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I'm just throwing this out there. I realize it isn't jazz, but...it is music.
I have always been a Todd fan, mainly of his progressive stuff. I relistened to the Initiation album (recorded in '74, released in '75) for the first time in 40 YEARS (yes I'm that old) and was very surprised at the sound on the album. It sounded like something produced in 1980--Duran Duran or New Order or the like.
What was notable was the change in sound from most 70's Top-100--in-you-face processed drums, thumping (sounds like picked) overdriven bass, staccato synths, staccato overdriven guitars. In fact, the sound we later called New Wave.
Now the term was not new but hardly used prior to '76-77. And obviously there were progenitors of a "new sound" like the Velvet Underground, Bowie, Roxy Music, Television and the New York Dolls--though these were mainly guitar-driven.
The synth sounds were most impressive. Whereas most prog rock groups (including Todd's former Utopia lineup) emphasized fat Moog sounds as lead, Todd was laying down horn-like sounds as the rhythm--like what Prince would later do for great effect. I don't know what synth he was using, but it doesn't sound like a Moog. ?Arp. He was also processing sounds through the VCS3.
Todd was always ahead of his time--singer-songwriter, then moved on to prog-rock and production, then New Wave when that was popular. Incredible multi-instrumentalist including guitar shredder, also produced some of the biggest albums of the 70's and 80's. A Wizard, A True Star.
His versatility has kept him from being a household name, but it has also kept him busy and professionally successful for almost 50 years.
Unfortunately, I had to miss his last shows in Omaha, but hope to catch him the next time he comes through.
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10-03-2016 10:51 AM
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Todd is a fantastic player and songwriter. He is also a wizard (a true star) behind the mixing desk. That said, Todd hears something he likes and refines it in his own way - whether progressive rock, pop songs, electronica, a cappella, etc. etc. He has such a unique voice that me morphs his work into something totally different. For me, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, but I am always willing to check it out. Personally, I just wish he had a longer attention span and really explored a type of music for a little while, but he drifts away to other things at the drop of a hat.
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I've been working on producer stuff the last couple years. I got around to synth programming from the ground up. Rockers and plenty of other people have been messing with synths and sequencers for a long time. The Who, Pink Floyd. I don't know much about Rundgren but I liked what I heard. Very pretty music.
Culturally, I would point to Joy Division and Rick James in regards to synths. There's a story with both of them.
The producer for Joy Division wanted the synth in Love Will Tear Us Apart. The band hated it first. The song was supposed to be a parody of the song 'Love Will Keep Us Together. It was a joke that turned real. That was the start of new wave.
Rick James was the start of the Black new wave. He couldn't program a synth to save his life. He got into a feud with Prince and Prince never actually spoke to him. He thought Rick was a low-life drug addict from Buffalo and he wouldn't talk to him. They had a lot of mutual friends and that turned into a great source of comedy. Rappers just shot each other but R&B feuds are hilarious.
Anyway, Prince was a wiz with synth programming. Teena Marie said only Prince and Stevie Wonder could program synths back in the old days. Rick stole all of Prince's keyboards because Prince was being a prick and I'd say his Linn Drum too.
Rick James's 'Street Songs' were all Prince's synth patches.
Rick couldn't do that.
'Black new wave' was really Rick James. Prince and Cameo were younger and took it in another direction. They were the pinnacle of Black new wave.
I'm having a feud right now. In R&B it's always about girls. We're all girly.
Not to go off topic but;
Nick Payton used to have a lot to say about Prince. he hasn't said a word lately. Maybe he gets it now. There's nothing like Prince rocking out over a song about unrequited love.
Back to synths;
This is a fascinating time. Our friends in Belgium make a digital audio workstation called FL Studio. I'm a longtime hobbiest and know it very well. I'm slow, younger people are much faster but I know it.
It's about to become mac compatible and this is huge. This is how people learn synth programming now. Now that it will be mac compatible institutions will be all over it.
