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International News Title: Todd Rundgren is the new singer for the reformed band the Cars The good times are rolling again for The New Cars (tickets | music), comprised of original Cars guitarist Elliot Easton, keyboardist Greg Hawkes, and the rhythm section of bassist Kasim Sulton (Utopia, Meat Loaf, Celine Dion, Hall & Oates) and Tubes drummer Prairie Prince. Taking over frontman duties in lieu of Ric Ocasek is Todd Rundgren (tickets | music). The reformed version of the seminal 1980s New Wave group--currently enjoying something of a resurgence thanks to a Circuit City advertisement and a clearly heard influence on bands like The Killers, Fountains of Wayne, and Weezer--plans to release a live album titled "It's Alive" and hit the road for the first time in 17 years during a North American tour with Blondie. Rundgren recently spoke with liveDaily from his Hawaii home. liveDaily: What did you have to take off your full playing and production plates to get involved with this project? Todd Rundgren: I suppose that, from most of my fans' standpoint, I had already done something strange. [laughs] I put out an album called "Liars," and it was successful, and required pretty much a band and some level of production in order to present it. The problem is that I'm at a certain level where I have a committed following, especially in certain regions, but in the main, if I take any sort of production out [on the road] I don't make any money. So people were wondering why last year I went out with Joe Jackson and a string quartet and essentially did a solo show, which depended substantially on older material. So I was already kind of perplexing my fans, and wasn't sure what I was going to do next. I knew that I had ideas for records, and there's always a possibility of [producing work], and there's always the possibility of joining up with somebody else. What I had originally planned on doing through last fall and probably into this year was an R&B review with Donald Fagen. But he got involved in finishing up recording [a solo album] and it took up all of his time, so we never got to do that. So I'm always open to collaborations. I've gone out with Ringo Starr, done the "Abbey Road" tours, and have gone out as an opener for Hall & Oates essentially using their band--that's how I get around that problem of not being able to take my own band on the road at this point. I thought, "Well, The Cars (tickets | music) thing will satisfy a number of things." One thing that it won't satisfy is that I won't be playing a lot of my material. There's so much Cars material, it fills up most of the show, although we will do a couple of my things. From the standpoint of my audience, they'll have to be satisfied to watch me sing Cars songs. [laughs] And other aspects made it potentially a good idea from the standpoint of my own career and what I want to do, in that I'll definitely be playing for larger audiences than I usually do. And perhaps, in some sense, a generationally younger audience, which is always good. What does being in the studio give you as opposed to playing live? For me, since I've had a studio of my own for most of my recording career--very early on, I realized that was something I needed to have--and because I've always had access to the equipment and an understanding of how to use it, the studio became my compositional tool. My instrument, as it were, as opposed to sitting at a piano and working out a song in its entirety, and writing out all of the aspects of the arrangement. The composition becomes completely interactive to the point that, in this day and age, you can, with your laptop, pretty much create everything that becomes the final product on a record. And I've done that already. Computers have changed everything. Right, I can do it all on my laptop, and then all I have to do is essentially sing over it. And it becomes a completely interactive kind of process. The verse that I wrote yesterday may not sound right to me today, and it's no big deal to change it. It's more of a process of taking not just the musical aspect of it, but the sound aspect of it, and massaging them both until voila--there's the finished product. At least that's the way it is for me. I haven't always done things that way, and it's just as likely at some point that I might do a recording like [my 1989 album] "Nearly Human," where I'll take a bunch of musicians and teach them everything we're supposed to play, and then we'll rehearse and do takes until we've got it recorded. And essentially there's no overdubbing, and it isn't so much massaging as it's intense rehearsal. In cases like that, I've had charts and everything all prepared beforehand. That's a lot different, and it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be substantially uncalculated in the way that working with a computer and sequencer is a very particular and precise exercise, even when you're trying to recreate something that sounds random. When you produce other artists, how does that impact your own music? I often choose the artists that I will work with based on my lack of familiarity with their genre. [laughs] It sometimes gives me an opportunity to absorb a lot when I'm working with them. I regret that I never got to do a serious rap act like Public Enemy, because some of those records are really amazing and transcendent from a production standpoint. And there are often genres that will come and go that I won't be involved in at all, sometimes thankfully. I haven't worked with a boy band, or girl band--haven't done The Spice Boys--and that's fine with me. It's not the kind of music that I do. Sometimes you find yourself in an era where almost nobody who is making music is making the kind that you'd like to contribute to. Where are The New Cars and Blondie going to go? Is it just North America, or will you head to Europe as well? We're starting in North America, and the presumption is that late in the summer or early fall we'll go to Europe, then perhaps to Asia. The U.S. part of it will be broken up into two passes, an initial one and then one four to six months later in a different kind of venue. Quite honestly, I have not seen any kind of itinerary at all, so I can only speculate. [Note: The following tour itinerary has been provided by artist and/or tour sources, who verify its accuracy as of the publication time of this story. Changes may occur before tickets go on sale. Check with official artist websites, ticketing sources and venues for late updates.] May 2006 12 - Robinsonville, MS - Grand Casino Tunica Event Center 13 - Grand Prairie, TX - Nokia Theatre 17 - Phoenix, AZ - Dodge Theatre 19 - Las Vegas, NV - Aladdin Theatre for the Performing Arts 20 - Universal City, CA - Gibson Amphitheatre 23 - Alpine, CA - Viejas Casino 25 - Saratoga, CA - The Mountain Winery 26 - Reno, NV - Reno Events Center Downtown 27 - Kelseyville, CA - Konocti Field Amphitheater 30 - Englewood, CO - Coors Amphitheatre June 2006 1 - Hinckley, MN - Grand Casino Amphitheatre 3 - Highland Park, IL - Ravinia Pavilion (excluded from digital album promotion) 4 - Cuyahoga Falls, OH - Blossom Music Center 6 - Vienna, VA - Filine Center (excluded from digital album promotion) 7 - Boston, MA - Bank of America Pavilion 9 - Wantagh, NY - Jones Beach Music Theater 10 - Holmdel, NJ - PNC Bank Arts Center 13 - Orlando, FL - Hard Rock Live (Universal Studios) 14 - Clearwater, FL - Ruth Eckerd Hall 15 - Hollywood, FL - Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino 17 - Atlanta, GA - Chastain Park Amphitheater (pre-sale 3/14 / general on sale: 3/25) 18 - North Charleston, SC - Oyster Shell & North Charleston Coliseum 21 - Toronto, Ontario - Molson Amphitheatre 23 - Montreal, Quebec - Bell Centre 24 - Atlantic City, NJ - The Borgata Event Center 25 - Uncasville, CT - Mohegan Sun Casino & Resort 30 - Clarkston, MI - DTE Energy Music Theatre July 2006 1 - Saratoga Springs, NY - Saratoga Performing Arts Center
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#1. To: TLBSHOW (#0)
I liked the cars. What happened to their original singer?
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