Help Me Out Here...

Do people actually enjoy the music of Todd Rundgren? Really, do people park their butts on the couch and say, "Phyllis, fetch my slippers--tonight, I'm gonna re-cline and bathe in the bittersweet melodies of the Todd." Is there some joke that I'm not getting?

I've tried to listen to this clown for years, and every time I'm left to wonder, "What am I doing this for?" Honestly, I don't know. Perhaps it's because people (friends, writers, connoisseurs) whom I respect mention his name from time to time--and not as a punchline, either! (What do you get when you cut cocaine with hairspray, VD and the eyebrows of George Harrison? Todd Rundgren. Or: What's the difference between a bucket of poop and Todd Rundgren? Todd Rundgren plays keyboards. Not very funny, I know, but I'm not getting paid for this.)

Anyway, last night I gave this so-called pop music genius/studio whiz another shot, dropping the needle on his 1978 opus, The Hermit of Mink Hollow. Three songs into this slick-as-shit, pop-goes-the-fart crap fest, I yanked the LP off the turntable, returned it to its jacket, and tossed it in the box of castoffs about to make the final leg of their round-trip journey from the thrift store.

Maybe I'll have better luck with the Alan Parsons Project.

Sing Along No More

On Saturday, July 31, Mitch Miller finally died. After 99 years! As I write, his corpse is being reunited with his music career.

Sadly, I'm sure to be haunted by Mitch's stupid smirk and goober goatee for years to come, for every time I treasure hunt for vinyl gold at the thrift shop, while flipping past cat-urine-scented classical LPs and mildew-stained Art Garfunkel albums, I'm greeted by a glut of "Sing Along with Mitch" records. And there are dozens of them. I haven't been to every thrift store in this fine country, but every thrift store I've been to, from Jacksonville to Spokane, Seattle to Santa Barbara, has had a stash of Mitch Miller records. Which isn't all that surprising since he was said to have sold 17 million albums by 1966!

And, really, the thrift store is where his music belongs--gathering dust and mold along with the rest of the consumer detritus and cast-offs we so charitably donate. It's justice for the sing-songy gimmicky crap "the maestro" shoved down America's throat in the 1950s and '60s. Back then, when rock 'n' roll was king, Miller, in his vain yet futile attempt to conform America's impressionable ears to his own bad taste, said famously, "[rock 'n' roll] is not music. It's a disease." Which wouldn't have been a big deal, had ol' Tin Ear not been running the show at Columbia Records. For the record, it wasn't Mitch who signed Bob Dylan; it was John Hammond.

Mitch made a brief comeback in 1993, when his music was taken out of mothballs and applied in a new, more suitable context when it was played at ear-splitting volumes to drive out David Koresh from his compound. Sadly, Mitch's music wasn't an effective enough irritant and ended up becoming background music for a pretty spectacular barbecue. Anyway, should you happen upon a Mitch Miller LP at the thrift store, leave it. Don't listen to it; don't even trash it--our dumps are already overflowing with Andy Williams records.

Besides the millions of pounds of toxic waste generated from the polyvinyl chloride used in the manufacture of his foul-tasting pop music confections, Mitch Miller is survived by his ridiculous goatee.