Todd Rundgren

Clearly Human virtual tour, Nashville, USA

If it’s Saturday it must be Chicago. Again.

’My world is something you can’t see, but it’s still very real to me,’ Todd Rundgren sings on the classic Real Man, which opens his show in ‘Nashville’. He’s in the middle of the 25-city Clearly Human virtual tour, for which he and his band remain in residence in a Chicago theatre, and pepper each concert with localised banter and video of the city they’re ‘playing’ in.

It does somehow feel very real. And much more engaging than the usual guy-in-front-ofa-bookcase pandemic gig. An ace nine-piece band decked out in matching outfits, with colourful lighting, choreography and multicamera shots keep the show moving. And in a decade-spanning set that included faves such as Love Of The Common Man, Compassion, Rock Love and eight songs from his 1989 album Nearly Human, Rundgren dances, paces and lets his still-supple voice soar up into the falsetto stratosphere before stair-stepping down with Philly soul grace. Seventy-two looks and sounds good on him.

Towards the end of the two-hour set, during a singalong of Hello It’s Me, he gently scolds one of the 25 or so actual live attendees who wasn’t wearing a face covering: “It’s not your fault, we are conveying a false sense of normalcy.” The show makes normalcy feel true. And a bit closer.