THE TODD RUNDGREN & UTOPIA CONSPIRACY

There’s a standard story about Todd Rundgren that you’ve probably already heard. It goes like this: He’s great. An enormous talent. Can write songs blindfolded. Thousands of ’em. But he got weird. Put together a band. Band wasn’t very good. He doesn’t care. And that’s that.

Basically, this is the same review rewritten three thousand times in three thousand newspapers, the same one that must really make Todd Rundgren mad if he reads it, but he probably won’t anyway. It’s also the same review that must make Kasim Sulton, Roger Powell and Willie Wilcox equally non-happy, because they’re Utopia and thus the “not very good” band everyone’s always talking about. Makes no sense, of course, because Utopia is a very good band and most people who write otherwise either haven’t been listening lately or else are too busy paying lip service to other outmoded concepts, too. Deface The Music, the most recent Utopia album, is not only that band’s best album evet—it’s one of the best pop albums of the year, something few critics bothered to mention while pulling Bedtle quotes out of it like silly schoolkids. It was^ great. Didn’t sell worth diddly, though—any LP that has Todd Rundgren’s name on it probably sells twice as much as any plain Utopia album—but that’s really par for Utopia’s course.