It's the greatest bang-for-the-buck software there is so, don't steal.
Steal After Effects and all that Adobe stuff. They deserve it.
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Joy Division and the Talking Heads defined what became New Wave - in my opinion.
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I agree. I'm pretty funky and I felt at home with the Black new wave.
Originally Posted by artdecade
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Todd certainly was a musical omnivore and could effortlessly (it seems) incorporate it into his art.
He was (and I guess still is) a helluva guitar player. He could have been up there with Page and Beck if he had stuck to that.
From the production side I think he really moved things in the direction of the newer sounds that would be popular in the late 70's. He was a synth whiz and programmed most of his synths himself after Todd Rundgren's Utopia disbanded in the early 70's. One of the band members of Utopia was Roger Powell, who worked with Bob Moog and also with ARP synthesizers, and there was also Moogy Klingman, so I guess he learned it from the best.
I hear the production elements in both those clips above by Joy Division and Rick James in Todd's work in the early 70's. (Maybe not the drum synths and handclaps in RJ, but certainly the bass and drum kits and synths.
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When I think 'new wave' the first thing that pops into my mind is Joy Division and Cameo. I wasn't giving Prince enough credit. I think of him as being equal to Cameo now.
It's easy to overlook all kinds of people. Eurythmics were huge but not quite as huge in the states. That's another great synth story.
They were seriously broke. Dave was sick. Annie said let's do one last song I'm going home. They did Sweet Dreams and the rest is history. There's a story that the synth wasn't behaving and started playing backwards or something. They thought OK that sounds good. Let's bang on these empty milk bottles.
OK. Let's do a video.
People ask why is a cow in the video. What does it mean.
It was the 80's.
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New Wave, I think Blondie and Flock of Seagulls.
Prince kinda transcends it all. He definitely made some pop music that sounded new wave, but I always got the impression that Prince did EXACTLY what he wanted to do and nothing else.
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In my view, 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' is the first new wave song and Cameo's 'Word Up' was the last.
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I give it one more year (1987) and end it with "Never Tear Us Apart" by INXS.
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Hm. When I think "New Wave" I think of The Police, Elvis Costello, Talking Heads, Joe Jackson. Stripped-down, post punk, punchy rock.
What you guys are talking about I think of as "synth pop".
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And Devo! Originally Posted by Boston Joe
As for the question in the OP, I was a Rundgren fan before new wave, so I never thought of him that way. I saw him with Utopia at Vanderbilt in the early '70s and enjoyed it. Funny thing about Todd: I've liked a lot of his music over the years but he's never been one of my favorites. (Elvis Costello definitely was for a while---I knew every lyric on his first five albums, and that was a lot of lyrics, some hard to decipher at that.)Last edited by MarkRhodes; 10-04-2016 at 05:03 PM.
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For me, Synth Pop lacks any other instruments but synths - bands like Yellow Magic Orchestra, Soft Cell, Erasure, early-Depeche Mode, etc. When you add guitars and acoustic drums to all those synths, I think you enter New Wave. That's where you can dump in bands like Joy Division, The Cure, Duran Duran, etc etc etc and etc etc etc. Ha. Either way, there is a lot of crossover.
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Slightly different perspective from Europe at the time. For me THE New Wave band was Duran Duran. But Depeche Mode was also super popular, and I remember A-ha, and Pet Shop Boys as well.
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I remember those bands but didn't care for them at the time. ("Where are the guitar solos? What good is a pop song without a guitar solo?") Both my brothers were more into "art pop" (beginning with Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Genesis--when they had Peter Gabriel---Roxy Music, which I like too, just not nearly as much as, well, stuff with killer guitar solos like Steely Dan or the Allman Brothers or Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner on Lou Reed's "Rock'n'Roll Animal" live album.... Originally Posted by Hep To The Jive
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My Roland A500 Pro midi keyboard arrived about 10 minutes ago. I'm into 'additive' synthesis. It's been around a long time but almost everything we hear is 'subtractive' synthesis. There are other kinds I think.
