It's been a good summer for Todd Rundgren. His latest solo album, The Hermit Of Mink Hollow, has fared better than usual in the press and in the stores. He's taken a non-Utopian band into clubs in New York and Los Angeles and recorded material for an upcoming, probably two-record live collection. He's been readying Utopia for an album and late summer tour. He's been getting deeper and deeper into the video work which he considers the key to the future—his included.

And, he's turned 30. Finally hit that age where nobody has to talk about him in terms of prodigy, about expectations based on his precociousness. If he thinks about it at all, it probably relieves him to have one more preconceived public notion dispelled.

Todd has fashioned a career out of frustrating people's attempts to make him fit into the slots they were most comfortable with. He's a very slippery guy. Guitar prince, romantic balladeer, mystico-progressive, technocrat, nextbig-thing for how many years? Rundgren has fouled up the tagging procedure causing all the people who thought they had him pinned in one of those niches no end of disappointment.

don't expect people to buy my records. ■