After reviewing
\nTodd Rundgren’s Utopia<\/i> last year, declaring it “okay” and
\nliving with the serious backlash I got (rightfully so, on further
\nreview) from fans of Utopia and Todd Rundgren, I think I was a
\nlittle gunshy about tackling
\nAnother Live<\/i>, their 1975 release. For one thing, I hadn’t
\nheard the greatest things about it from some of the people I had
\nbeen in contact with. Second, I really didn’t want to spend my days
\nanswering polite but firm flame mails letting me know that I was
\ncompletely wrong in my judgment.<\/p>\n
I’ve spent (no joke) the better part of six months nursing this
\nalbum on the turntables of the Pierce Memorial Archives. And I
\ncouldn’t believe my reaction. What would the people on
\nalt.music.todd-rundgren say when I admitted in my review that I –
\ngasp!<\/i> – liked this album?<\/p>\n
I’ve heard the horror stories about this album – the recording
\nof the show was poor, the performances were poor, “you’re gonna
\nhate<\/i> this album”. Sorry, gang, but I didn’t hear a lot of
\nthat in this record. There were a few moments I could have lived
\nwithout, but there weren’t a lot of them, and for the most part,
\nthe album does a good job of capturing Utopia at a turning point in
\ntheir career.<\/p>\n
After starting out life as a progressive rock outfit, you can
\nbegin to hear cracks forming in their armor. Sure, there’s a lot of
\nprogressive music on this record (“Another Life,” “The Seven
\nRays”), but you also hear the project stating to merge with
\nRundgren’s solo artist mindframe.<\/p>\n
Exhibit “A”: “The Wheel,” a song which blew me away the first
\ntime I heard it. It’s a jazzy acoustic track that locks into a
\ngroove that refuses to let you go until its sudden, a capella
\nending. The interplay between Rundgren’s guitar and vocals, John
\nSiegler’s bass, John Wilcox’s percussion and Roger Powell’s trumpet
\nis a thing of beauty that must be heard to be appreciated.<\/p>\n
Exhibit “B”: Utopia’s cover of The Move’s “Do Ya,” a version
\nthat is surprisingly close to the bone, and is a rollicking good
\ntime. It’s not often I hear even the original version of this song,
\nso having Utopia’s take at my fingertips is a nice luxury.<\/p>\n
Exhibit “C”: Even the progressive numbers, for the most part,
\nseem to have been toned down from just one album ago. (Note that
\nI’m not making the same mistake twice and suggesting that the
\nprogressive angle is the wrong one.) If anything, the merging of
\nprogressive with a pop sensibility seems to work better for Utopia,
\neven if it does water down the original intent of this musical
\nexperiment.<\/p>\n
Sure, I would have cut back on Powell’s keyboard solo on
\n“Intro\/Mister Triscuits,” but everything did seem to fall into
\nplace once the full band kicked in. And I guess it would be fair to
\nsay that it does take a little time to get used to “Another Life,”
\nbut after about three listens, it’s just as natural as
\nbreathing.<\/p>\n
So, the judgment is passed:
\nAnother Live<\/i> is a better album than many people give it
\ncredit for… and probably better than some would have thought I
\nwould have given it credit for. The line for the complaint
\ndepartment forms to the left.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27577,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6517],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-38952","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-utopia","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38952"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=38952"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=38952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}