My Amazon Reviews: Todd Rundgren "No World Order"

Rapping and Ranting with Rundgren
3 Out of 5 Stars

In the early 90's, the ever inventive Todd Rundgren took a stab at a new technology, the Interactive Musical CD. Rechristening himself TR-I, the unique "No World Order" appeared. While the original CD-I's were playable in a now obsolete format/technology, the CD's themselves are still available - and cheap, too - for play on a standard CD player.

This is one of Todd's oddest recordings. Comprised of 10 songs that are fractured into snippets across "No World Order's" duration, the album is all Todd playing all the music. He cross-cuts bridges, lyrics and choruses from each song (plus a quick drop-in from "The Twilight Zone" and a sample pulled over from his own "A Capella"), bouncing from one theme to another. Instead of the lyrical exercise of writing lyrics, cutting them apart and reassembling them at random, Todd did the same to his musical fragments. It makes for a very interesting cycle.

There are some superb individual songs here, with Todd singing (or more often, rapping) over the synthesized beats. This also perhaps Todd's angriest album, with the scathing "Fascist Christ" mincing no words when it comes to religious fundamentalists and "World Wide Epiphany" encouraging his listeners to "send a message to the government, pack it in cement." But it wouldn't be a complete Todd album without that one soul searching ballad, and on "NWO," it's "Time Stood Still."

That is the odd song out here, with rapid-fire rants like "Day Job" setting the primary tone of the CD. Todd kept the TR-I moniker for two more releases, "The Individualist" and a remixed soft-sounding version of this album called "No World Order Lite." This original "No World Order" remains as a testament to Todd's ongoing fascination with new technologies and his constant ability to leap from style to style at will.