Live in Chicago 91

Issued as an archival album eight years after the fact, Live in Chicago '91 finds Todd Rundgren on tour promoting what would turn out to be his final major-label album, 2nd Wind. That album had been released seven months prior to his Chicago concert at the Riviera Theater on August 26, and it had long since slipped off the charts. But that didn't keep Rundgren from performing seven songs from it, along with four songs from its 1989 predecessor, Nearly Human, and another four from 1985's A Cappella. Thus, the bulk of the show represented Rundgren's then-recent output, although, as usual, he found room for such concert favorites as "Real Man," "Love of the Common Man," and "Hello It's Me." Fans will be especially interested in the unusual selections, which include two Utopia numbers, "Secret Society" and "Rock Love"; the "Marvin Gaye Medley" of "What's Going On," "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)," and "I Want You" that Rundgren had been appending to A Cappella's "Lost Horizon" since 1985; the Tubes' "Feel It," which Rundgren had co-written; and, particularly, "Jesse," an unrecorded song on which Rundgren flipped the bird in explicit terms to Jesse Helms, Tipper Gore, and Pope John Paul II before recommending that his listeners register to vote. Although A Cappella, Nearly Human, and 2nd Wind were not among Rundgren's most popular recordings (none of them producing a hit single or crossing number 100 in the charts), the concert demonstrated that they were full of catchy Rundgren songs that deserved a chance to be heard. ~ William Ruhlmann