Another LIVE

While I wasn't much of a fan of Utopia's first album, Todd Rundgren's Utopia, a slightly trimmed down version (they'd lost a synthesizer player) recorded Another LIVE, which was an altogether different type of album. There's no doubt that the band had quickly become a lot funkier and was sounding very smooth.

Utopia Another LIVE

Utopia Another LIVE

Secondly, Another LIVE was song based, rather than improvisational.

In fact, there are three great hippy anthems taking up the entirety of Side 1, perhaps the greatest cosmic songs ever written:

The first is Another Life, delivered with urgent prog-rock earnestness. The subject matter? Well, it's reincarnation. Now, try to remember, this form of er... "spirituality" was pretty new in the West during the mid 1970s and Todd was providing music for that Niche.

"...Something happened just the other night
I had a vision in the middle of a daydream
In a place I'd never been before
I couldn't tell if I was still awake...or sleeping
I saw so many things I barely recognised
I thought that I was lost..but then I saw you
Well, I could be wrong...but I swear that I knew you
In another life..."

Another Life

"...Wow. This is brilliant. I loved this song when I was 14, not knowing why, and I recently read the lyrics and was blown away. Only Todd could take some esoteric buddhist teachings and turn them into a rocking tune like this..." youtuber spanishlake

The Wheel with gentle, acoustic guitar, harmonium, soft drums & virtually spoken lyrics certainly draws a line in the sand. If you like it, you're almost certainly a hippy (or a closet-hippy) and if you hate it, you're not, it's as simple as that. Still occasionally performed by Todd at concerts, I actually rather like The Wheel (whoops, there a giveaway!), both musically and to a certain extent, lyrically. Face it, few have ever been this blatant about Hippydom before or since!

"...You know, they say that Life's like a merry-go-round
I think it's more like a ferris wheel
Cos sometimes you're up, sometimes you're down
Sometimes you just don't know what to fee

And just when you think you've got the game figured out
And you say you've got it made
The mysterious madman with his hand on the lever (?)
Don't seem to ever want to let you off

We can't get off this wheel of Karma
We can't stop the hands of Time..."

The Wheel

Seven Rays: Certainly the most musically complex of all the three songs and lyrically an er...esoteric view on the composition of matter. (I'm sure the young girls screamed!). Seven Rays is actually quite dramatic and sounds fabulous.

Irrespective of your own position on things cosmic, this was young Todd laying his (eternal) soul on the line. The music was beautifully put together...and as I said in the Initiation review, the best of these two albums would have made an awesome hippy album. Why Todd relegated thes 3 mystical prog-rock songs to a LIVE album is beyond me, knowing that in the future, they'd seldom be heard or played!

Side 2 is, unfortunately, a bit of Todd LIVE mish-mash rather than anything relevant to the jazz-rock/prog-rock of Utopia:

Intro/Mr. Triscuits...great synth work from Roger Powell & Moogy Klingman

Something's Coming...Stephen Sondheim's upbeat Broadway lyrics from West Side Story sounds eerily Todd-like...and superb!

Heavy Metal Kids from Todd is, like the original, unconvincing but was something of a crowd pleaser

Do Ya from The Move, an English pop band from The Sixties which had hits like Flowers In The Rain, Blackberry Way, Fire Brigade & Brontosaurus (a fave of mine as a kid and who later evolved into ELO) is one of the band's end-of-set numbers and is plodding but fun &

Just One Victory...from Wizard is suitably Utopian and rousing

The problem isn't so much this second suite of songs, it's more that the individual songs don't sit particularly well together. Still, there's plenty of good music here...and if you reprogram your CD to play the album in this order:

Intro/Mr. Triscuits
Something's Coming
Another Life
Seven Rays
The Wheel
Heavy Metal Kids
Do Ya
Just One Victory

Another LIVE sounds considerably more cohesive. If you were to do that, I really can recommend it, because these hippy songs are one-of-a-kind and very good and the other tracks top and tail them quite well.

Utopia: Another LIVE

"...It was Summer in Jersey, when Utopia performed this concert. Todd flew in on a winged Unicorn named Raul, making several passes over the amazed audience. He landed and spent several minutes arguing Quantum Theory with a gnome, a surly wood nymph and an Italian, before bestowing immortality on the crowd..." Amazon reviewer C. Clymer

"...The only thing that holds this back as the greatest LIVE album in my collection is the actual recording. Don't let that stop you from buying it though. You'll look at show tunes in a new way after Something's Coming and the instrumental work on this jazzy album makes you wish you could have been there. Another Life and Seven Rays are alone worth the price of admission..." Amazon reviewer A Customer

N.B. New Age fans of Another LIVE may also enjoy: