Hold on because this can get confusing. In 1997,
Todd Rundgren released an album called With a Twist, where our hero decided rework a bunch of his favorites in the bossa nova style so popular with the hipsters in the waning days of the great mid-'90s lounge revival. Because of this, it's easy to assume that the convolutely titled
Greatest Classics: With a Twist is a reissue of that album, or at least an album in a similar spirit. It's not. It's a double-disc repackaging of two of the worst albums in the
Rundgren catalog: 2000's
Todd Rundgren: Reconstructed and 2002's Todd Rundgren & His Friends. Both feature reworkings of original
Todd tapes, maintaining elements of the original vocal track and adding new instruments by the truckload.
Reconstructed, as its futuristic title may suggest, features 14 electronica remixes, while & His Friends has a host of hard rock guitar gods -- well,
Vivian Campbell,
Gary Hoey, Skunk Baxter, and
Bruce Kulick, anyway -- layers new instruments, and spews out pointless guitar lines behind the vocals. That's it. There are no reinventions, no reinterpretations, just wanking. It's not even interesting as a novelty. But if you're a
Rundgren completist,
Greatest Classics: With a Twist is at least a way to kill two birds with one stone and get his two worst albums at once. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine