Todd is God

Alan Childs

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Love Something/Anything! One of my favorite albums of all time.

Didn’t get hip until 1987. (I’m 53) I worked for Record World in Waterford CT. One day, I mentioned to my manager (who is my best friend to this day) that I loved “Hello It’s Me” but didn’t know much else about Todd. I gave him a Maxell XLII 90 and he taped me “Something/Anything”. I fell in love with it immediately. Everything about it was fantastic and I, like you, was impressed with the fact that he had done all of it himself. (Side 4 aside) I hipped a twenty something musician to it about 4 years ago and its one of his faves now too. Glad to have “passed it on”.

It is one of the VERY few studio double albums that has no filler. I speak of course of double albums from the classic era. Pre “vinyl resurgence”. (“Songs In The Key Of Life”, “Physical Graffiti”,  “Sign Of The Times”)

It took a few years before I did a full on deep dive with Todd. But I did. And I am all the better for it. One of my favorite artists.

Ed Toth

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I can’t pretend to be conversant in “Something/Anything”, but “The Ballad of Todd Rundgren” has a slew of absolutely wonderful tunes. “Wailing Wall” is as good as record-making gets. It’s brilliantly written, beautifully performed, brilliantly arranged, and beautifully recorded. For that one song alone I’d be willing to put Todd up there in the Pantheon.

Berton Averre

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We called him Todd.  Like he was a bud.  And we felt him in the room with us when we blasted his stuff to whatever it was that we were doing. Every listen was like a home visit.  You could feel him. Great songs, one after another, all of them evoking different feelings. And he’s still doing home visits with me, all these years later.  And I could tell stories and meander on.   But I’m short on words despite my excitement.  And you never could capture him with words, anyway. Could you?  Thanks for this piece.  I’ll settle in and “take a few of these…..”  And fans of Todd know what I mean.

Bill Nelson

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This is fun. Some footage for a music video?

Bill Seipel

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I’ve always loved this song.. To me it was a throwback to Motown back in the 60’s.

Jeff Laufer

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Believe it or not but in the early 60’s this boy, in his early teens…in Queens NY (!) was able to pick up Wolfman Jack on my transistor radio in the wee hours of the morning…@ 2 AM EST.
Sometimes it was fuzzy, sometimes the reception went in and out but using micro fiddling with the plastic tuning circle I was sometimes able to get a clear signal from Mexico.
I am still amazed.
Alan Crane

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The Mighty 1090 XERB out of Chula Vista is how I remember first hearing Wolfman Jack back in 1966 ~ Seems he was taking away listeners from all the local rock LA radio stations with that voice that made him famous ~ Also his playlist was different ~ He sounded crazy to most listeners so although as I remember it if your transistor radio wasn’t powerful enough or your battery was low you could hardly hear him ~ Not really as crazy as say Howard Stern but he did stand out from the norm back in the day ~

RS

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When I opened my first office upstairs in the Whisky a Go Go in August, 1969, Rundgren was one of my first customers, seaching for a keyboardist for his band, “Runt”.  He only came in once, and I never knew if he found someone through me or not.

Sterling Howard, founder/owner
https://www.MusiciansContact.com

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Nice!

Something/Anything is a desert Island LP/CD/Stream for me.

Michael Becker

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Back in the 1960’s, we had a radio unit made by a company called Telefunken.  It was state of the art/high tech at that time.

Late at night on the East Coast, we could get radio stations as far away as Laramie, Wyoming.  And in Laramie, there was a station on which you could catch the Wolfman Jack radio show.  And so we were among the very few high schoolers who not only knew who he was, but heard him live.  It was cool to be in such a select club.

R. Lowenstein

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Along with the “do it yourselfers” McCartney, Rhodes and Rundgren, let’s not forget the amazing Roy Wood. Founder of The Move, ELO, Wizard and curator of two brilliant early 70’s albums, “Boulders” and “Mustard”. He did everything and played everything on those two albums, including cello, saxes, banjo and much more. I was so thankful that he was inducted into the RRHOF with ELO. A truly gifted musical artist.
Dan Sturtevant

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Bob, don’t forget that Stevie Wonder was also a one-man band back then!

