CONTEST: NY AREA TICKETS AND BACKSTAGE TO BLENDER SHOW

NEW YORK BASED CLASSIC ROCK STATION Q104.3 IS RUNNING A CONTEST TO WIN TICKETS AND BACKSTAGE TO A SHOW IN NYC CLICK ON LINK BELOW TO ENTER

http://www.q1043.com/cc-common/globalcontestfinder.html?contest=31802

The Q104.3 Downtown Concert Series continues on Friday December 26th at the Blender Theater at Gramercy, featuring Todd Rundgren. Register below to win tickets to the show with backstage passes so you can meet the band.

Video: lord chancellors nightmare w/ Ethel

recorded in liverpool 2005,and featuring "ethel"



another version by
The Lord Chancellor (David Rayner) in Southampton Operatic Society's production of Iolanthe (2005). Reduced orchestra arrangement courtesy of www.pattersong.co.uk

new tour date: Infinity Hall Norfolk Ct DEC.20

http://www.infinityhall.com/
Now there's another place to hear fabulous music in the state. Infinity Music Hall opens this weekend in Norfolk with blues, jazz and comedy.

Jazz musician Kenny Rankin performs Friday at 7 p.m., the Duke Robillard Band performs Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and there's a sold-out comedy show Sunday at 7 p.m.

Infinity Music Hall plans to bring performers from all musical genres (plus comedians) to its intimate 300-seat setting. Other musicians scheduled to appear include Jonatha Brooke (Oct. 25), Melissa Manchester (Nov. 7), Livingston Taylor (Nov. 29) and Todd Rundgren (Dec. 20).

Infinity Hall is on Route 44, 20 Greenwoods Road, Norfolk. Tickets for Friday's show are $25 and $35; tickets for Saturday's show are $20 and $25.

Infinity Bistro, on the main floor of Infinity Hall, is open for lunch and dinner seven days a week, and for brunch on Saturday and Sunday.

For tickets or details, call 866-666-6306 or visit www.infinityhall.com.

— AMY ELLIS

REVIEW: A Talk with Todd mountaintimes.com

A Talk with Todd, Part 2

Rundgren releases the motivational album Arena
http://mountaintimes.com/mtweekly/2008/1009/todd.php3
By Jeff Eason

Musician Todd Rundgren is currently on tour promoting his latest album, Arena.

A lot of musicians slow down as they get older. Todd Rundgren turned 60 this past summer and is busier than ever with a new album called Arena and a tour that will take him and his band all over the United States and Europe.

Best known for his radio hits such as “Hello It’s Me,” “Bang on the Drum All Day” and “I Saw the Light,” Rundgren’s four-decade-plus career has seen him venture into all manner of musical territory including psychedelic rock, Brazilian music and American soul music. Arena takes Rundgren back to his days as a guitar hero and is filled with the power chords and searing leads that his fans remember from albums such as Todd, Another Utopia Live and Faithful. It is also a thematic album in which many of the songs call his listeners to get up and take action on the issues of the day.

Todd Rundgren’s five-piece band, featuring longtime bandmates Kasim Sultan and Prairie Prince, will perform at the Orange Peel in Asheville on Wednesday, October 15.

The following is the second half of a two-part interview with Todd Rundgren. The first part was published in the Oct. 2nd edition of The Mountain Times.

The Mountain Times: With your new album, Arena, your theme is that people need to stop talking about issues they care about and start doing something. Can you give me an example of what you mean?

Todd Rundgren: I’m not talking about going out and bombing something or enlisting and getting yourself shot at or shooting at other people. If you are so motivated, fine.

It’s all of those little daily habits that we’ve gotten ourselves into that we refuse to change. The whole core of what’s going on now has been completely driven by the rising cost of gasoline. The cost of fuel has made the cost of everything go up and as the cost of everything goes up then the economy starts to collapse.

When people don’t have money because the cost of everything is going up, they start to borrow money. I had a building loan to build a house here and the gas crisis hit right in the middle of that project and by the time we got to the end, the building loan was never going to be enough to complete it. The price of concrete, the price of lumber, the price of everything just continues to go up.

Once gas hit a certain price we don’t rethink our addiction to gasoline, we just start looking for more gas. We’ll drill here, we’ll drill there. We won’t change our habits. We won’t, for instance, get out of our car and get in somebody else’s car to go to work.

MT: Many smaller touring bands are having to modify the way they travel. Is it the same with national acts?

TR: You have to because you’re not going to see anything positive otherwise.

This whole drill, drill, drill thing is pointless. People want industry and the government to take care of our problems for us. If everybody started carpooling tomorrow, the price of a gallon of gas would go down by a dollar in a month. And once that happens, everything starts to move again. People have money that they didn’t have to spend on gasoline. Not only are they using less gas, but the gas costs less. Once people start spending that extra money on stuff, then people have to go back to work at factories to make that stuff. Then suddenly, there’s money in pension plans and for investment.

Everyone’s coming up with these complicated plans, but if somebody could just convince the people of this country to half their gas use—completely voluntarily—the problem would immediately begin to fix itself.

MT: How long has it been since you played in North Carolina?

TR: I’m on the road constantly. I don’t often get to Asheville. The closest to there is when I went to see my son play AA baseball. He was with the Carolina Mudcats so I would go see him in the Raleigh area in Zebulon.

MT: How long is the current tour going to last?

TR: We’re doing this tour in chunks right now because the release date of the record was pushed back. It was originally supposed to be released in July. Then we got an international distribution deal and because of the peculiarities of record distribution and the weakness of the dollar, one of the restrictions of that deal is that the record has to be released worldwide on the same day. Otherwise, people would go out and buy American imports because the dollar is weak and an American import is cheaper than the domestic version in many countries. In order for the album to chart, the label has to make sure that everyone buys their domestic version. If they only buy imports in doesn’t show up on the charts.

MT: Do you sell much of your music as online downloads?

TR: I don’t have at this particular time an individual download site. I’m on iTunes and other sites where you can purchase individual song downloads. People still order my albums on Amazon.com and we still sell a few at the merchandise tables (laughs).


I’ll be interested to see what my new label can do to help sell the new record. They seem to have a whole master plan.

MT: How much do you have to do with Rundgren Radio and some of the other Internet sites dedicated to your music?

TR: There’s a bunch of third party things out there. In some ways I find that if the fans are the ones who get the idea to do something, then the sites tend to have greater legitimacy then if I put up a site that’s supposed to be the official site. First of all, it gets me out of a lot of babysitting. If I was running my own site—you know how these squabbles can break out between people on blog sites. And I’m just not interested in that kind of stuff. Somebody else should police that. I can’t deal with that stuff anymore. My first response would be to say, “Just shut up, both of you.”

I’m perfectly happy to have the fans maintain the sites and a couple of them do an outstanding job. There’s the TR Connection which is very complete and friendly. Then there’s Rundgren Radio (www.rundgrenradio.com) which basically produces (streaming audio) interviews with people connected to my career. I did an interview for it yesterday. But the rest of the time it just plays my music or music that I’ve been involved with somehow

Doug Ford Rundgren Radio host:Oh, Snap! BlogTalkRadio Host Cozies up to Todd Rundgren in the Carolinas

Oh, Snap! BlogTalkRadio Host Cozies up to Todd Rundgren in the Carolinas
Not wanting to be outdone by Fruit Salad hosts Pauly & Rico’s summer love fest with the celebrity set, Doug Ford sent us this pic of himself with legendary rocker Todd Rundgren.


Todd and Doug: Doin' hors d'oeuvres in Dixie.

As host of BlogTalkRadio’s Rundgren Radio – which features interviews with musicians associated with the Bang The Drum All Day singer’s career – Doug of course holds a special place in Todd’s heart.

