Todd Rundgren -- "Parallel Lines" (1989) and "Not Tonight" with The New Cars (2004)

Back in college, the zaftig music editor of the school paper used to sneer "Todd is God." She may have had something there, although I wish it wouldn't have come from her.

Rundgren's life as a pop and rock music chameleon and jack of all trades never seems to get its proper due. He probably could have cruised for years cranking out surefire little pop ditties like "Hello It's Me" and "I Saw The Light." But then he'd make a complete left turn and do something nuts like his album Faithful, which was like his musical version of Gus Van Sant's shot-by-shot remake of "Psycho," except he did note for note copies of the Beach Boys "Good Vibrations" and The Beatles' "Rain." Or his 20-minute electronic drone excursion that occupied the entire second side of 1981's Healing.

Let's not forget Todd the maniacal producer, who made commercial gold out of Grand Funk Railroad, Meat Loaf, Patti Smith, The Psychedelic Furs, Cheap Trick, The Tubes, XTC and others. That's a whole other blog entry.

After wandering off the beaten track commercially for much of the 80's, Rundgren pulled another one of his outstanding pop gems out of a hat when he assembled a huge set of musicians and singers in the studio and cut the Nearly Human album live. Always introspective, soulful and taking an unvarnished look at the human condition, Rundgren melded amazing hooks with his vocal arrangement mastery to tackle singular obsession ("The Want of a Nail"), child abuse ("Unloved Children") and the mind games between lovers (the exuberant "The Waiting Game").

The production was quite grand, rivaling the one on Bat Out of Hell, but certainly more impressive that it was all done live in studio. Unfortunately, the CD mastering was aggressively compressed, which flattens the dynamics of the many instruments and vocals used in the album.

Coming in my final months at Radio City Music Hall, I finagled tickets to see Rundgren and the whole original band on his album tour stop at The Ritz venue. The place was packed, the Todd is God groupies were out, and they blew the roof off with a horn section, an extended group of musicians and background singers.

However, one special song stands out from that record, from a forgotten theater project Rundgren that came and went when Nearly Human came out -- a musical version of playwright Joe Orton's never-used Beatles movie script "Up Against It." "Parallel Lines" is is a searing sad mid-tempo ballad about how certain relationships are never meant to happen, given a layered pop treatment on the album. I particular love the fact that each of the verses' last lines is completed in the choruses.

Kindred spirits moving along the spiral
I can see you up on another level
It's too great a fall
And I can't reach you to pull me higher
But I don't seem to get much closer or any more far
What would you tell me, if I could hear you speaking?
If you could touch me, how would I know the feeling?
I just can't imagine
But I try to do it anyway
I wish I was moving faster, I wish you'd drift back
But it just wasn't meant to happen
Very soon I'll have to...

Face the fact
Some things never come together
Parallel lines running on forever
And you can't turn back
There is never any starting over
Parallel lines never do cross over

From this classic personal project, Rundgren had no problems doing what may be called "crass sell out" gigs, something that almost seemed antithetical to his usual anti-corporate banter. Yes, he did the Ringo Starr & His All-Stars Tour, but even more fascinating was jumping into the Ric Ocasek role when some of the remaining Cars reunited to record and tour to cash in on New Wave nostalgia in 2007.

I thought it was musical heresy when guitarist Elliot Easton and keyboardist Greg Hawkes hooked up with Rundgren to record a couple of Cars-clone songs and then tour as The New Cars. Rundgren recruited his old Utopia mates Kasim Sulton and Prairie Prince to join on what was an obvious way to pocket some easy cash. Original Cars bassist Benjamin Orr had passed away, and both drummer David Robinson and Ocasek wanted nothing to do with the deal.

You have to admire Rundgren for taking some of that Faithful magic and writing a song that sounded remarkably like an Ocasek number and even produced like one, almost a loving parody. The drone-ish clipped vocals, sarcastic, obtuse lyrics -- all there.

Below are two very different version of "Parallel Lines" -- the first is a stripped-down slow and moving rendition from the TV show "Night Music," followed by the tour band performing the album arrangement live in Japan. And then The New Cars, on "The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson."

The KLF -- "What Time is Love?" (1988)

Reloading a new terabyte external drive drive in my production studio tonight, I clicked on a bubbling synth bass loop on a disc called "Psychedelic Trance and Goa," rippling so fast, reminding me of one of the UK's pioneering acid house hits, "What Time is Love."

The KLF, to the average American, means practically nada. In the UK, they were complete chart domination in the late 80's, two guys who made up this whole back story of being followers of the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (!!) ripped right from Robert Anton Wilson's classic conspiratorial Illuminati trilogy (so there, Dan Brown!).