JimV

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He was a fun guy to hang with …he stopped by my club on a promo tour …..I blew his mind mixing records ….he came back later that night and had a blast hanging with the Disco folks  .. 1977 @ Celebration / Boston

Joseph Carvello

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Oh, contrare ….

In 1965, we listened to Wolfman Jack (from Del Rio, Texas) while in college in Fairfield Iowa – and he came in crystal clear (on clear nights).

He was somewhat a religious experience in those day.

A long time ago

Onward …

Alan Newman

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One of my favorite albums. “Marlene” is my go to song. I knew Todd in Phiadelphia during his Woody’s Truck Stop days. He was the first person I knew with multi-colored hair. He was always a star.

Rich Arfin

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Thank you, sir, for the lesson!  Wow what a track!

Joshua Hall

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Ah yes. Wolfman Jack.
I knew I wasn’t the only one who looooooved that one. I was also a “real” Wolfman Jack fan. I used to imitate him when I was a teenager, who wanted so bad to get in to radio.
As I recall, there was also a single of that glorious song released and they had Wolfman add his little adlibs throughout the song.
As a kid, I was living in Grand Forks North Dakota, and as was my usual thing, I stayed awake nights with my transistor radio under my pillow looking for those songs, and DJ’s who told us what we wanted to know about the music. I first heard The Wolfman when he was doing his shows with the transmitter in Mexico so they could blast his show to all of us who wanted to hear what he would play and the crazy things he would say.
Nothing beats those good old days for listening. Give me the Wolfman over any Spotify playlist any day.
Bill live from MN.

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Bruno Mars should do a cover of this song. He could definitely bring this to life again!

Anita Heilig-Zaccaro

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The Wolfman magic captured 4 thirteen year old teenage imaginations’ thousands of miles away in an industrial town on the river Thames (Gravesend) Great Britain – we listened to the soundtrack for months. Knew every song off by heart. There’s a story behind the songs chosen by George Lucas. Please get him on the Podcast :-)  Thanks Bob..

‘The songs and music of American Graffiti were all Poetry In Motion to us boys who knew off by heart everything Wolfman said on the record. “Those Green Onions are hanging around the studio, especially to keep them Vampires away – you understand” in his husky, gravel voice as he cued-up the Booker T and MGs instrumental organ twister Green Onions’.

Eddie Gordon

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You nailed it. For me, Wolfman Jack was *exactly* something from the early 60s, pre-Beatles.

As an adolescent in what seemed to me to be the ultimate stagnant backwater town in Florida, I was truly thrilled to discover his late night show on XERF, blasting out at 100,000 watts from Mexico across the river from Del Rio, TX. This was years before FM and AOR came on the scene, and I was perpetually searching for better music than the Bobby Vee-Little Peggy March fare cycled endlessly on the local Top 50 station. The black radio station that played the stuff I liked went off the air at night, and that’s when I began scanning the AM dial and found the marvelous pre-FM clear channel AM stations like XERF and WLS out of Chicago. I had to sneak my very 50s style pink plastic clock radio under the covers to listen, as I was around 12 or 13 and was supposed to be asleep. My mom never knew I was listening to Bobby Blue Bland instead of getting my shuteye.

Long time reader, and always enjoy your thoughts and insights.

Marty DeHart

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Wolfman Jack on XERB, coming through the transistor radio in my Cupertino, California bedroom, when I was supposed to be sleeping, dancing between the static. It felt like audio contraband, the Wolfman was breaking the rules, emanating from below the Mexican border.

Ecstasy.

One more thing – the search for copies of all three Nazz albums and Todd’s two Ampex releases consumed a big chunk of my teenage years. The SGC red vinyl of Nazz Nazz was the biggest prize; it  contained “Under the Ice,” a song that would have fit Black Sabbath quite well.

