from FUSION Magazine
December 1995
Over his three-decade career, musician and multimedia pioneer Todd Rundgren has pulled in fans fanatical to the point of Deadhead proportions (though, arguably, in quieter and less visible numbers). Anyone doubting this assertion for a moment can simply access any of the scads of Rundgren web sites and read among the faithful for themselves -- and perhaps even cast a vote on the eternal question, "Is Todd Godd or not?"
Undoubtedly, Rundgren has given listeners plenty of material to pour over -- having recorded over 20 albums and produced at least that number. In 1993, however, he began providing followers something to interact with as well. Beginning the medium as we know it, Rundgren released No World Order, the first interactive music CD-ROM.
Not surprisingly, Rundgren has only continued his multimedia efforts, having recently crafted a new album, the enhanced CD The Individualist. In an eloquent and knowledgeable interview, Rundgren spoke with FUSION Senior Editor Joe Fielder about this new project and interactive entertainment in general
What do you think fans can gain from this medium that they couldn't before?
One thing that they can get is something on their computer that sounds as good as what usually comes out of their stereo. In other words, when they launch into one of these experiences (aside from graphics and little interactive activities), if they've got their stereo plugged into the computer, they'll be playing the Redbook Audio. So it won't be that nasty sounding 8-bit digitized sound, it'll be full spectrum stereo sound.
What do you think of the current explosion of enhanced CDs?
Well, it's an explosion just from the standpoint that everyone's announced that they're making one. It's not an explosion from the standpoint of everyone rushing out and buying them yet. Until that happens, we're just talking about something that's more or less speculative.
It could go a couple of directions and not everybody is going to go in the same direction. A lot of bands will just gather together some biographical material and have somebody put it into a little navigational framework, essentially giving you promotional material in the extra space. And sometimes you'll actually be charged for it! (laughter)
I think that less commonly, but more importantly, some artists will attempt to add a new dimension to what they're doing musically, rather than simply use the space for publicity purposes.
But there's no way to say with certitude what kind of response the audience is going to give this. So we're not charging any extra for what's on the disc at this particular point in time. It goes for the same price as the regular CD. That way, it at least won't be a hindrance to people getting the experience: If they're inclined to buy the record, they get the rest of it anyway. Then maybe we can drum up a little enthusiasm for the concept in general.
What most appeals to you about interactive media?
Well, we lost something when we lost the LP, and it was principally the album jacket. Artists used to expand the experience by taking advantage of the extra packaging. Now we're into a form factor that doesn't allow that for most albums. It sort of limits the kind of avenues [you pursue] from a graphical standpoint, which can be made up for by utilizing that extra area on the disc for some way to alter the experience of the music.
I would say in some limited sense we're offering an interactive music experience because we have a little interactive lyric deal in there. You can essentially call up the lyrics of the songs, have them highlighted and follow along or else you can click on the lyrics and it'll jump to that part of the music. So that allows you in some ways to deconstruct the songs along lyric lines.
But most of the experiences are essentially little... I don't know, we'll have to think up a name for them because they're not videos. They're little presentations that have a lot of action and motion in them so they seem to be videos, but they're actually very clever manipulations of small amounts of data. So we'll just call them "vignettes." There are vignettes for every song.
What would you like to see done with the medium that hasn't been possible so far?
Since no one has yet experienced The Individualist, I would have to say that that is our manifesto at this point. If you want to know what we think should be done, that's what we did. In my opinion, it goes beyond what most people are even considering when the term CD-Plus comes up --in terms of the investment and artistic and engineering energy that went into it. We developed new technologies from the ground up to enable us to get the most out of the least. I'm sure there will be further breakthroughs, but so far people are using fairly conventional technologies to do these CD-Plus things.
What do you think about the future of interactive media?
Everything's sort of merging. In the short term, CD-ROMs are going to find more and more usage as an archival support medium, but not as a principal medium. For example, people are going to start playing games over the network, using what's on the CD-ROM as support material so you don't have to download the graphics. You can have all this kind of very thick data locally, send control information over the network and then play multiuser games that way. A lot of services will be delivered that way.
Eventually broadcasters will start banging into each other. The Internet just may become too saturated and somebody will have to come up with media-oriented networks that are based on entirely other technologies, technologies that may incorporate things like more traditional broadcasting techniques, satellite techniques and things like that, rather than fiberoptic hardware techniques.