Posted on Jun 28, 2011
Rock’n'roll icon, guitar genius, interactive progenitor, consummate singer/songwriter and record producer Todd Rundgren, will get up close and personal with four rare UK concerts in October 2011. Dates include HMV Ritz, Manchester on Saturday 1st October, and The London Jazz Café on Monday 3rd October, Tuesday 4th October and Wednesday 5th October.
Tickets are on sale from 10:00 on Tuesday 28th June. Ticket Hotline: 08700 603 777, www.seetickets.com.
This year’s intimate dates mark Rundgren’s first UK shows since 2010’s sold-out London Hammersmith Apollo concert where he performed the entirety of his 1973 milestone album
A Wizard, A True Star. These will be Todd’s only UK concerts in 2011.
Todd will be performing “An Evening with Todd Rundgren”, universally described by the US press as “The greatest hits tour his fans have been waiting to see for years”.
ROCK’S ORIGINAL RENAISSANCE MAN
An acclaimed record producer, composer, songwriter, and recording artist, Rundgren is widely regarded as the acknowledged godfather of the marriage of music and multimedia. Having founded and fronted The Nazz, the quintessential `60′s power-pop psychedelic band, in 1969 he left that band to pursue a solo career, recording his debut offering, the classic Runt.
It was 1972′s seminal Something/Anything?, on which he played all the instruments, sang all the vocal parts, and acted as his own producer, that catapulted Todd into the superstar limelight. Among Rundgren’s impressive 50+ production projects are albums by Patti Smith, Cheap Trick, Psychedelic Furs, XTC, Grand Funk Railroad, Hall & Oates, and Meat Loaf’s perennially multi-platinum debut “Bat Out Of Hell.”
A Wizard, A True Star. The title of Todd Rundgren’s 1973 solo album aptly sums up the contributions of this multi-faceted artist to state-of-the-art music. As a songwriter, video pioneer, producer, recording artist, computer software developer, conceptualist, and, most recently, interactive artist (re-designated TR-i), Rundgren has made a lasting impact on both the form and content of popular music.
Born and raised in Philadelphia, Rundgren began playing guitar as a teenager, going on to found and front The Nazz, the quintessential `60′s cult group. In 1969, he left the band to pursue a solo career, recording his debut offering, the legendary Runt. But it was 1972′s seminal Something/Anything?, on which he played all the instruments, sang all the vocal parts, and acted as his own producer, that catapulted Todd into the superstar limelight, prompting the press to unanimously dub him ‘Rock’s New Wunderkind’.
It was followed by the landmark albums Hermit of Mink Hollow, A Wizard, A True Star, and the hit singles – I Saw The Light, Hello It’s Me, Can We Still Be Friends, and Bang The Drum.
In 1974, Todd formed Utopia, an entirely new approach to the concept of interactive musicianship, and embarked on an extensive round of touring and recording. Standout Utopia offerings included Oops! Wrong Planet, Adventures in Utopia, and Oblivion. Utopia combined technical virtuosity and creative passion to create music that, for millions, defined the term "progressive rock."
Rundgren’s myriad production projects include albums by Patti Smith, Cheap Trick, Psychedelic Furs, Meatloaf, XTC, Grand Funk Railroad, and Hall and Oates. Rounding out his reputation as rock’s Renaissance Man, Rundgren composed all the music and lyrics for Joe Papp’s 1989 Off-Broadway production of Joe Orton’s Up Against It (the screenplay commissioned by The Beatles for what was meant to have been their third motion picture). He also has composed the music for a number of television series, including Pee Wee’s Playhouse and Crime Story.
Early last year Rundgren performed his iconic 1973 album A Wizard, A True Star in concert in its entirety for the first time ever, and recently did the same with a double bill: Todd and Healing. His latest studio album, Todd Rundgren’s Johnson, a collection of classic Robert Johnson songs, was released in America in April.
In 1998 Todd debuted his new PatroNet technology which for the first time allows fans of a musical artist to subscribe directly to the artist’s musical output via the Internet. This caps a long history of groundbreaking early multimedia "firsts", including:
- 1978: The first interactive television concert, broadcast live over the Warner/QUBE system in Columbus, Ohio (the home audience chose each song in real time during the concert by voting via QUBE’s 2-way operating system).
- 1978: The first live nationally broadcast stereo radio concert (by microwave), linking 40 cities across North America.
- 1979: The opening of Utopia Video Studios, a multi-million dollar state-of-the-art facility. The first project produced by Todd there is Gustav Holst’s The Planets, commissioned by RCA SelectaVision as the first demonstration software for their new videodisc format.
- 1980: Creation of the first color graphics tablet, which was licensed to Apple and released as The Utopia Graphics Tablet.
- 1981: Time Heals, the first music video to utilize state-of-the-art compositing of live action and computer graphics (produced and directed by Todd), becomes the second video to be played on MTV (after Video Killed the Radio Star).
- 1982: The first live national North American cablecast of a rock concert (on the USA Network), simulcast in stereo to over 120 radio stations.
- 1982: The first two commercially released music videos, one of which was nominated for the first-ever Grammy awarded for “Best Short Form Video” in 1983.
- 1992: The release of “No World Order”, the world’s first interactive record album on CD-i. Also the first commercially available music downloads via CompuServe.
- 1994: The release of “The Individualist”, the world’s first full-length Enhanced CD.
- 1995: The world’s first interactive concert tour. The London Forum shows were filmed and released on DVD.
- 1998: Launches PatroNet, the world’s first direct artist subscription service
Manic Street Preachers have announced details of their forthcoming album, National Treasures – The complete Singles.’