Thanks for the memories. I still listen to Something/Anything fifty years on.

Cheers,

Michael Witthaus

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I was working at a college clothing store in Madison, WI in 1972 when a local FM DJ I knew walked in with the radio demo copy of S/A.  He handed it to me and said it would blow my mind.  I went home, put it on the turntable.  Sat in low light on the top bunk of my bunk bed.  Listened to it track by track and followed with lyric sheet.  I was astonished the each successive song was better than the last one.  Became a lifelong TR fan.  All the songs on S/A ARE memorable.

Agree that Ballad is as good or better.

But S/A changed my life.  Even sounds fresh today.

And the opening track is classic, no matter how you slice it.

ed.wolfman

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Hey Bob –

It’s so great to see you writing about Todd.

He’s such an incredible artist, and he’s known among the musician community but lesser known–at least currently–among the younger music fans.

And “Wolfman Jack” is an amazing piece of art.

Incredible that he played all the instruments on most of that album…..

Mark Feldman

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Hi, just read your piece about Wolfman Jack and was wondering if you’d heard the version by female-fronted Tiny Demons on the tribute album Someone/Anyone? Changes the context a little bit when a woman is singing it.

That whole album is pretty cool if you haven’t heard it yet! Reinterpretations and straight covers galore of the songs we know and love.

https://toddtribute.bandcamp.com/track/tiny-demons-feat-bobby-strickland-wolfman-jack

Holly Duthrie

Note: Entire tribute album here: https://bit.ly/36aDgJU and here: https://spoti.fi/3O7DnXK

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In the military in Germany, early 1970s, on Armed Forces Radio (actually it had been renamed American Forces Radio) we heard this crazy guy called Wolfman Jack.  He wasn’t on any of the Philly radio stations.  Totally new, nuts and refreshing and we all got into him.  My company commander’s last name was Jackson, so of course he was nicknamed accordingly.  And then American Graffiti and Midnight Special.  And I still occasionally pull up Guess Who’s Clap For The Wolfman….

Dave Thorn

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and of course there is the great Guess Who track, “Clap For The Wolfman”!

Bill Migicovsky

Montreal

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Very cool. Wasn’t even aware of the Wolfman track! Thanks for unearthing it from the mothballs. Wolf was one of the first celebrities I ever met as a very young person in Sacramento radio at the time. I was familiar with him based on our syndication of his weekly show and my tuning into XERB during summer camp near Yosemite. Less than a decade later, as a DJ on XTRA (The Mighty 690), broadcasting from a coastal shack about 10 miles south of Tijuana I sorta felt his spirit. What a legend!

Rob Tonkin

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To me, one of the true highlights is the “conversation” that happens before “Slut”.
The cocaine references (way before the general populace had any idea) are hysterical.

And then, of course, the shining moment: “I just decided I’m changing the name of the album to “Throw Money.”

“Something/Anything” LIVES ETERNAL!!!

Matt Auerbach…

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I have been a reader for ages and always look forward to what you have to say.

I enjoyed this riff a lot. Made me smile.

I was at UCSD when “Something Anything” came out. It was right at Todd’s transition to more of the fusion jams of bands like “Yes.” One of my bandmates loved TR.

I also remember when I discovered wWolfman Jack at 13 years old in Vista, California (hipped to him by the older brother of one of my close friends.)

He was the coolest underground disk jockey.

I think you might have missed a track on “Something Anything” that hasn’t aged too well. “S-L-U-T.” Wasn’t that on there?

Big ensemble chorus shout:

S    (S!)   L    (L)!     U    (U!)   T!

She may be a slut but she looks good to me!

Times change.

Will Anderson

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Have always loved all Todd’s Nazz and early solo work. Something/Anything was a huge influence on me as a multi-instrumentalist and session player. Wolfman Jack is such a great cut and totally catches the sound and feel of that era.
Wonder if it provided any inspiration for the Guess Who’s Clap For The Wolfman.

Michael Gregory

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50 years ago I took a chance based on a friends half stoned suggestion that we move to  D.C.- but actually ended up in Arlington ,VA in a large house with 14 bedrooms with 15 others  trying to “find ourselves”. The reason we went? Jobs, construction jobs to be more exact- being laborers at almost twice what we were paid back in Michigan being busboys and gas station attendants. So while cleaning the buildings of wood, drywll,nails etc, we would listen to WGTB -Georgetown Broadcasting-and more specifically the “Spiritus Cheese Show”. This is the station and the show that introduced me to so many bands and artists from Tom Waits to Jim Kweskin to Bob Marley and everything in between. This was also the station where I heard so many songs from Something/Anything. I heard all the songs you mentioned and more from that album and on a Friday payday I stopped at a record store on  the way home, bought the album and spent most of the weekend in my room playing it loud on my Columbia stereo. Later bought an 8 track tape for the car. Those songs were such a part of my late teens. Thanks to your email, I guess I know what I will be listening to a great part of this weekend. (I still have the original vinyl I bought then)

Jeff Appleton
Marathon Entertainment

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You didn’t have to live in SoCal to listen to Wolfman Jack.  His taped broadcasts were on XERF in Ciudad Acuna, Coahuila, on the border with Texas.  XERF had 250,000 watts and could be heard in 48 states.  I listened to him in both Texas and Arizona.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfman_Jack#Film,_television,_and_music_career

“Though Smith was managing a Minneapolis radio station, he was still broadcasting as Wolfman Jack on XERF via taped shows that he sent to the station”  1962-64.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XHRF-FM  (this is a cool story)

One of Freed’s fans was Bob Smith, a disc jockey who also adopted the Moondog theme by calling himself Wolfman Jack and adding his own sound effects. Smith took his act to Inter-American Radio Advertising, who sent him to the studio and transmitter site of XERF. It was here that Wolfman Jack invented his own style of border blasting by turning the airwaves into one long infomercial featuring music and off-the-wall products.

Wolfman Jack gained a huge audience which brought in enough money to not only pay the bills, but to cause bandits and corrupt officials to also take enough interest in taking over his promotions for themselves. As a result, Smith began to pay his own security force to protect him, because although he lived in Del Rio, Texas, because of the Brinkley Act he had to actually broadcast from the station itself in Ciudad Acuña in Mexico.

Bill O.

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Yeah. Todd. A B&W Bearsville promo poster of Todd hangs over my studio desk at all times, gazing at me, reminding me to do better; to go in harder. The bar has been set higher.
And just to remind us how chock full o’ song Todd was during this period, “Wolfman Jack” is followed on “Something/Anything” by the Nyro-esque gem “Cold Morning Light”- a full on heart melter. C’mon.
I’m with you- I always preferred “Runt: The Ballad of Todd Rundgren” to “Something/Anything?— perhaps there was just too much content to unpack on the latter? Dare I say: too much brilliance? Dunno. At now age 50, I discovered all Nazz and 70’s era Todd after the fact, and in random order… first really discovering the Todd WTF-ness with a random Dr. Demento spin of “Lockjaw” from A Cappella when it was released, and then picking up the 12” single of the same album’s “Something To Fall Back On” at the glorious Record Trader 5/$1 parking lot sale shortly thereafter. Instantly hooked. I worked backwards, mind constantly blown. It still is.
I get the same feeling of “throw off” 60’s psychedelic whimsy from Runt’s “I’m In The Clique”. But where to begin and where to end with Todd?
I guess I’ll be buying those tickets to the Daryl Hall with Todd show coming up here in L.A. after all, damnit. Maybe I’ll see you there.
Thank you Todd/thank you Bob

-Jeff Babko
the valley

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As we used to say in the day: Todd is God.

queenie taylor