What can you ask a man that knows everything? That was the conundrum for the interview with the wizard and true star, Todd Rundgren. Questions about world peace, Elian Gonzalez, and XTC were put aside while we asked Todd questions his "patrons" would have asked. The interview started with a long distance call to Hawaii on April 11th.
PH – Hi Todd I’m Paul from Soundwaves Magazine here in Connecticut.
TR – I’ve been expecting your call.
PH – How’s the weather there in Hawaii?
TR – It’s been a little dodgy here for awhile but it looks pretty good actually.
PH – Well you’re missing the snow in the northeast here, we’ve been having a little snow.
TR – I’ve heard about that but we’ve got our own problems.
PH – Well Todd, I’ve heard you’ve got a new CD coming out, you want to tell the readers about that?
TR – Well it’s pretty much a compilation of the stuff that I’ve been working on under my subscription arrangement.
PH – The Patronet?
TR – Yes. All the stuff that my most dedicated, I call them patrons, some people would call them fans. But the fans are sort of a more general people who might come out to the shows and things like that or buy a record if they saw it in a store, but a patron is a kind of surrogate. Patrons take the place of the record label and underwrite the production of the record by the subscription fees. So instead of it being produced in the normal way, where people go into the studio for a month or two or three or whatever. They record and mix all their material and put out an album and then go out for a year and a half or so to promote it. Well, under this arrangement I make music whenever I have a song in my head or whenever I’m in the mood to make some music. I can go in and satisfy my obligations to my subscribers by recording something and delivering it to them right away.
PH – That’s great.
TR – So everything that’s on this record, my subscribers, the two thousand or so people who have signed up with Patronet, they’ve heard it already. They’ve heard it essentially a song at a time.
PH – Right and they can download it.
TR – Yeah, the select few of my most dedicated fans. The ones who are willing to essentially take the place of a record label in terms of making a new album.
PH – And it’s going well for you?
TR – Pretty well. It’s been a struggle certainly but recently my company was merged with another larger show business entity and we’re about to do another roll out of the whole Patronet. So you could say that that album represents all the effort conceptualized that went into phase one of the Patronet and now we’re entering phase two which we expect is gonna be many more orders and many more people and a lot more kinds of service involved.
PH – Right, and is that where Mr. Goldberg comes in?
TR – Well, he kind of comes in at a number of different levels. It’s this new entity. The so-called company that I merged with. It’s sort of a top to bottom arrangement in that Danny Goldberg has a traditional style record label. Granted it’s one of the few independent ones at this point. They do business through a component called ‘Artist End’ which you access through the web and it offers essentially a forum for artists who are familiar personalities, principally, to be able to expose what they’re doing to a larger audience using the web. Then, ideally, move every one on to what is the third aspect, which is Pagernet subscription model, in which you use a special piece of client software, it’s not really the Internet, it’s Pagernet. You use a special piece of software to access and download content that’s created by the artist you’re interested in and you get to interact in some manner, usually by chats and e-mail and stuff like that. So you can just get a greater insight into the life of that particular artist.
PH – And it keeps you busy I bet.
TR – Way busy. I been busy for a couple of years now on this and it’s waiting for the break in the proceedings. But it seems like as we go up another level things get even more frantic. I spend probably eight to ten hours a day in front of my computer working on software, on music, on something. But I live in Hawaii so if I need a break I can just go outside, to the beach or something.
PH- I’m sure it’s beautiful
TR – Yeah, it’s great.
PH – So when you come around will there be a band backing you up?
TR – Well we’re coming out with a pretty stealth unit comparatively. I’ve had some very large bands and then I’ve gone out completely by myself on occasion.
PH – I’ve seen them all.
TR – I’ve seen them all too! In this particular instance, just because of scheduling and stuff, I couldn’t get my regular band together. Some of the guys had taken other gigs, things like that. So I’m putting together a power trio for the purposes of the tour.
PH- Right
TR – Which is like going back to when I started music. I imagine it’s gotta be easier than going out and doing it all by myself.
PH- I loved the ‘With A Twist’ Tiki room tour.
