he’d still continue to blur the line of expectation.

Todd Rundgren Todd (1974)—3