33 rebellions per minute
1980
Utopia, DEFACE THE MUSIC
Ooh, just what the world needed: a Rutles imitation! The Rutles concept, by Eric Idle and Neil Innes, was to make a documentary movie about a band extraordinarily similar in history to the Beatles--- so much so that it wasn't really all that funny; Brits don't always seem to think a puchline or an exaggeration is as helpful as I do. The movie also contained a bunch of songs which, though technically original, seemed to consist in remarkly large part of Beatle song-fragments and hooks mixed together. I would have liked it better, myself, if "Shangri-La" and "Love Life" and others hadn't drawn so heavily from the same wretched-excess "Hey Jude"/ "All You Need Is Love" well that Oasis have long since dried up and continue to draw wet concrete from anyway.
Utopia, a project of well-known pop oddball Todd Rundgren, trace the Beatles' legacy in a much better way. For one thing, he remembers that their _real_ specialty was in establishing a great tune, a great chorus, a bridge, and then leaving, all within the spac of 2 or 3 minutes. Secondly, Rundgren (who does a real good Lennon impersonation) is less afraid to bring his own songwriting skills to the party. "Feel Too Good" is a flop, with nothing but a "Getting Better" guitar riff and the descending 5-note hook from "When I'm 64" in its favor, but however obvious it is that "Take It Home" rewrites "Day Tripper", the riff really is quite different (and excellent), and the melody is its own; and while the rest of the songs follow a clear progession from "Eight Days A Week" homages to "Walrus" and "Help From My Friends" homages, most of the hooks are blends of things the Beatles _almost_ did, but which happen to be just as inspired. Third, Rundgren doesn't pretend he's stuck, technologically, in the '60's. No studio wizardry, no, but "I Just Want To Touch You" and "Silly Boy" and "That's Not Right" use multitracks to fit congas and tom-toms and garage organs into the spaces alongside the guitar rock, and end up actively better than the real early Beatles--- from me, a high compliment indeed. You could enjoy this as spot-the-reference, but you can also enjoy it as really good pop music. No, the real Beatles wouldn't record an album this self-referential. But they aren't doing anything else much either, so Rundgren's one-up for that alone.
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