TR – That was a great tour. It was just hugely expensive and a lot of effort to get that thing out on the road. So we had some tour support the first time and that allowed us to take the full band out. After that we went out with sort of a progressively stripped down version of it until finally when we went out last year we simply pulled out a couple of chairs. We’d stand up for the first set and play our guitars real loud and then we’d do a loungey bossa nova set, sitting on our stools and stuff. So that was something that was a lot of fun for us as well. We would’ve done that for years, but now we may have to tuck that aside until we’re all ready for retirement and then we’ll open up our own little lounge somewhere.
PH – So Todd is there any new software coming out that we should know of, that you’re working on?
TR – Well mostly what I write is for Patronet. It’s a client called the Interositer. It allows people to get connected to the subscription services and to download stuff and to do it with a certain amount of ease and security. Generally there are some shortcomings in the standard way that browsers work that make it hard to run subscriptions. And they have to do with things like the security model and the display model and all this other stuff. So the Interositer is the second incarnation of the software I wrote when I first started doing this a year and a half ago, almost two years ago now. So when you sign up you get directed to a web page where you can download the software from there, then everything runs through the Interositer, it doesn’t run through your web browser.
PH – And that makes it easier?
TR – Yeah, it eliminates a lot of the hassles for people in terms of getting all the pieces necessary together to display entertainment, stream audio and video and that kind of stuff. Most people they have to get a half a dozen plug-ins for their browser which are all provided by third parties. I discovered when I first started doing this that when you depend on third parties you wind up doing a lot of their customer service, because plug-ins mostly are given away for free. Therefor, you’re not going to get any customer service when they don’t work properly or when they conflict with other plug-ins. That kind of thing. So I wanted to eliminate that element. I want to make sure that everyone who subscribes I looking at the same thing, getting the same experience. And, you know it’s a somewhat different model than doing things on the web. Because most things on the web are paid for by advertising banners, things like that. So if a person visiting a site isn’t satisfied, well, there’s no money to return because it’s just banners and things like that. So you can give people something like a password and have them log on with a password every time but the problem with that is it’s too easy to publish your password. In other words one person pays for it and gives the password to their twenty best friends.
PH- There you go, I’ve seen it happen.
TR – Yeah, and in that particular sense it’s protecting the copyrighted material of the artist. And we can’t do everything to prevent people from duplicating and giving it away, but you have to at least discourage it where you can. So that’s part of the reason why we use our own software, because it helps to control that, the transfer and copyrighted materials in a way that at least we know who’s getting it. We know exactly who’s getting it. Now if they turn around and give it to someone else, well that’s another issue. But we’ll know that nobody who hasn’t actually paid for the privilege will be downloading any of the stuff or participating on any of the services.
PH- That’s great but you really got to think it out.
TR – Well I started out not thinking it out. You know I started just doing it and then discovered all this stuff. You discover as you go along see? That’s what life is all about. You never know until you attempt to do it and then you’ll find out.
PH – Do you have people sitting around with you, a little team? Or is it just you in a room?
TR – Well, I had people come in and out occasionally but since I live so far away from civilization I don’t have, at least not yet, a whole team of people here. We only did the merger just around the first of the millennium, only about four months ago I guess. And it’s an interesting time, all of these Internet companies; they’re all so hot that it’s hard to find good help nowadays. Everyone is in a company that’s revving up for an PI or something like that. And it couldn’t have been much longer than a year or so when a lot of people were still on the streets looking for gigs. But nowadays there’s so many of these start up companies that they’ll hire anyone just to fill a seat. So everyone’s got a gig. It’s hard to find good people to build a company with. So it just takes longer, you know, waiting for good people to get freed up to do other things.
PH – Speaking of other things, do you do any more videos at all?
TR – Videos are such a time consuming thing that it was just one of the things I couldn’t afford to do much recently. But we’ve gotten a bit more into it now that there’s a new round of equipment and software that’s much cheaper and easier to use. So we’ve been doing some video and I’ll be doing a lot more video.
PH – I love it!
TR – The other thing is there’s a technology called ‘Flash’ which is very popular on the web but it’s also something that can be used to make video with and right now we’re in the process o attempting something like that. We’re going to see how it works out.
PH- Did you use any Premier at any time?
