B-Side Discoveries: Todd Rundgren

Welcome. As you may or may not have noticed, one of the subtitles for the ol' Togglesphere is music. As you also may have noticed there has yet to be any posts regarding such things. That all changes with our new feature, B-Side Discoveries. Each week (hopefully) I will post a new b-side (but not always) that I feel deserves a second listen, maybe say a few words about the artist, hell, maybe I'll even post lyrics. At my very laziest I'll at least post a link to the lyrics. I can do that, can't I? I think I can. Let's get started.

While on vacation Amy and I hit up a few Goodwill's and an ARC for good measure to do a little thrift shoppin'. Incidentally I ended up bringing back some records with me (only three) and decided to spend our first afternoon back home hanging out and listening to some vinyl. The records I picked up were: An old record of Bullfighting music; a Chinese man or woman singing in a irritating high pitch; and a Spaniard's score-less recording of Orff's Carmina Burana. The first and last were pretty solid, though I have to admit my level of tolerence was stretched pretty thin on the Chinese record. Anyway, I quickly went through my purchases and move forward to my current half-listened-to record collection.

Long story short I found this stirring tune by Todd Rundgren called Bread off of his 1978 album Hermit of Mink Hollow. You might know Rundgren from his piano-pop hits Such as Hello It's Me or Can We Still Be Friends? or from his stadium staple Bang On The Drum which a.) I had no idead that was a Todd Rundgren song and b.) actually find kind of annoying. However, though I'm not a fan of everything he's done, Rundgren has always had a strong experimental side to go along with his pop culminating in his somewhat short-lived producing career (he produced Meat Loafs Bat Out Of Hell as well as XTC's Skylarking). It was during this time in the late seventies that Rundgren began released Hermit of Mink Hollow in 78. The first track off the b-side is a tune called Bread that I found immensely catchy, a little glam (which I'm a pseudo-secret fan of), and an impressive amount of intelligently expressed poignancy.

So without further ado, for your listening enjoyment: