''2nd Wind'' is the thirteenth album by American musician

Todd Rundgren Todd Harry Rundgren (born June 22, 1948) is an American multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, multimedia artist, sound engineer and record producer who has performed a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of the band U ...

, released in 1991 on

Warner Bros. Records Warner Records Inc. (formerly Warner Bros. Records Inc.) is an American record label. A subsidiary of the Warner Music Group, it is headquartered in Los Angeles, California. It was founded on March 19, 1958, as the recorded music division of the ...

. It reached number 118 on the ''Billboard'' 200 album chart. ''2nd Wind'' includes the single "Change Myself" and was Rundgren's final album on a major label until 2004's '' Liars''.

Background

As with its predecessor, ''

Nearly Human ''Nearly Human'' is a 1989 album by the rock musician Todd Rundgren, released by Warner Bros. Records. It was his first release in four years, although he had been active as a producer in the intervening years. Many of the album's songs deal with l ...

'', Rundgren chose to record the album with a full band, as opposed to playing all of the instruments himself. The album was recorded live in front of an audience at the

Palace of Fine Arts The Palace of Fine Arts is a monumental structure located in the Marina District of San Francisco, California, originally constructed for the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition to exhibit works of art. Completely rebuilt from 1964 to ...

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the ...

, over the course of a week. The album includes three songs ("The Smell of Money", "If I Have to Be Alone" and "Love in Disguise") written for Rundgren's musical version of the

Joe Orton John Kingsley Orton (1 January 1933 – 9 August 1967), known by the pen name of Joe Orton, was an English playwright, author, and diarist. His public career, from 1964 until his death in 1967, was short but highly influential. During this brie ...

play/screenplay ''

Up Against It ''Up Against It'' is an unproduced script by Joe Orton, written in 1967 for The Beatles at the height of their fame. Background Orton's screenplay was a revised version of a 1966 script called ''Shades of a Personality'', by Owen Holder, wh ...

''. "Gaya's Eyes" continues the new, more mature sound introduced on the preceding album ''

''. Rundgren used the video for the album's only single, "Change Myself," as a showcase for the NewTek

Video Toaster The NewTek Video Toaster is a combination of hardware and software for the editing and production of NTSC standard-definition video. The plug-in expansion card initially worked with the Amiga 2000 computer and provides a number of BNC conne ...

, a desktop video card for the

Commodore Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved grap ...

computer.Electronic Musician 1991 – Volume 7, Issues 7-12 – Page 99 "Todd Rundgren's stunning video for his song "Change Myself" required no less than ten Toaster systems running in parallel for a period of five weeks."

Releases

Promotional DJ issues of the CD have a black, gold and blue swirl on the CD label where the stock releases have a blue and yellow swirl. There was also a vinyl release of the album in Europe which is nearly impossible to find. After the album had been out of print for several years, Friday Music released a remastered version in October 2008, the first release in what the company called the "Todd Rundgren Remaster Series", although the follow up remastered release of Nearly Human didn't arrive until 2021. In 2002,

Image Entertainment RLJ Entertainment (formerly Image Entertainment) is an American film production company and home video distributor, distributing film and television productions in North America, with approximately 3,200 exclusive DVD titles and approximately 34 ...

released a DVD entitled ''The 2nd Wind Recording Sessions,'' which detailed the making of the album, and featured interviews with Rundgren as well as band members and fans. Also included with the video was ''The Desktop Collection,'' a compilation of Rundgren's

-powered music videos, including "Change Myself."

Track listing

All songs written by Todd Rundgren.

Personnel

– vocals, guitar * Roger Powell – keyboards and vocals *

Vince Welnick Vincent Leo Welnick (February 21, 1951 – June 2, 2006) was an American keyboardist-singer-songwriter best known for playing with the band The Tubes during the 1970s and 1980s and with the Grateful Dead in the 1990s. He was inducted into ...

– keyboards and vocals *

Ross Valory Ross Lamont Valory (born February 2, 1949) is an American musician who is best known as the original bass player for the rock band Journey from 1973 to 1985 and again from 1995 to 2020. Valory was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as ...

– bass *

Lyle Workman Lyle Dean Workman is an American guitarist, composer, session and touring musician, and music producer. His music has been widely distributed since his debut on the eponymous ''Bourgeois Tagg'' album in 1986, and is known for his work as compose ...

– guitar *

Prairie Prince Charles Lempriere "Prairie" Prince (born May 7, 1950) is an American drummer and graphic artist. He came to prominence in the 1970s as a member of the San Francisco–based rock group The Tubes, was a member of Jefferson Starship from 1992 to ...

– drums * Max Haskett – brass and vocals * Bobby Strickland – reeds, winds and vocals *

Scott Mathews Scott Mathews (born July 25, 1955) is an American music producer, composer, performer, and entrepreneur. He has appeared as a musician, songwriter or producer on recordings with sales of more than 40 million units which earned more than 20 gol ...

– percussion, guitar, samples and vocals *

Shandi Sinnamon Shandi Sinnamon (born 1952) is an American singer and songwriter. Career Shandi was born to a Huguenot family as Shandra Sinnamon in Miami, Florida. After dropping out of high school, she left home for Big Sur, California. Her ambition was to ...

– vocals * Michele Gray – vocals * Jenni Muldaur – vocals

References

1991 albums Todd Rundgren albums Warner Records albums {{1990s-rock-album-stub