Utopia
Fine Arts Center, University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA
1980-04-29

Todd Rundgren-vocals, guitars, drums, piano
Kasim Sultan-vocals, bass, guitar, piano (possibly on Love Alone)
Roger Powell-keys and vocals
John "Willie" Wilcox-drums, bass, vocals

source/lineage: cd-r trade of VG++ audience recording captured on unknown equipment> EAC> Audacity> TLH> TTD

1-Back On The Street 4:13
2-TR stage remarks 0:44
3-Shot In The Dark 3:24
4-Set Me Free 3:59
5-Love Of The Common Man 3:40
6-equipment problems 1:34
7-Gangrene 3:49
8-equipment problems 1:36
9-The Last Ride 5:29
10-Trapped 3:03
11-Love In Action 3:24
12-The Last Of The New Wave Riders 4:15
13-Bolero 10:28
14-Rock Love 5:25
15-Sands of Arrakis >Emergency Splashdown 6:56
16-Love Alone 3:58
17-Kasim stage talk 0:41
18-Baby Don't Hold Back 2:21
19-You Make Me Crazy 3:38
20-Something's Coming 5:23
21-Todd Medley, It Wouldn't Have Made Any Difference, Can We Still Be Friends Dream Goes On Forever, Hello It's Me 6:05
22-Bag Lady 3:57
23-Cliché 4:06
24-piano moving / banter 4:30
25-Communion With The Sun 4:55
26-The Ikon 2:25
27-The Seven Rays 5:04
28-Singring And The Glass Guitar 3:59
29-Initiation 2:28
30-Utopia Theme 2:35
31-Couldn't I Just Tell You 4:32
32-Just One Victory 7:03

This is seemingly a full show from the Adventures in Utopia touring in 1980. "Seemingly" because it's somewhat surprising that Caravan isn't played, so perhaps that could be missing. What is here is 2 hours plus of a pretty amazing audience capture, given the date and presumed size of the arena Utopia was playing. They were temporarily in "bigger joints" like the Nassau Coliseum, where I saw them on Long Island during this tour. Adventures was arguably Utopia's commercial pinnacle, and they were at the cutting edge at that point with things like video, and even the idea that they might have their own TV show, in those days on the cusp of MTV.
There are a few issues with this very fine aud, so to get them out of the way: there are chatty people nearby at times; our taper seemed to fluctuate volume levels here and there (notably on Bolero into Rock Love). The beginning of Rock Love does suffer a little before levelling off. There's some sort of cut during Sands/Emergency, and I tried to make that cut a little less jarring via editing in Audacity. On that note, my trade acquired copy includes several minutes of crowd sounds due to things onstage that ranged from members of Utopia switching instruments to tuning and moving a grand piano (!). Since this is a rock show from a big venue, I didn't do anything to mitigate that issue. Any fades or places where the audience was cut had been like that from the start with my copy of this show. I did re-track this in Audacity because a few things were misidentified or not identified at all (Bolero and The Ikon), and the big plus from having done that is to now have the music truly start each track at a more obvious point where that should be happening. Sonically,a mastering tool from audacity was lightly applied to try to "open up" the recording a slight bit.
Regarding the performance, the band plays and sings as well as a fan would hope. The early "equipment issues" tracks may have had to do with instrument switching so Willie could play bass on Gangrene, while Todd sat at the drums, and Kasim played guitar. It also might have to do with sound issues that seemed to be there towards the beginning of the show. Starting with Sands of Arrakis, each Utopian had a few pieces that featured them. That ends after Todd's performance of Cliche. Kas is alone on an acoustic guitar for Baby Don't Hold Back; and Something's Coming is played through instrumentally up to a Willie drum solo, after which the vocal version from Another Live kicks in. Communion With the Sun up through the Utopia Theme is actually another medley, but each part had been tracked separately, unlike the Todd piano medley, which had been a single track.
Huge thanks once again to whoever got such a good audience capture back in the day, and to the person who'd made this available to me via cd-r's in those old snail mail trading days.