Swing to the Right

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Swing to the Right is a Utopia (featuring Todd Rundgren, Roger Powell, Kasim Sulton, and Willie Wilcox) album from 1982. It followed the well-intentioned but poorly timed parody of the Beatles on their first follow-up to the should-have-been gold Adventures in Utopia album called Deface the Music. The now solidified and over-talented four-member incarnation of Todd Rundgren’s group brainchild continued to follow in their pattern of swinging between positive-oriented and cyncially-oriented albums. Their 1977 about face to [[OOPS! Wrong Planet]] came hot on the heels of the perniciously opti-mystic RA. Swing to the Right swings into hard-edged commentary on corporate raiders, warmongers, political villains, and despicable music industry mogels.

Utopia, by now clearly more reactionary than progressive, took this material on the road for a full year begging audiences to petition the reluctant Bearsville Records execs to release it. This explains the time gap following their previous vinyl output Deface the Music, just as clever/witty/immaculate but released a mere month before John Lennon’s untimely demise. The true irony of this chapter for the band is that the subsequent new label release, the self-titled LP on Network Records, was for all intents and purposes the record Bearsville always wanted them to make. As the annals show, with this final salvo, the long-time backing company for Todd’s consummate conclave of musician’s musicians was treated just like the bad guys targeted on the disc: left hanging.