HELLO, IT'S TODD

Todd Rundgren's great gift - and equally great curse - is that he has spent most of his career ahead of the pop-music curve.

As a result, Rundgren has very little chart success to show for a highly prolific, 35-year recording career. Widely viewed as a can't-miss superstar during his 1972-73 heyday, he's proven to be too eccentric for any single audience to pin down. To some, he's the pop savant who penned "I Saw the Light" and "Hello It's Me." To "Todd is God" prog-rockers, he's the mastermind of the band Utopia. To recording geeks, he's the producer for a wildly eclectic collection of artists: XTC, New York Dolls, Psychedelic Furs, Hall & Oates, Cheap Trick, Badfinger,

TODD RUNDGREN 8pm Friday, March 28 $20 Gruene Hall 181 Gruene Road, New Braunfels (830) 606-1281

Patti Smith (who once likened him to "the great child poet Rimbaud"), and Meatloaf (his biggest seller).

At Gruene Hall on Friday, March 28, he will be Todd the Solo Troubadour, accompanying himself on piano, guitar, and MP3s. It's not quite the venue's usual rootsy fare, but it should be a welcome, close encounter with one of pop's great, unsung oddballs.