Music
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Memo to Todd Rundgren: if you're going to dance vigorously while wearing shades, you might be better with a tinted set of the goggles worn, though not actually used, by your drummer and guitarist. Rundgren's shades took a tumble during the cleverly observational Collide-A-Scope, leading to gaps that suggested the lyrics might be printed on the lens. It was a prelude to a total breakdown shortly afterwards as Windows 8's reliability for musicians using computer-stored backing tracks was found wanting.
The latter calamity constitutes an occupational hazard for Rundgren these days, but while it and the rather metallic sound quality of digital equipment made one hanker for five minutes of Rundgren singing at a grand piano, there was something almost mesmerising about what was billed grandly if humorously as the Official State Visit. This is not Rundgren pretending to be rock royality. State is his latest album and much of the early set focused on tracks from it, such as Imagination and Angry Bird, which found Rundgren singing and acting as if experiencing a real-life computer game.
In his current incarnation Rundgren is part lifestyle analyst, part Speakers' Corner sermoniser, part Ibiza DJ and part soul screamer, windmilling his arms as he declaims into an overhead mic to Prairie Prince of the Tubes's precise electronic drumming and Jesse Gress's tough guitar licks and flicks. Older fans may have sighed with relief as he dug out the more familiar Prime Time and an encore including the classic Can We Still Be Friends and I Saw the Light, but good on him for moving with the times, even if tech nology can't always keep up with him.
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