Is Todd the God of Weird?

At repose on the Cultureberg day-bed, idly flicking through Uncut magazines wide-ranging and provocative feature on the 101 Weirdest Albums, I was surprised (and it is axiomatic that such a list should surprise) and pleased to see Todd Rundgren's A Wizard, A True Star at the pinnacle in the Canon of Cacophony.  One might have expected Trout Mask Replica there, but of course that is to be paradoxical - it is the expected classic of inaccessibility and obsidian idiosyncrasy and that is likely why it is not there.  Trout Mask is the People's favorite avant-garde hurdle, where even the pluckiest explorer will admit that they are beginning to get it and will carry on trying.

 A Wizard,A True Star is a long time favourite, going back to Cultureberg's adolescent fealty to the Todd mystique, and its presence at Number 1 is roundly applauded.  It may well be the album where Mr Rundgren most successfully blends the sonic scattergun with the melodic marksman (like a Zen Archer?) of the preceding three classics.  Runt, Ballad and Something/Anything all have some outre moments, but AW,ATS springboards into another dimension.  Despite all this, Cultureberg would ask you, Dear Reader, to consider its follow up, the double album sans gatefold, Todd, as a more deserving recipient of the Powdered Wig Of Weird Wig-outs.

What is the evidence before the Court?  Firstly, its size.  Todd sprawls, or seems to, yet every minute earns its place, even the wonky ones.  It is the curious details that enhance its pleasing otherness, its delight in its own creativity.  Why else cover the hyperactive word rush of Gilbert and Sullivan's Lord Chancellor's Nightmare Song if not for the delight and hell of it?  The range and variety of styles apes, perhaps swings past, AW,ATS.  There are nursery rhyme intermissions - A man would simply have to be as mad as a hatter, to try and change the world with a plastic platter - grumbling heavy guitar work outs - No. 1 Lowest Common Denominator - and Utopian singalongs - Sons of 1984.

There are long, largely instrumental workouts that reflects Todd's increased use of keyboards and synthesisers, which have a delightful lo-fi and warm, organic feel which sounds utterly contemporary.  Of particular note are the undulating, proto-Flaming Lips of In and Out The Chakras We Go, and the queasy The Spark of Life.  The nearest Todd gets to the aural collage of AW,ATS side one is side threes segue of Sidewalk Cafe and Izzat Love which explodes into the Uber-Alice, Uber-Iggy Heavy Metal Kids, which like all the best stomping glam-metal satirises as it struts.

This is balanced with some of Todd's most glistening blue eyed soul ballads, any of which would have slipped effortlessly onto previous albums.  A Dream Goes on Forever and The Last Ride are poised and peerless, a sweeter memory alongside the fried explorations.

Is it weirder than A Wizard, A True Star?  Well, it's a certainly less feted album, and I play it more often.  It's gloriously bananas, and less concerned with meeting the listener's expectations and more concerned with recruiting to the massed choirs of Sons of 1984.  Where some of the albums on the list are unknowable at their heart, where madness and solipsism pull like whirlpools,  Todd invites the listener into a world where the seemingly unpredictable is embraced.  It paved the way for a series of career swerves which seldom again provided such a varied smorgasbord.  There would be note perfect recreations of 1965 classics, albums of Robert Johnson covers, a 69 minute prog album that sounded like Metropolis scored by Yes.  There would be a lush album where every instrument was the human voice.  A Treatise on Cosmic Fire.  Cardboard inserts to build your own pyramid.  What makes Todd Cultureberg's pick for Weird No 1 is that this magpie creativity was not isolated on their respective projects, the pressure of creativity at the time insisted that this all be thrown together and behold! the whole of Mr Rundgren's Insistent Muse is there on one Elpees Worth of Tunes.  

Suicide and their precursors, Leon Russell's Ballad of Hollis Brown

The sight of stars of the rock and roll firmament fizzling away has been frequent in 2016, and has been an intimation of mortality for all of a certain vintage. Were the Cultureberg gramophone to be taken over by sentiment streaked retrospectives there would be scant time for new favourites, but one record that has snuck in there, possibly because I had never played it whilst its creator was extant, has been Leon Russell's Stop All That Jazz. From 1974, and encased in a cover where Leon is about to get cooked up in a pot (no, me neither), it features at least two off beat classics. First, an instrumental version of Spanish Harlem that sounds like Sun Ra in a loosey goose mood.  The second is linked to below, and is probably the best of Leon's many excellent Dylan covers, The Ballad of Hollis Brown.

Far superior to the version Dylan scraped out at Live Aid, and which Ron Wood believed was the Ballad of Collis Brown, this features a monster groove led by Leon on Synth, and the field hollers which introduce and punctuate the song put me in mind of Suicide's similar tale of patricide and hysterical anomie, Frankie Teardrop.  Its intensity is a bit at odds with the rest of the record, for example the take of If I were a Carpenter which has a likeable, braggart lope, but a listen to his eponymous debut or, even better, Carney, is enough to evidence that here is a singular musician for whom routine is anathema and whilst there is a solid grounding in Gospel, Country, Jazz and all strains of American musics, Leon is, quite frankly, all over the shop and impossible to second guess.  I suspect that amongst the piles of unaddressed and half remembered vinyl in the Cultureberg vault are copies of Hank Wilson's Back and possibly Will O The Wisp and Americana as well.  Bring em on!


To close, I will list some of the classics Leon played on as a sidemen, information borrowed from Uncut magazine.  Be assured, one doesn't even have to name the artist on these platters for even the most callow child to recognise them....The Monster Mash, Be My Baby, Da Doo Ron Ron, Mr Tambourine Man, California Girls, River Deep Mountain High, Strangers in the Night, 59th Street Bridge Song, Gentle On MyMind, Delta Lady, After Midnight and Watching The River Flow.  And if that ain't a genius, I don't know what is.