If you’ll recall, we’d been making some progress toward a working definition of Proctomusicology and its practitioners’ common threads as expressed in what is becoming known as Prock music.
If the Proctomusicologist, as another Townsperson remarked, displays, “an overt intention to approach rock from an intellectual mindset,” then Todd Rundgren might be an artist we can study and use toward furthering our definition. If you have not already viewed the opening clip of Todd’s flashy, self-consciously bluesy performance of “Black Mariah”, I encourage you to do so now…
What did you think? There’s the obvious play for the glam market; the second-rate self-conscious “Yer Blues”-like use of blues structure; the green-haired taller brother of Paul Williams twiddling knobs, the last psychedelic painted guitar, chops and perms a’plenty… And how ’bout that intro: “You know what, he looks like he does everything!” All around, it’s a pretty joyless and stifling performance, no?
This is not to suggest that Prock is nothing but a series of self-consciously, inappropriately mixed styles. At times, in the hands of a skilled, flexible, and playful artist like Rundgren this process results in something approaching magical. You know his great, fluid, soulful pop hits, like “Can We Still Be Friends”.
It’s been said that Todd could have rolled out of bed at 3:00 am and written another dozen pop hits to please The People, but Todd had grander ambitions in mind. (What Prock musician doesn’t?)
This 1977 clip (above) of Todd’s “ambitious” band Utopia displays amost visionary bad taste. Listen to how the band’s overplaying immediately casts the excesses of veteran prog-rock bands in a better light! Dig the proto-Prince guitar AND bass! Sing along with those futuristic Beach Boys cum CSNY harmonies! Savor those space-age threads! Rarely has a stronger case been made against mixing drugs with high-technology and extra-musicality.
Utopia wouldn’t stop there at making awkward all that was supposed to be right about rock through its expansive, rocking, progressive years.
Like the greatest of Prock musicians, however, Todd was self-aware enough to know that a time came when he had to “get back” to the rock ‘n roll’s basics. His musical legacy might be defined by the simplistic, novelty number “Bang on the Drum”. He also took the following, seemingly contradictory routes back to where he once belonged. Like the best of Prock artists, Todd was not short on words and demonstration. Here he discusses his one-man album Acapella…
And here he discussed his recorded live in the studio Nearly Human. I must caution sensitive viewers about Todd’s Look in this interview.
Most recently, Todd has recorded and toured with The New Cars, or The Cars minus their two leaders. For Proctomusicologic reasons, this is a match made in heaven.
I hope that by examing this Prock artist’s career arc we will creep closer to finalizing our definition of this set of terms and concepts. Thank you.
mod…
i DIG this performance of “Black Mariah” and I don’t see it as any bluesier than the studio version. Listen to both back to back.
But that’s neither here nor there. Let’s talk proctomusic:
the heart of the matter to me seems to be in the fact that MANY musicians look back to, or are inspired by the music of their past when they make their own.
hell, even DEVO are thinking of the music of the past, even as they turn iconoclastic in their writing.
so i think we have to include the the concept of REVERENCE for the music of the past that is SO OVERARCHING that it impedes the proctomusician from including new elements…
also, did anybody notice that in his description of “barely human”, todd goes from talking about a totally live performance to talking about splicing the best parts of those performances together? why even bother getting everyone in the same room, and why bother banging the drum about your “live in the studio” record if you’re going to start splicing the best parts together after the performers leave?
Excellent point regarding the characteristic overarching reverence!!!
I can live with the song “Black Mariah” myself, but where’s he coming from? Like “Yer Blues”, for some reason, I hear it as a meta-blues song. Am I on the right track?
thanks, mod.
far be it from me to say, once and for all, whether you’re on the right track. but i hear a slight bit of ‘yer blues’, too…in the phrasing of the vocals, right? other than that, the general tendency for slow heavy blues was all over the place, and there’s not much else about the two songs that are similar. and i hear alot of psyche, soul, prog, and even metal in “Black Mariah”. at first i couldn’t even figure out why he’d play that on the “midnight special”, but then i thought about it some more: it covers alot of ground, and as a good proctosongwriter, todd probably thought of it that way, too. plus, it’s a stoner song, good for the late night audience.
the one thing that it does have that we would hear more and more of in the succeeding decades, is that way of writing, arranging, performing, even conceiving of a song so that it will reach the guy in the back row of the stadium or arena. of course, todd didn’t invent this way of making music, and probably picked it up from festival performances by zeppelin, hendrix, and even janis joplin and otis redding, but in this song, at least, he’s participating in its development, and adding to a vocabulary that even guns and roses and nirvana would also find useful nearly 15 – 20 years later.
so maybe we can also say that while proctomusic doesn’t add new elements to music making, it may accidentally be prescient of them? dunno….
Hey, Mod —
Once again, I think you’re confusing proctomusicology with Kentonism. These clips clearly show why Rundgren is in fact probably the greatest Kentonite in pop music today. Having said that: had you chosen to include media from Utopia’s “Face the Music,” or Rundgren’s “Faithful” album, I would have said the same thing about Rundgren’s proctomusicologic tendencies. I don’t know how familiar you are with those two discs, but in the former, he and Utopia out-Rutle the Rutles — without the sense of humor — in recreating the entire arc of the Beatles’ song catalog. (To be honest, as dreadful as the concept sounds, about one half of that LP is pretty darn fun to listen to.) On “Faithful,” Runt takes things a step further — and manages to combine his prock and Kentonite tendencies — by recording one side of note-perfect, “sounds perfect” replicant covers of his favorite songs from the rock historical canon. Side two is a collection of original songs directly inspired by the songs on side one.
Now THAT’s proctomusicology!
Hey, Hrrundi –
I wish you’d stop with this turf war over RTH Glossary terms. Listen, my friend, you’ve got your Kentonite glossary entry sealed. Proctomusicology is still a “working definition.” It’s not a finished piece, it’s not ready for inclusion in the Glossary. With your fine insight and the insight of others, however, I’m confident we’ll shape up a definition for a set of terms that will not threaten the utility of the term you have coined so well, Kentonite. What I’m saying is, please keep the flow of ideas running strong, but don’t get anxious over what I’m calling your perceived Glossary Turf Wars. It’s cool, man.
I know both Face the Music and Faithful. The former sounds like so much pleasing, bland power pop to my ears. The latter is more to my liking, and you have not only described it accurately but managed to help us more clearly delineate the blurred lines between Proctomusicology and Kentonism! Awesome work!
Utopia put out an album around 1981 with a black cover – actually it might have been an ep that came with a bad full-length Utopia album. Anyhow, this black-covered album I recall had a couple of great Power Prock songs. I think the best of the batch was called “Feet Don’t Fail Me Now”. That song had all the qualities of the music the world wanted out of Todd, but nooooooooo. He had to keep pushing the limits of Prock. For shame.
One man’s “turf war” is another man’s search for epistemological accuracy!
I’ve never been a Todd fan (although years ago I did see him play a gig where the first half he sang along alone to a backing tape and the second half was what must have been the first Utopia line-up).
Coming at this material cold, I was struck by how conventional it all was. Black Maria sounded like an Allman Bros song, and the later stuff sounded like Styx. It’s amazing how regressive prog was. Now it seems about as futuristic as the Jetsons.
Todd is just such a blank. All dressed up with all that talent and nowhere to go. It’s odd that as a producer he has a reputation as a taskmaster, since on his own he seems so adrift.