Todd Rundgren’s Utopia Reunion Shows – January 29/30, 2011


If laughter is considered the best medicine by most – for musicians then, in contrast, music will always be their best medicine. At very least that was in the mind of Todd Rundgren and the band Utopia as they assembled on the stage of the Highline Ballroom in New York City for a two night benefit on January 29th and 30th on behalf of fellow band member Moogy Klingman (the proceeds of the reunion going toward Klingman’s treatment for cancer).
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Band From Utopia @ Cologne’s Tanzbrunnen, 1994

While initially invited to perform at the Jazz Open Stuttgart in Liederhalle, Stuttgart, Germany on July 1st, 1994, Band From Utopia also had one other gig two days after Stuttgart at Cologne’s Tanzbrunnen on July 3rd, 1994. Watch these recently posted videos of Band From Utopia’s Cologne (courtesy of TheCaveStudioFilms) performances of “Tink / 13” (above) and “Village of the Sun / Echidna’s Arf (of You) / Don’t You Ever Wash That Thing?” (below):
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Interview With Michael Bruce – The Original Alice Cooper Group

Recently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with the other original members of the Alice Cooper GroupMichael Bruce was the band’s guitarist, keyboard player and backing vocalist. In an exclusive interview by Nightwatcher for Nightwatcher’s House of Rock, Michael Bruce talks about his experiences as a member of the Alice Cooper Group (for the Zappa/Mother of Invention fan, though, one will find a lot of interesting historically relevant information – both in the interview, and on Michael Bruce’s website):
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Sunday Big Note – Listening Session #19

Riding the post punk wave out of the 1970s and into the 1980s along with such bands as The Talking Heads, The Residents, Devo, and Cardiacs, was a favourite band of mine – a thinking man’s band some would say – Wall of Voodoo. Particularly if you happened to pick up their second full-length album, 1982’s Call of the West – which All Music Guide described as “full of tales of ordinary folks with little in the way of hopes or dreams, getting by on illusions that seem more like a willful denial of the truth the closer you get to them.” To me, at least, a perfect description of the decade of the 80s which would later be aptly described in Jay McInerney’s novel Bright Lights, Big City and Bret Easton Ellis’ 1991 American Psycho.
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The Cardiacs in Rehearsal

Long before I had began writing and posting here at KUR, one of the many things which had attracted me to this weblog (and frankly, still does, years later) was all the new music I was exposed to on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis (via posts, comments, and various emails from band publicists throughout the world).
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The Tubes – Re Styles, Then & Now

From the very beginning of The Tubes, I was always taken with the vocal and performance style of band member Re Styles – born Shirley Marie MacLeod (certainly being a teenage boy at the time didn’t hurt my infatuation very much). Watch Styles in her role as Patty Hearst, live at California Hall in 1974, as The Tubes perform “Whiz Quiz” and “Crime Medley” (above), then 35 years later as she makes a one night only appearance with the band doing exactly what made her a natural member of the band as the band performs “Smoke” (below).
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Sunday Big Note – Listening Session #18

Unlike many of their contemporaries, British group Gentle Giant‘s classical influences ranged beyond the Romantic to incorporate elements of mediaeval, baroque, and modernist chamber music. Undoubtedly, this was what drew Frank Zappa to their music – that, and their elaborate arrangements, complex instrumental parts, and odd meters, too. I know, that was certainly what drew me to the music of Gentle Giant, too: a band made up of multi-instrumentalists who combined diverse elements from rock, classical, jazz, soul, blues, and the avante-garde, playing more than thirty instruments.
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Frank Zappa – Penguins In Bondage, 73-74

Ah, the memories, Barry. Especially from the 8th November 1974 WXRT radio broadcast of “Penguin In Bondage” from Frank Zappa’s performance at the Roxy on December 1973 (above) with various visual memories added later. Then a soundboard recording of “Penguin In Bondage” from St.Paul, Civic Center Arena on November 27th, 1974. Followed by a November 15th, 1974 performance of “Penguin In Bondage” at Memorial Auditorium in Buffalo, New York. And lastly, “Stockholm In Bondage” in Stockholm, Sweden on August 21st, 1973 for the Swedish program ‘Opopoppa Special’ (below).
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