The last time Todd Rundgen was in the area was with the 1998-99 Tiki Lounge Tour, a novelty show featuring bossa nova arrangements of various classic and recent songs — the latest phase of his 30-odd year project of not only always keeping the fans guessing, but avoiding the common trap of perpetually seeking to recapture the sound of one’s initial success. Still, the rock always rolls back around, and this tour was the time — lest we mistake Rundgren’s getting older for going soft.

The aptly named Power Trio hit the Whitaker on Sunday evening, August 6, and consisted of Rundgren, Kasim Sulton (bassist from Rundgren’s ’70s-through-’80s band Utopia), and drummer Trey Sabatelli. That "Power" was also the show’s real theme, as evidenced by the selection of songs, both old and new — some that protested the theft of power by the powers-that-presume-to-be, both silicon and the more traditional money-and-gun-oil varieties (the new "I Hate My Frickin’ ISP" and the Utopia rant "Trapped"); others asserting the reality of true power’s ever-presence in a spiritual and political enfolding of uncompromising universal love ("Love Of The Common Man," "One World," "The Ikon"); and, most especially — this is, after all, Rundgren — the compelling complexity of power in the ways of lovers ("Fix Your Gaze," "There Goes My Inspiration," "Hammer In My Heart," and the rollicking Nazz classic, performed live for the first time in many years, "Open My Eyes"). All these power-laden lyrics were hammered musically home in that pure, manic, kick-ass exultation of just plain being alive which tears the envelope of life’s attending pain to shreds.

The theater at the Whitaker Center is an acoustically gorgeous space. The area enclosed between stage, audience, and ceiling approximates a vast spherical amplifier, where a voice from any seat carries perfectly to every other seat, environmentally egging on the usual audience-to-Rundgren banter to such proportions that at one point Rundgren called over to the stage crew, "Do they serve drinks here?" He didn’t seem terribly bothered by it, though, and even got a chuckle when, after a long string of shouted song titles, someone came out with "Freebird!" — a cry well known for its cringe-inducing qualities to bar bands everywhere. ("I normally don’t take requests," answered Rundgren with a grin, "but in this case...")

During the midpoint break for Sulton and Sabatelli, Rundgren treated us to a solo performance of the 1973 A Wizard/A True Star tune "I Don’t Want To Tie You Down." ("This is the first time I’ve played this on the tour," he explained, "so I’ll probably mess it up..." He didn’t, but at another point, got out of sequence with the spoken part of "No. 1 Lowest Common Denominator" and wound up losing three or four lines of it.) He then broke out a baritone ukelele for a solo rendition of "Bang The Drum All Day" in a spirit of mockery against the hit system, or maybe just the sheer perverse fun of it. Rundgren, in his fifties, has finally reached puberty, it seems, and has lost a bit of his upper vocal range. He compensates by rewriting the melody to a different stratum in the harmonic structure of particularly high-pitched passages (most notably in the choruses of "Love In Action"), and pops out the occasional high note by cocking his head and bouncing it off the side of his throat in some kind of ricochet Doppler effect.

Still, great as the show was, the Whitaker Center is, in one important way, not really the proper venue for this kind of show, though it would have been perfect for the A Capella tour: it is a theater. Rundgren’s is not music that was ever intended to be sat down to. Nor is Sunday the best spoke on the weekly hub to hang it from, with Monday morning staring down your collar.

The only technical glitch of the evening involved a finicky connection in Sulton’s mike cord, which needed an occasional high-tech adjustment from Rundgren’s shoe. "I told the band the rest of the tour doesn’t matter, as long as we’re perfect in Harrisburg," Todd commented dryly. "Oh well..." A successful repair, of course, resulted in a static pop that made everyone jump — Rundgren not least. "I can see the reviews now: A Crackin’ Good Show..."