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I wonder if you get ‘the itch’?
This happens to me every few months, when I get a craving for records by a certain artist or in a genre. It’s quite an inexplicable thing but is felt really strongly and the pull of the records is great.
At the moment, I’ve got the itch about Todd Rundgren, with and without Utopia. Of course I’ve got all the albums from Runt to Nearly Human but there are about 30+ singles to collect. I picked up ‘All The Children Sing’ last weekend, a 1978 single, plus lots of Utopia records.
It’s not often realised that Todd had a lot of hits in America and didn’t have a single fail to chart until 1981’s ‘Compassion’ - 15 singles, as low as #107 (Time Heals) and as high as #5 (Hello, It’s Me) though only 3 out of 13 Utopia singles charted, 2 in UK.
Part of the attraction of these are that they came out on Bearsville. And there’s a great label to collect in itself. They mostly got a UK release but only I Saw The Light (#36) and Bang the Drum All Day(#73) were hits and those are easy to find, you can even find European picture sleeves of it and I can’t find many others outside the UK, though Japan released a good promo picture sleeve of Hello, It’s Me. Good luck finding that. Also hard to find are the early singles lifted from the Runt; The Ballad Of Todd Rundgren album. Be Nice To Me and A Long Time, a Long Way to Go. We Gotta Get You A Woman from the debut you can get a UK copy of but USA copies, were it made #20, are more common.
One of my favourite Utopia tracks is Communion With The Sun from Ra, a 1977 single b/w Sunburst Finish. Something/Anything? provided three singles, Hello It’s Me was the big USA hit, which was a #66 four years earlier for The Nazz. The only release from 1974’s Todd is the excellent ballad A Dream Goes On Forever (#69 USA).
Love Is the Answer by Utopia was an uncharting single. It is the closing track on their excellent 1977 album Oops! Wrong Planet, and was the only single released from the album. However it was resurrected In 1979, by soft rock duo England Dan (actually from Texas, the brother of Jim Seals out of Seals And Croft) & John Ford Coley when they released their version as the lead single from their seventh studio album Dr. Heckle and Mr. Jive. It reached number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart] in May 1979] and spent two weeks at the top of the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart. John Ford Coley was quoted as saying: "Of all the songs we released as singles, that was my favourite. The song first of all had a classical base, and the middle had a gospel section which I loved.” It made #45 in the UK but still gets a lot of airplay.
The two releases from the superb Adventures In Utopia, including the surprise hit Set Me Free (#27 USA #55 UK) and The Very Last Time (#76 USA) are great releases, A Wizard A True Star (#86 USA) didn’t have any singles released from it and neither did the live Another Live (#66 USA) and Back To The Bars (#75 USA )
I have about half these three dozen or so singles and intend to try and get the rest. So the next time I’m sifting through a box of 7” singles, I’ll be looking out for them in the knowledge that it’s unlikely to cost me more than £2.00 to buy a record. You always think you won’t see one and it’s always a thrill when you do.
