TODD RUNDGREN DEMOS NEW CD+ RELEASE

by Eric Arnum, earnum@attmail.com

  During a concert Thursday night at Irving Plaza in New York, musician 
Todd Rundgren demonstrated the multimedia capabilities of his new 
disk, "The Individualist," which he plans to release in September in 
the just-approved CD+ format.

  His performance was one of hundreds of live concerts scheduled into
15 Manhattan clubs during the week of July 17-22 as part of the Macintosh
New York Music Festival.  Other CD-ROM and online performances this
week have featured Laurie Anderson, The Residents, and the Emergency
Broadcast Network.

  The CD+ format is a recently approved format that will be used for the
simultaneous playback of audioand video on the same five-inch disk.  It
was approved several weeks ago by the Recording Industry Association
of America (RIAA), but other factors have slowed its progress to the market.

  The advantage of the CD+ format is that disks can be played in either 
an existing Compact Disk machine or in a CD-ROM drive, Rundgren said. 
"You can take this disk, slip it in your regular old CD player, and 
it will sound and act just like a regular CD.  So if you don't have a 
computer, no problem, don't worry about the computer crap.  Just play 
the record," he told the audience at Irving Plaza.

  Those who have a CD-ROM drive on their Macintosh or Windows PC, 
however, can enjoy additional visual entertainment loaded onto "The 
Individualist" disk.  Rundgren said the computer data is hidden in 
the otherwise unused portions of the disk.

  Rundgren used a projection TV and movie screen to display the monitor 
of a Macintosh that he was running on stage right.  His first demo 
was of a lyrics section on the disk, where fans can use their mouse 
to highlight a particular line from a song, and then listen to that 
line being sung as they follow along with the lyrics onscreen.  They 
can jump ahead, let it play through, go back, or change songs as they 
wish.

  Next came a demo of the visual entertainment that's programmed to 
accompany each of the ten songs on the disk.  Rundgren took the 
audience through short demos of the tracks "If Not Now, When?", 
"Family Values", and "Tables Will Turn", explaining that he would 
perform them later in their entirety during the concert that was to 
immediately follow.  One track was accompanied by twirling shapes; 
another contained a black and white cartoon of hammers, faces, and 
fingers dialing phones.  The third track featured color animations.

  Rundgren himself didn't appear onscreen until the video editing 
section of the disk.  "We did a multi-camera shoot of a live 
performance in London last year of a "No World Order" interactive 
show," and included the performance of "Fascist Christ" on this disk, 
Rundgren explained.  Fans can use their computer to act like the director of a 
music video, choosing when to switch among three different camera angles of 
the performance.  "You can call your own shoot of the show," Rundgren 
said, and edit your own video..

  The CD+ release is tentatively scheduled for the first week of 
September, delayed by the slow appearance of the drivers needed to 
play the disk on a Mac or Windows machine.  Rundgren said he expects 
"The Individualist" to carry the same list price as a music CD -- 
typically $16 -- though it will be sold by both music shops and 
computer retailers.

  While fans wait for the CD+ release, Rundgren has decided to ship a 
music-only cassette version of "The Individualist" worldwide, as well 
as a music-only CD format release in Japan.  After the CD+ drivers 
become available, he said he plans to remix and release some of his 
earlier works in a multimedia format.

  In addition, all ten tracks are available for downloading from the 
CompuServe Information Service (by typing Go Individualist).  
Rundgren is sponsoring 30-day free trials of the service for his 
fans.  However, the tracks range in size from 2.3 MB to 5 MB -- and 
all ten add up to a whopping 35 Megabytes -- so users may need to set 
aside a whole month to download all the music via dial-up modem.

(ION Records 1-310-452-8448; Compuserve 1-800-550-5335)