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Tonio K. aka Steve Krikorian — 80, 79, 78, 77, 76

ALBUMS: Life in the Foodchain (1978); Amerika (1980) La Bomba (1982); Romeo Unchained (1986); Notes From the Lost Civilization (1987)

MVC Ratings: Life 5.0/$$$$$; Amerika 4.5/$$$$$; La Bomba, 4.0/$$$$; Romeo 4.5/$$$$$; Notes 4.0/$$$$

Well, it’s finally time. Time for one of my favorite artists. Tonio K. (Real name Steve Krikorian; He takes his moniker from Tonio Kroger, a novel by Thomas Mann.)

I fell for Tonio K. the first time I heard the song ‘Life in the Foodchain’ at a watering hole/hamburger place in Athens, Ga., about 1980, or somewhere in that vicinity. I remember it took me a while in those days before Google to find anything about Tonio K. You couldn’t just find bios and histories and contact information with a few keystrokes on a search engine.

I ended up finding Tonio K. through my record expert Chuck at WUXTRY Records. Readers of this blog know I bought a significant amount of used records from WUXTRY, both in Athens and Chuck’s spinoff in Birmingham and Cahaba Heights.

Tonio K. was right up my alley. He was glib, cynical, angry and funny. I mean funny. I go back and listen to the records sometimes and marvel at the wordplay.

“Baby don’t leave me here alone, don’t break up our happy home, think of the children,’ Tonio sings. ‘I know we ain’t got no kids, but think of if we did, it would surely upset them.’

Another song, he sings she’ll be waiting for him ’till the cattle come home.’ He changes cows to cattle. One word change and he sets up some ‘t’s.’ so he can punctuate his angry delivery rat-atat-tat. That’s the small stuff.

His debut album was alternately a punk metal precursor to a group like the Bay Area’s punks Rancid and the already crazy Warren Zevon going more crazy. His first band while a teen was called Raik’s Progress, a psychedelic punk band worth seeking out a recent re-issue.

The opening lines tell you about the harsh realities faced in a survival-of-the-fittest world.

‘Well your mother was there to protect you’ (Wham a one-chord punctuation mark)/Your papa was there to provide (wham)/So how in the world did the excellent baby wind up in this hotel so broken inside.’

Then a little later: Cause it’s dog eat dog/and it’s cat and mouse/it’s watch your step and cross yourself and get back in the house/and it’s do or die/it’s push and shove/because everybody’s hungry and there just isn’t quite enough.

Beyond this survival theme, broken relationships seemed to be his inspiration. Here’s from the not-so-subtle H-A-T-R-E-D.

‘I wish I was as mellow, as for instance Jackson Browne, but ‘Fountain of Sorry’ my ass $%^&***/ I hope you wind up in the ground.

But then Tonio K. got religion, or at least his music did. From ‘You Will Go Free’ with T-Bone Burnett on back-up vocals.

You can call it the devil/call it the big lie/call it a fallen world whatever it is, it ruins almost everything you try … But in the midst of all of this darkness, in the middle of the night/The truth cuts through like a razor, a pure and holy light.

Tonio was in the Buddy Holly band, the Crickets, after Buddy Holly died in a plane crash. He has also collaborated with Burt Bacharach and has written songs for numerous other artists.

I see his musical career in two parts. The angry Tonio of younger years, hurt in relationships, wounded in love. That would encompass the Life and Amerika albums. Then La Bomba was kind of a transitional piece. The guitars were less grungy — just as loud — but not the same as amped up Earl Slick, Nick Van Maarth, Albert Lee and Dick Dale.

After the hard (but clean) rock of La Bomba, Tonio K. moved into a slicker 1980s sound with Romeo Unchained and the Lost Civilization that to these ears almost pushed the music to boring. Couple standouts though, ‘You Will Go Free,” and ‘Perfect World’ on Romeo and ‘You Were There,’ — which always makes my wife cry — and ‘Children’s Crusade on Notes.’ The records had talent to burn with the entrance of T-Bone Burnett. The albums appeared on an A&M subsidiary that promoted Christian artists.