Just this week, in fact, Todd told The Mountain Times of Boone, N.C., that Doug “does an outstanding job” with his BlogTalkRadio show.

As for Doug’s tête-à-tête with Todd, the two shared (what look like) Swedish meatballs recently at a Greenville, N.C., eatery.

Video: Tarrytown music hall

upped on youtube by badj123

arena tour Arena Tour at the Tarrytown Music Hall

promotion on long islands main newspaper newsday

i was shocked to receive this email notice on the bottom right is a free download of mountaintop i had to chop up the ad so i can post the picture..






http://www.newsday.com/about/ny-insider-promo-page,0,4630187.htmlpage

you have to subscribe and then go to the digital portal on the top of the page.. it is a pain to find.

i was shocked to receive this email notice on the bottom right is a free download of mountaintop

rundgren radio 10/21/2008 8:30 PM ellen foley

Special guest Ellen Foley who is an American singer and actress whose range of talent and experience has spanned edgy rock, mainstream pop, standard Broadway, sitcom television, and Hollywood. Her first big break was singing the duet with Meat Loaf on "Paradise by the Dashboard Light". Bat out of Hell is a 1977 album by singer Meat Loaf, songwriter Jim Steinman, and producer Todd Rundgren that became one of the best-selling albums worldwide.
www.rundgrenradio.com

Review: Todd Rundgren - Arena (BlogCritics.Magazine.org)

Music Review: Todd Rundgren - Arena
Written by Donald Gibson
Published October 14, 2008

Todd Rundgren is kind of like a Mensa member who gets inadvertently
enrolled in remedial math. His expertise in the studio is so copious
and his musical styles so varied that creating a pop or rock record
has sometimes made him sound artistically stifled, sporadic, or flat-
out bored. While he's demonstrated time and again that he can dabble
in various genres (and often on the same album), his more resonant
work has resulted from a cohesive and concentrated approach.

Rundgren does just that on his latest effort, Arena, on which he
delivers the kind of streamlined progressive rock suggested by its
title. Brazen, swift blasts of electric guitars are ubiquitous,
punctuated by meaty riffs and fist-pumping choruses. There's also a
palpable element of cheek at play here – if not downright cockiness –
but Rundgren (ever the showman) pulls it off.

As he has wont to do in the past, Rundgren assumes the role of a one-
man band, playing every instrument and programming all computerized
simulations. To his credit and to the album's overall advantage, the
synthesized aspects don't overtake or impede the robust velocity of
the music. Certainly, on vitriolic tracks like "Mountaintop"
and "Strike," Rundgren wields more power chords than Pro Tools.

He informs much of these songs with pointed lyrics decrying – or at
least contemplating – false hope ("Bardo"), resentment ("Mercenary"),
and myriad forms of deception. "There's another crack in the façade,"
he sings in "Afraid" while on "Weakness," he asserts, "I'd be no good
to no one/If they knew the truth."

On arguably the album's most provocative track, "Gun," Rundgren rails
against a deceptive sense of security, savagely lampooning a
glorified American gun culture: "The Constitution says that I'm so
blessed/That I can clean my piece on the Supreme Court steps… There's
many like it, but this one's mine/A good replacement for a lack of
spine." He levels his most scathing caricature in the refrain, "You
better run/'Cause I'm young, dumb, and I've got a gun."

Even if Arena is but one of Rundgren's arbitrary sonic experiments,
he at least follows it through with focus, consistency, and no
shortage of testosterone. In a nutshell, he's succeeded here with
something, which sure beats getting by with anything.


http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/10/14/133302.php

DOWNLOAD ARENA DIGITALLY..

http://toddrundgrenarena.com

  you can now download ARENA from amazon or  itunes

click on the above link to start download

click on image to see full size.

.

VIDEO: Todd Rundgren - Black Maria - Tarrytown Music Hall 10/11/08

upped on youtube by jonnyheroes

Black Maria

VIDEO: Just One Victory BR COHEN WINERY 10/4/08

just one victory live upped by squadsquid
October 4th, 2008 at a benefit at the BR Cohen Winery in central California.