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Punk rock was a move against the long guitar solos. It was so common in 60's. I never liked p-rock that much but they were overlords of the club and anyone could play there. That wasn't my scene. I was in a traditional R&B scene but I liked the edgier Prince and Cameo stuff. They were 'new wave'. Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
Punk rockers hated the Eagles so they can't be all bad.
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I think of the one hit wonders from the UK when it comes to new wave.
A lot of things that happen in 'art' was an accident. Film school is where we get into that. Remix culture started in film quite a while before music.
Love Will Tear Us Apart was an accident. The producer said try this synth.
Rundgren wrote some nice pop in the 70's.
Nowadays young people will recreate the sequenced synth part from a Pink Floyd song. I can't recall the name but it's on Dark Side of the Moon.
In general I think there was a pinnacle of entertaining that happened in the new wave. Prince was the culmination of a lot of things. Very tech-savvy.Last edited by Stevebol; 10-04-2016 at 07:48 PM.
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On The Run. It's supposed to represent a guy running through an airport as a plane is crashing. Or so I've heard. Originally Posted by Stevebol
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That's it. Originally Posted by Boston Joe
I've been working on DJ and producer stuff for the last year or two. Some of these guys are good. I'm old and slow. The simplest sounds with delays used right are interesting. They're imitating guitar players. Check this out at about 3:00;
It's from the movie Criminal.
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From what I've read in the UK New Wave at first was more identified with punk, whereas in the US it was more synth-pop and power pop. Interesting term it is.
In high school I reviewed records for the school paper, and got a sample record called "New Wave" about '77-78--clear vinyl--with Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, the Police, the Fabulous Shrinking Dickies, the UK Squeeze, Klark Kent and the Stranglers. Interesting collection, which shows you how full of **** the marketing guys were--they didn't know what it was either.
But what really sticks out from the early 80's is the production sound--the processed drums and drum machines, the plucked bass, the synths--Arp, Roland, Prophet--the staccato guitars (Joy Division and New Order, the Smiths, U2). And the measured f*** you attitude of the artists. With makeup and hairstyles to match.
The one thing you wouldn't find in this music was long guitar solos. It was definitely anti-Steely Dan.
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This is it, for me. New Wave was Television, the Cars -- lotsa synth there, but still a lean sound -- the Vapors, and especially what is in my mind a sorely underrated band, Missing Persons. The Cars and MP both definitely had elements of synth-pop -- and both had beautiful melodies and fantastic musicianship -- but they weren't synth-pop, due to having ass-kicking drummers. Originally Posted by Boston Joe
Television is perhaps my favorite of these I've listed, and I still regard Marquee Moon as a masterpiece -- musically daring, lyrically evocative. If only Verlaine didn't sound like he was singing through a hernia ....
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Missing Persons with the great Terry Bozzio and his lovely wife!
I wonder how Frank felt about Terry leaving him for a "New Wave" band? Since Frank mercilessly skewered punk and New Wave (Tinseltown Rebellion).
Television was (is) a great band. They were lean but did have a lot of long, intricate guitar solos. The guitar interplay between Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd was a thing of beauty.
Useless trivia--for one of his birthdays, Wilco guy Jeff Tweedy got guitar lessons from Richard Lloyd from his wife. It shows in the recent Wilco albums--very, very TV-influenced.
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I never got into the synth stuff much, but I did see a ton of cool bands when they were hot and in their prime--Elvis Costello, Echo and the Bunnymen, U2 (right after their 2nd album came out), REM (local Georgia boys), X.
That was the thing about the late 70's-early 80's--you'd go to see the Allman Brothers or Springsteen one night, then X or the B52's the next. We didn't discriminate; they were ALL good.
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I lived in SoCal in late 70s/early 80s, and heard plenty of X (though I never got to see them, sadly). They were badass. I always thought of them as punk rather than New Wave, though.
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