It is odd that Todd Rundgren is best known for that catchy tribute to distraction, "Bang the Drum All Day." Because, as the cult of fans who have followed him since Runt in 1970 know, Rundgren has been a role model for workaholics. It is hard to list the number of careers he has maintained, often simultaneously, over the years. Among them: legendary producer, engineer and arranger (New York Dolls, Meatloaf, Patti Smith, XTC); band leader (Utopia); soundtrack composer (Dumb and Dumber); and of course, prolific solo artist.
Rundgren was also a music video pioneer, experimenting with enhanced CDs, as well as being an Internet entrepreneur years before the rest of the music business. Back around 1996, Rundgren was a founder of PatroNet, which allowed users to get music directly from his website: in retrospect, a precursor to file sharing.
Being at the cutting edge, Rundgren was among the first to discover the obstinancy of labels in dealing with electronicly distributed music. He now takes pleasure in the downfall of the music industry.
"Ten years ago, I started to become aware of new possibilities in the way that music can be delivered. I was even contracted to build a demonstration of on-demand music services for an experimental wired community in Orlando. That project has since folded," he says. "But the idea was the same as what people are doing now, and what they've done since they discovered Napster. They find the music they want to hear, and use the Internet to deliver it to them.
"We went to every single label 10 years ago, because we needed to have music for our service, and not a single label would allow their music to be put on the server," Rundgren continues. "So, the position that [the labels] are in right now is all their own fault. They had plenty of warning that these new technologies were going to change the way that music was distributed. But they just didn't want to think about it. Now, control has been taken out of their hands, and they are whining about it like babies. The point is that the industry which pretends to represent artists never really did. It just inserted itself between artists and their audiences. I think the whole system as it stands now should collapse."
Rundgren's interest in new technology also had an affect on the music he made, particularly in 1994 when he began recording using the moniker TR-i, for Todd Rundgren interactive. Touring as TR-i, Rundgren appeared in a cage-like contraption, surrounded by high-tech computers, equipment and video monitors. Instead of using a band, the audience was invited to interact—at times playing guitars and percussion—in the shows' construction.
This time out, Rundgren is opting for a simpler approach to the solo show.
"I pick up the guitar, and the sound comes out of it. I start yodeling along, and there you have it," he states. "I've been doing this solo presentation since February. It is similar to a show that I used to do a lot in the '80s—in between the time Utopia broke up and the time I put together my so-called big band—I did a lot of experimenting with some smaller shows. If this one has any substantive difference, there's less equipment nowadays than there used to be. Otherwise, it is a look at the material I've written throughout my recording career. It is not promoting any single record or anything like that. This is a chance for people to hear me do material that I normally don't do when I'm out with some presentation concept. I will pretty much guarantee that they will get to hear those songs that I rarely play."
That means that fans will likely get to hear the beautiful ballads like "Hello, It's Me," "Can We Still Be Friends," "I Saw the Light" and "We Gotta Get You a Woman" that have always embodied the very human soul at the core of Rundgren's most far-out technological explorations.