RUNDGRENRADIO MOE BERG 10/14/08

Moe Berg from The Pursuit of Happiness 10/14/08
posted by Doug at Todd Rundgren Radio - 3 days ago
Moe will be our special guest on RundgrenRadio.com at 8:30pm ET on Tuesday October 14, 2008. Moe was a founding member of The Pursuit of Happiness in 1986.

WWW.RUNDGRENRADIO.COM

Article : www.kweevak.com Morristown show

nice on line article with great pictures from morristown show
http://www.kweevak.com/files-articles/rd_art_2008_10_12_todd_rundgren.php

REVIEW:I Saw The Light: Todd Rundgren's Alive & He's Taking Names BY SAL NUNZIATO / HUFFINGTON POST

At the beginning of "On Golden Pond," Henry Fonda and Katherine Hepburn return to their summer home. It's an annual pilgrimage that is both warm and familiar, as well as cold and dispiriting. As each year passes, everything becomes a little less everything. Lots of dust and some cobwebs, a few more broken frames, both door and picture, and squeaks that come from machines that need oil. The look on Fonda's face when he first turns on the lights seems to ask, "Here again? What's the point?," as he gazes around at the same old furniture and musty books. Yet minutes after their arrival, the sound of the loons wakes them up to realize, they are home again. They fall right in as if they never left.
This describes my relationship with Todd Rundgren. I am now on my 34th year of seeing Todd Rundgren in concert. Some years I'd see him 6-8 times. I've flown from NYC to San Francisco to New Orleans and back, with no other purpose than to see the man live. It's something that me and a few friends have done ritually for years, and the older we get, the more we resemble Henry Fonda & Katherine Hepburn. The memories and familiarity always seem to outweigh the cold hard fact that it just isn't the same anymore. But at the Tarrytown Music Hall, once we "turned on the lights," or more accurately, when the lights went down, Todd Rundgren launched into one of the most inspired performances I have seen in years. We were home.
Touring behind his brand new release "Arena," Todd was armed and ready. I've listened to "Arena" a dozen times and each time I've felt differently. I'm mostly disappointed by it's sound and not the content. Rundgren's a legendary producer who has made magic for everyone from Meatloaf and XTC to Patti Smith and the New York Dolls, yet his own records sound slapdash. As one friend so brilliantly put it, "His records sound like the example recordings that come with recording equipment. He seems to be up on all the new gear and gadgets, but it sounds like he keeps them at the factory setting and doesn't tweak them to make them sound like himself. Wasn't he supposed to be The Individualist?"
Last night, with a band that included Rachel Haden on bass, veteran Tubes drummer Prairie Prince and Todd's long time right hand man, Kasim Sulton on keyboards and vocals, the songs from "Arena" exploded with a mightiness that is missing from the studio recordings.
Everything was working during the 100 minute set. The patented Todd harmonies were there, as well as some of Todd's best guitar work since the mid-seventies. "Arena" was played from head to tail, flanked by such faves as "Love In Action," "I Saw The Light," "Couldn't I Just Tell You," and the traditional closer, "Just One Victory," aka the "Utopian National Anthem." It all seemed so right, like the classic shows from Wollman Rink in NYC's Central Park, or the Agora in Cleveland.
I must admit, right on up to showtime, I was questioning just why I'd come back here. The set lists haven't changed much since 1995. Todd has been known to not only phone it in live as of late, but to sometimes just barely give a crap at all. Did I need that from someone I've been so loyal to for so long? The answer is YES! Rundgren is a musician first and a legend for good reason. Take the word of someone who has seen Todd Rundgren live more times than he's visited his mother, if he comes to your town, go say hello and pick up "Arena," while you're at it. This is a show not to be missed.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sal-nunziato/i-saw-the-light-todd-rund_b_133955.html