Fernando Perdomo and various artists | Anyone anyone? | Ferdomo Perdomo Music
Four out of five stars

In his relatively brief career, producer/musician Fernando Perdomo has proven that there is nothing beyond his creative sphere. He has worked with a number of legends, hosting a tribute to the late Greg Lake on the Cruise to the Edge program, to working as a lead member of the documentary band Echo in the Canyon, hosting a 50th birthday tribute to Paul McCartney. Ram album, collaborations with drummer Carmine Appice, Harry Nilsson’s son Zak Nilsson and several albums under his own umbrella. Its production has been spectacular, even if it takes an always ambitious range of projects.

His latest, a tribute to Todd Rundgren’s 1972 opus, Something anything? may be his boldest effort to date. Perdomo gathered a remarkable array of Rundgren’s followers to hail an album that had a lasting influence on virtually every power pop release that appeared in its wake and remains a standard of excellence and imagination to this day. The range of songs gleaned over the course of the double-disc affirms this fact: “I See the Light”, “It wouldn’t have made any difference”, “Black Maria” and more particularly, “Hello It’s Me”, the latter recorded originally by his band Nazz, then reconfigured into a more stripped-down setting.

Anyone anyone? traces all of these tracks and also adds several Rundgren-related bonus tracks, all of which are revisited and rebooted by an impressive array of collaborators, including Louise Goffin, Ken Sharp, Brian Wilson band’s Robyn Gregory, Rungren Sulton’s trusty sidekick Kasim, Victor Wainwright, Marshall Crenshaw, Jordan Rudess of the Dream Theater, Dennis Diken of the Smithereens, Stan Lynch, Brent Bourgeois and bluesman Albert Castiglia. Each artist does an impeccable job of sharing their mission, choosing, for the most part, to stay true to the original arrangements.

It is a wise decision; it would be difficult to improve on Rundgren’s original model. Yet the fact that Perdomo had the foresight to consider this effort, to begin with, speaks as much to his ingenuity and imagination as it does to the source of the songs itself. To borrow another title from Todd, Perdomo has clearly earned the right to be called a wizard, a real star as well.

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