A Wizard, A True Star & Todd [Collector's Edition]

Never Never Land:

Todd's fourth solo album A Wizard, A True Star was first released in March 1973 on Bearsville Records. It marked a dramatic shift in styles for Todd with the entire album performed with songs mostly flowing in and out of each other with some being very short interludes. The album has more of a trippy feel do to the drugs Todd was using when putting this album together. Some fans and critics were put off by this album but it's actually quite excellent.

The first half starts off with a cool piece entitled International Feel giving way to Todd's far out cover of Never Never Land. The instrumental Tic Tic Tic It Wears Off is quite fun and jumps into a couple of short hard rock numbers. Dogfight Giggle/You Don't Have To Camp Around is fun. It's here where we get a very brief break before the beautiful Flamingo/Zen Archer. The first half concluded with Just Another Onionhead/Dada Dali/Sunset Blvd. and rapping up with Le Feel Internationale which is a continuation of International Feel. The second half starts with the cool Sometimes I Don't Know What To Feel. The second half continues in the spirit of the first with classics like a Medley: I'm So Proud / Ooh Baby Baby / La La Means I Love You / Cool Jerk, I Don't Want To Tie You Down, Is It My Name? and one of Todd's most well known songs Just One Victory.

The Spark Of Life:

Todd's fifth solo album and second two record set, simply called Todd, was first released in February 1974 and features Todd's growing interest in synthesizers. This is a great Todd album with most of the songs being classics. What a great set list: I Think You Know/The Spark Of Life, An Elpee's Worth Of Tunes, A Dream Goes On Forever, The Last Ride, Everybody's Going To Heaven/King Kong Reggae, Useless Begging/Sidewalk Cafe/Izzat Love, Heavy Metal Kids, and Don't You Ever Learn all being highlights. The basic track for Sons Of 1984 was recorded at the first Utopia concert in Central Park. Many of the songs on here would become concert staples for Utopia in the '70's. Bonus Tracks are Ooh Baby Baby, A Dream goes On Forever, and Do Ya which had previously been released on Somewhere/Anywhere. There's a nice booklet and the remastering with this release wonderful!

I am a big fan of Todd since 1974. These are two of his best. Rated 5 stars for the albums themselves, however the sound quality is not as clear as the Rundgren releases that were on the Rhino label. There are parts that are extremely distorted compared to the Rhino versions. I was hoping for an upgrade from THOSE versions but that's not the case. It's worse! I own the Edsel release of Runt/Runt: The Ballad Of Todd Rundgren and found them to have pretty good sound quality (not included the alternate tracks from Runt). Edsel did a great job on the Three Dog Night catalog..what happened here? I am now hesitant to purchase any more Edsel Todd Rundgren re-issues.

I was 15 or 16 when I purchased my first Todd Rundgren album. My trip into Todd's world began with a trip of Todd's own, the insane and wonderful "A Wizard, A True Star." I remember picking it out because it had a bunch of songs on it with a bunch of crazy titles, and that cover artwork sure made it look like it was going to be a good time.

At this point, I wasn't familiar with any of Todd's previous three albums, so hearing this in comparison to those later on (especially Something/Anything?) wasn't a shock at all compared to folks who may have gone the other route. I remember upon first listening, all I could think was, "Wow, this really has a lot going on in the mix!" Just trying to soak in the entirety of everything colliding in "International Feel" was an event unto itself.

I admired the madness right off the bat. "Tic Tic Tic It Wears Off" sounded exactly like what I thought weird, spacey '70s silliness should sound like. The blistering of "You Need Your Head" and "Rock and Roll Pussy" (Rundgren's swell ode to John Lennon) made perfect sense when they gave way to "Dogfight Giggle" and the sweet pop of "You Don't Have to Camp Around," at least in my mind. It was like this big puzzle in which you discovered something new every time you listened to it.

And that crazy production was just absolutely thick. Layer upon layer of sound and instrumentation that didn't really give way until the opener on side two, "Sometimes I Don't Know What to Feel." It was, in effect, an acid trip caught on tape. But unlike so many trips that other artists had try to capture in the studio, Todd nailed it perfectly, while experimenting with various psychedelics during the recording process and installation of his Secret Sound recording studio.

A Wizard, A True Star is one of those albums that just needs to be heard to be understood. You don't have to have ever taken any drugs to enjoy it. It's unlike anything else that came out in 1973. And yet Todd followed it up, solo-wise with the even more oddball Todd double LP.

Todd is one of those albums that seems disappointing upon first discovery. It's not as insane as its predecessor, yet it's not a rehashing of the Something/Anything? formula, either. It's kind of a mix of the two, yet at the same time creating another all-new path, if that makes any sense. It's filled with synthesizers and plenty of instrumental experiments. These basically fall into the categories of skull-splitting ("In and Out of the Chakras We Go") or instantly lovely ("Sidewalk Cafe"). Both succeed on their own merits once again. You can literally hear Todd discovering his keyboards and all the tricks they can play as you listen to these tunes.

Lyrically, Todd was showing off his dissatisfaction of the record industry ("An Elpee's Worth of Toons"), his penchant for not only writing catchy love tunes ("Izzat Love?"), but also sex-related songs as well ("Number One Lowest Common Denominator," which features his greatest Hendrix impression), and still leaves room for heavy rock ("Everybody's Going to Heaven/King Kong Reggae"), Gilbert and Sullivan ("Lord Chancellor's Nightmare Song"), and an anthem ("Sons of 1984"). It was everything and the entire kitchen, let alone the sink. It tends to divide some fans, but has certainly been a favorite of mine since becoming a fan.

This was the point where Todd started recording more music than was easily fit onto a single LP. A Wizard, A True Star pushed the limits hovering in at just under an hour, while Todd became Rundgren's second double LP (it was released during an oil shortage in the US, so was delayed a bit, which seems funny considering ever-popular band Chicago was still releasing double, triple, and quadruple albums at around the same time). A Wizard was a victim of compressed production on the original LP. The Rhino reissue corrected that problem, but I'll still side with the Edsel remaster here. It's not entirely different from the Rhino version but there is enough nuance to notice in comparison. There's just so much going on in that album that I'm not sure if there could ever be some sort of "ultimate" version that didn't sound at the very least crowded in places.

The Todd album sounds great all around. The copies I heard on original LP as well as my Rhino tape and CD versions always sounded a little muddy, giving some credence to the brown backdrop featured behind poor forlorn Todd on the cover art. On the Edsel version, everything's been brought on nice and clear. It definitely sounds livelier and less two-dimensional as on the previous versions. And again, there's plenty of great info on the inside to read about each album. My only complaint is that the lyrics for AWATS are printed in a neon red against a blue background, making them hard to read. This wasn't the case on the Rhino version, but hey, we're hear for the music, right?