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POP MUSIC REVIEW : Rundgren Show Bridges Studio, Stage : At the Wiltern Theatre, he and his band provide the same full, sophisticated pop sound that live album ‘Second Wind’ delivers.

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SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

There wasn’t much need to worry that Todd Rundgren’s fine concert Thursday at the Wiltern Theatre wouldn’t live up to his latest album. “Second Wind,” though it doesn’t sound like a live album, was recorded on stage before an audience, with most of the same musicians as on this show.

The wizard/true-cult-star and his psychedelically garbed 10-piece band (who come to the Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim Tuesday) indeed were able to provide a full, sophisticated pop sound for a healthy two hours plus--almost all of that time devoted to songs from Rundgren’s three most recent albums, with only a handful of old hits.

Casual fans who haven’t paid their dues in the Todd-Is-God Club for a while may not have recognized much--though they probably weren’t put off, since the direction of his current material is more in line with “Hello, It’s Me” (which he did perform) than the side trips of intervening decades.

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Fans of guitar heroics may have been put off: Rundgren picked up a conducting baton far more often than his trusty ax (and, one of the three or four times he did solo, it proved nightmarishly out of tune).

Though he’s essentially apolitical, Rundgren’s best and worst songs this time addressed counterculture concerns: “Second Wind” is a sweeping, Utopia-style call for post-’60s spiritual renewal. But the acoustic “Jesse”’--his profanely satirical attack on easy targets Sen. Jesse Helms, Tipper Gore and Pope John Paul II--seemed a reactionary response to the reactionary, and quite beneath him.

Todd Rundgren plays Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at the Celebrity Theatre, 201 E. Broadway, Anaheim. Tickets: $21.50. Information: (714) 999-9536.

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