TR – I use to, I still do have a Media 100 system and I used all the associated tools that came with that including Premier and After Effects and all the plug ins and other extensions. I was involved in a project last summer that used Final Cut Pro, which is essentially pretty much softer only you don’t need any of the hardware. I still pretty much prefer a hardware system thing, something like the B100, it cuts down on the amount of time you spend waiting for things to render all the time. So yeah, the video tools have come along quite a bit. I’m kind of up to my neck with most of what I have here, so I don’t have time to go out and mess around with them too much. But I know video is gonna be a bigger factor in what we’re doing, now that video streaming solutions are a bit more available.
PH – Yeah, and somewhat easier to use.
TR – They’re easier to use, they’re cheaper and also now they are kind of like all in one solution. Where if you can get video into a camera, you can then take it and pump it through a series of software pieces and stuff like that. Like Media Cleaner and various CODECs and stuff like that so that you don’t really have to be a software genius necessarily to get your stuff up on the web anymore. It used to be you’d jump through quite a few hoops to get decent video, but now they developed technologies and tools that make it all much quicker, much easier and less of a job pulling it all together.
PH – Well I won’t keep you much longer. I can’t wait to see you in Uncasville.
TR – Back at the casino!
PH – Yeah, you’ve played Toad’s Place in the past. How did the gig at the Mohegan Sun come about?
TR – It starts with promoters and then filters up through the agent and management and eventually gets to the artist. What the agent attempts to do, of course, is get you the best offer in any particular area and what’s happened in recent years is these casinos have become principal stopping points along the tour. They pay really well and they’re not so much concerned about making money as they are getting people inside the casino. So they almost take a loss in that sense. I guess they figure that of every 100 people they get to just go through the casino to the gig, some percentage of them are gonna drop money at the blackjack table or the slots and they’ll make money that way. I discovered this when I was out a year ago with Ring Starr when at least half the tour was casinos.
PH – Really, half the tour?
TR – Yeah, it’s not that uncommon when you get older as an artist. It’s not really a place for younger musicians who aren’t even allowed to go into a casino to gamble. It’s [for] the artist who’s been around for awhile. But I guess it’s always been like that. To me it’s always been kind of a running gag that you would play rock and roll up until a certain age and then you go to Las Vegas and do the Wayne Newton, Frank Sinatra thing for the rest of your life, if you’re lucky right? And that’s now started to happen. Hey, in the late seventies and early eighties you’d see bands like Kool and the Gang in casinos. I remember the Aladdin started doing actual pop music acts instead of lounge music or the show music kind of thing. Now you go to Las Vegas and half the acts are my contemporaries. So now it’s a basic underwriting element of putting a tour together nowadays. I don’t have too many casinos on the tour that I’m doing but there’s certainly a couple more than there used to be. And they’re great gigs from the standpoint of they are usually highly professionally run venues. They’re not like some creepy dank bar. Lots of cities, the only venue that they have is some warehouse painted black inside with so-called festival seating where everyone stands and you’re in competition with the noises at the bar throughout the whole thing. And casino gigs, it’s always really nice seating for everyone, stages are really big and spacious because they do all kinds of shows. They got professional crews, great dressing rooms, great service. Most of the casinos will throw in some ridiculous amount of per diems as well. Like on the Ringo tour, we’d rehearse for a week or ten days for two or three nights at the Taj Mahal and we had like a hundred day per diem. Everyone was frustrated because they couldn’t eat enough food to use it up! We were living like kings. The casino vibe is actually great. I never think of going to the casino to gamble. I never gamble. But doing a gig in a casino is not a bad thing from the artist’s standpoint. You get treated very well and the people in the audience get treated well also.
PH – I’ve been to a few and they’re great. We’ll look forward to seeing you in Connecticut.
TR – Just stay away from those blackjack tables.
PH – So when will the new CD be available in the stores?
TR – I heard the release date is June 20th. I also heard they’ll be promoting a single before that which hasn’t happened to me for a long time. But the object of the single promotion is to get people to sign up for the online services as much as to go buy the record.
PH – And is there going to be a video with that?
TR – It’s quite possible.
PH – Todd thanks so much for your time.
TR – And I’ll see you when we get to Uncasville.