BACK TO THE BARS

Todd Rundgren is an exceptional songwriter, a great producer, and wonderful musician. But strangely enough, despite having a solo career for four decades, he only has one live album. Sure, his band Utopia has a number of live albums, which include a few of his solo compositions, but this is the only album to primarily feature his solo works.

The album features most of Todd's hits up to 1978, when the album was released (thankfully, this was before the awful Bang The Drum), so it has a fine array of great pop songs. There are also a few of his harder rocking songs, like Love In Action (a Utopia song, that has some pretty funny lyrics), Black And White, and a favorite of mine Black Maria.

There is a smattering of Todd's progressive songs as well. Don't You Ever Learn? and Zen Archer are both light prog, but sound great in these live performances. Eastern Intrigue, with it's layered vocals, is just spectacular, and Initiation comes off well, too.

The band is top notch, mostly consisting of different groupings of Utopia musicians, with the Hello People (Todd's touring band for his solo material for much of the seventies) as well. There are other stars appearing on the album, also, but most of them, like Stevie Nicks and Hall & Oates, are just singing on the finale, Hello, It's Me.