Bill Drummond and Jimmy McCauty concocted weird videos, dressed up in Druid-type robes, and had a damn good laugh all the way to the bank, as they pretty much retired KLF once it peaked. They came in, made a ton of money with their records and videos, and knew when to call it a day.

But while they were masquerading as The KLF (??), they were taking the UK's burgeoning acid house scene and putting it on the Top 20. Stomping psychedelic electronic music, heavy with samples, with a charge of hip hop, and a throttling raw Roland 303 synth bass, it was the music of heavy clubbing and drugs in Europe. I was in London at the time, buying up double-CD compilations that were not available in the US, just to soak up all this music that I couldn't hear back home.

"What Time Is Love" brilliantly starts off a clip of Detroit garage rock legends The MC5 doing their famous "Kick Out The Jams" rally cry, sliced right into the 135bpm one-chord rave-up, police sirens swarming in from all sides, and another sample of C+C Music Factory's "Gonna Make You Sweat." The KLF boys had the women shouting "Mu! Mu!" during the breaks, in case you forgot this was the dance music of conspiracy theorists who packed the club floors in a psychedelic fury.

And if you didn't get the joke then, The KLF continued pulling the public's leg, albeit with great music, when they released another single called "We're Justified and Ancient" sung by country warhorse Tammy "Stand By Your Man" Wynette.

The KLF barraged the world with numerous remixes of each songs, twisting and turning them, tongue firmly planted in cheek. Why just look at the videos for the three "What Time Is Love" remixes below. First, you have your original version, complete with aerial shots of crop circles (gimme a break!). Then their electric guitar-inflected 1992 American bid for the song, complete with one of the "Justified Ancients" standing on a rock in the middle of the windy sea extolling their perilous journey to the U.S. on board what looks like a Viking boat with a drum kit set up in the rear. Finally, the "pure trance" dub version of the song, featuring lots of grazing sheep out in a field, long extended shots of a police car riding through a valley, and then back to the sheep again!

American producers have had relentless efficiency in cashing in on manufactured pop with a decidedly straight face. But The KLF was a purely British creation of not only concocting a silly elaborate musical scheme, while actually pioneering the musical genre it was delivering.

The Jim Carroll Band -- "People Who Died" (1980)

I'd been thinking of posting about Jim Carroll's one classic new wave/punk song not long ago when I just heard he died on Friday, September 11th of a heart attack at age 60.

In the late 70's, New York was at the height of the punk movement but at the same time, just scraping by through its financial crises. Carroll was a natural to join the musical fray, having written the underground college classic book "The Basketball Diaries," about his own downward spiral from aspiring street athlete to heroin junkie.

Carroll couldn't sing worth a damn, but he had a rather staggering spoken style of cadence infused with pain. When "People Who Died" came out, its title was easy to dismiss as a novelty number. After all, in the 70's, oddball songs did crack the Top 40.

But this was as startling a number as there could be -- a roll call of friends who OD'd or were brutally killed, all done to gatling-gun breakneck guitars and yes, it rhymed. As a matter of fact, the lyrics are so wild, he repeats them all over again, like a mantra of warning, regret and sadness.

Could you imagine anything remotely like this played on the radio now? No way.


Teddy sniffing glue, he was 12 years old
Fell from the roof on East Two-nine
Cathy was 11 when she pulled the plug
On 26 reds and a bottle of wine
Bobby got leukemia, 14 years old
He looked like 65 when he died
He was a friend of mine

Those are people who died, died
They were all my friends, and they died

G-berg and Georgie let their gimmicks go rotten
So they died of hepatitis in upper Manhattan
Sly in Vietnam took a bullet in the head
Bobby OD'd on Drano on the night that he was wed
They were two more friends of mine
Two more friends that died.

Those are people who died, died
They were all my friends, and they died.

Mary took a dry dive from a hotel room
Bobby hung himself from a cell in the tombs
Judy jumped in front of a subway train
Eddie got slit in the jugular vein
And Eddie, I miss you more than all the others
And I salute you brother.

Those are people who died, died
They were all my friends, and they died.

Herbie pushed Tony from the Boys' Club roof
Tony thought that his rage was just some goof
But Herbie sure gave Tony some bitchen proof
"Hey," Herbie said, "Tony, can you fly?"
But Tony couldn't fly, Tony died.

Those are people who died, died
They were all my friends, and they died.

Brian got busted on a narco rap
He beat the rap by rattin' on some bikers
He said, "Hey, I know it's dangerous, but it sure beats Riker's"
But the next day he got offed by the very same bikers.

Those are people who died, died
They were all my friends, and they died.



Carroll's "The Basketball Diaries" became an early Leonardo DiCaprio film many years later in 1995. Below is Carroll intercut with scenes from the movie. Jim Carroll, we salute you brother.