Hello, It’s Still Todd

Todd Rundgren has a few words to say about the state of the music business, but none of them are kind.

“It still isn’t known to the public at large what’s known to the industry, which is that the dark-robed figure with the sickle is at the door,” he says. “When no one cares about the new stuff, and they aren’t buying the old stuff, the business dies.”

Rundgren’s had plenty of time to think about this stuff. After a 30-year career recording and producing albums for various record labels--and scoring the occasional hit, such as 1972’s “Hello, It’s Me” and 1978’s “Can We Still Be Friends?”--he’s now almost exclusively working outside the traditional parameters of the music business. And that suits him just fine.

Like so many cult artists who came of age in the ‘70s, 50-year-old Rundgren--who plays the Ventura Theatre tonight and the Roxy on Saturday and Sunday--found that his stock had sunk with traditional labels by the early ‘90s. As he puts it, “I had reached the entropic phase in my relationship with the industry.”

But unlike most middle-aged rock musicians, Rundgren had the know-how and the resources to make an end-run around the business and continue to create new music for his small but rabid fan base.

An Early Proponent of Internet’s Possibilities

Always a true believer in the ability of new technology to create paradigm shifts, Rundgren leaped into the Internet soon after it became accessible to the public, creating a Web site in 1994 that enabled users to access music, news and merchandise. (His current Web site is at https://www.tri.com.)

A remarkably prolific artist--he’s been known to churn out two albums a year--Rundgren had also grown increasingly frustrated with the glacial pace of record distribution and marketing. To hear him tell it, artists waste too much time promoting music and not enough time creating it.

“Before the Beatles redefined the business as album-oriented, when you came up with a good song you released it,” he says. “Now, you go into the studio for a couple of months, then you have a two- to six-week window of opportunity that will determine whether it succeeds or fails. But that’s irrelevant to the fact that you’re gonna have to go on the road and play the record for the next year. Is that the way a musician lives?”

Not this musician. Last August, Rundgren established Patronet, an “enabling platform” that allows his music to be literally underwritten by his fans. For an annual fee, users can access new music as soon as Rundgren completes it. In many cases, subscribers can even track a song from rough draft to final mix.

At the end of the year, subscribers get four completed CDs sent to them. Although he’s currently Patronet’s only client, Rundgren hopes to make the service available to other like-minded artists once all of the technical glitches are ironed out.

“By the turn of the millennium, anyone that’s got an Internet connection will be looking for something new and exciting, and will come to take it for granted that there’s a whole world of unknown music out there,” he says. “There will be some kind of technological replacement for a DJ and a music critic, which will guide you to the music.”

‘With a Twist’ Album Proved a Turning Point

Despite being hard-wired to the Internet, Rundgren--an elder statesman of intricately crafted pop music whose influence can be heard in the arch yet wistful narratives of Ben Folds Five and the New Radicals’ up-with-people anthem “You Get What You Give”-- still devotes summers to a decidedly second-wave notion--touring.

The left-field success of 1996’s “With a Twist,” an album in which Rundgren performed bossa nova remakes of some of his more familiar songs, prompted him to tour using an elaborate stage set that resembled a Martin Denny album cover. He’ll break out the tiki torches again during the second half of his L.A.-area performances.

“The ‘With a Twist’ album was a highly successful experiment with both fans and critics, so we want to milk it for a while,” says Rundgren, who lives in Kauai, Hawaii. “It’s not something that had a natural appeal to me, ‘cause I’d rather be doing new music than revisiting the old material. But we went to so much trouble to build this set that it seemed like a waste not to use it again.”

BE THERE

Todd Rundgren, Friday at the Ventura Theatre, 26 S. Chestnut St., Ventura, 8 p.m. $25. (805) 639-3965. Saturday and Sunday at the Roxy, 9009 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, 8 p.m. $25. (310) 278-9457. Monday at the Galaxy Theatre, 3503 S. Harbor Blvd., Santa Ana, 8 p.m. $25. (714) 957-0600.