Utopia NETWORK

Review by George Lazares (Switch to
)
8/15/1996

When I first heard this record I was utterly baffled by the "sound" of it....slowly I began to delight in a number of its songs. The front cover was quite eye-catching, but the boys looked anything but well-conditioned. I've read many times that Network, as a label, went under during this time, but I tend to disagree with respect to their lack of support. That is,

they (Network) established:

et cetera

The choice of "Feet Don't Fail Me Now" was a major misstep - this was a flat-out feeble song and the video laughable and donyeyish.

The live tape from the aforementioned Turkey gig in L.A. was a bit lifeless, not bad, but still lacking. I mean - Utopia had waited for this moment for a long time and from my perspective the show was little more, and perhaps a lot less, than its live Utopian predecessors.....cardboard crowd as well.

notes:

I believe we have so many dissimilar opinions on Todd/Utopia records because there is no standard, commercially or artistically. The only touchstone that the rock critics agree on is that S/A (recorded almost 25 years ago) was Todd's magnum opus. Many fans (some here) disregard S/A as bubblegum. And even the critics (72 RS) were less than impressed with S/A ("Todd may have a masterpiece in him, but S/A is not it" Rolling Stone 1972). Commercially, S/A was not a BIG seller - only going GOLD (500,000). AM's "Jagged Little Pill" has sold 10 million copies (more than all of Todd's 30 years of record output combined times two). Hermit sold better than the norm of 150,000, but not that much, Adventures sold better, but not unlike Hermit, no GOLD status. Folks think "Bang The Drum" was a big hit - it charted at something like #US 68 for a couple of days.

Pls note....I'm not comparing AM with Todd, my point was that there is this perception that Todd was (or has been) commerically successful. Yes S/A, Hermit, etc sold better than his/Utopia's avg sales, but it terms of the industry, they were still pretty much small-beer and short-lived success's.

Deviceful efforts, such as; AWATS, NWO, Init, and the 1st Utopia were hypercritically knocked. Hence, no all-embracing universal innovational standard...


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