  1. Life in the Foodchain (Life.)
  2. Funky Western Civilization (Life)
  3. Cinderella’s Baby (Amerika)
  4. You Will Go Free (Romeo)
  5. H-A-T-R-E-D (Life)
  6. Fool’s Talk (La Bomba)
  7. One Big Happy Family (Amerika)
  8. Perfect World (Romeo)
  9. You Were There (Notes)
  10. Children’s Crusade (Notes)
  11. Say Goodbye (Amerika)
  12. Trouble (Amerika)
  13. Willie and the Pigman (Life)
  14. American Love Affair (Life)
  15. La Bomba

This is not the full extent of K.’s discography. Go to his website www.toniok.com for more. I highly recommend getting Ole’ which has songs to match many on this playlist.

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Daily Journal, Oct. 28, 2019, Life in the Food Chain

I told my wife, Catherine, it has been a wild ride the past few weeks, and I’ve been emotional. (I can get my shoulders rubbed with that.) Lots of life events. First a friend died at 58. It’s a sad sad story. She was my wife’s maid of honor in our wedding — and they were like sisters in high school when I started dating Catherine. Carole even lived with Catherine when her parents moved and Carole wanted to stay to finish her senior year in high school. I included a tribute in my lyrics post. I went to her memorial. I brushed away a tear or two.

A 3-year-old was found in a dumpster. I used to cover the cop beat and courts. I’ve written about vile acts and unfathomable cruelty. But like the proteins killing my brain cells, these stories are taking a toll on me over time. I ranted a bit in a column that I think shows those internal struggles.

I wrote a memoriam to a colleague whose birthday is tomorrow. He died 10 years go come Nov. 29.

I went to a wedding in Tallahassee where beautiful Megan was married to her longtime sweetheart. I had all three of my (grown up girls, a boyfriend and husband and my wife. We all crammed into a big rented van (seats seven) and sang our way all the way to Tallahassee.

Stairway to Heaven, Four Non-Blonds “What’s Up” “Free Bird” ‘Earl Must Die’ and “I Shall Be Released” as done by Kevin Kinney drew the loudest singalong response. Megan and her family had been back door neighbors in Florida. The girls used to talk through the privacy fence — that’s how they became friends. Next they started using ladders taken from each garage to climb over and play. Finally Jim, their father, and I said enough. We took a saw and cut a door out of the fence, added hinges and a latch which they could open from either side by use of a screen and, voila, instant two-home compound. It would not be unusual to wake up in the morning and find one of the girls from the other house going through refrigerator or vice versa. “Help yourself,” I’d say, rubbing sleep from my eye. Of course I cried at the wedding, but not as much as I wanted to. It took a manly effort not to. Stupid gender rules.

I get feedback from time to time that people don’t see my stories. One thing is most of my stories are online only and not in the newspaper, so you won’t see me much there — just occasionally. The other factor is I write a lot on my blog which you are reading right now: www.myvinylcountdown.com . Some of these blog posts go on to AL.com posts or vice versa. Good Idea to put that website address on favorites and check every day or every other day for new content. But then also every week I publish in AL.com and sometimes that post is on my blog and sometimes it’s not. One way to check for that is go to the ‘search’ button at the far right top of the AL.com website screen and type in my name Mike Oliver:Al.com. It should give you a list of recent writings of mine.

Thanks for everybody’s support. I feel like I’ve been distracted from my music by other blog posts . So I’m going to jump on those. I finally am out of the ‘M’s’ unless I find some stragglers.

Couple other things. It was reported that Joe Henry, one of my favorite recording artisfs has Stage 4 prostate cancer. He’s my age. I don’t have him on vinyl thus he has not made my list. But now, maybe for my birthday I’ll get what I can that he does on vinyl. I have about five or so of his CD’s. My favorite I think is Trampoline followed closely by Scar and Kindness of the World.

So it’s been quite a week. I also filed the 12th and latest story, a fun, hopefully funny dystopian serial series that is at once silly and dumb. And to top it off it has no redeeming value. Gotta read it now, I hear you thinking. Must start from top, the first one and read in sequential order otherwise it’ll make even less sense than it does now. You can find them all in the website bar at the top that says Hisicanes and Hurricanes (A Serial Story)

I dedicate this post to Challen, a colleague at AL.com, who emailed me this morning to say he had Tonio K.’s ‘Life in the Foodchain’ cranking and thanked me for recommending it.

You know Challen, it’s kind of like carving the turkey, it’s kind of like mowing the lawn, everything gets to a certain dimension, winds up on the customer’s plane and then’s gone …

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7X7x7: Seven underrated artists, albums and songs, album in MVC collection (blog)

This is the first in a three-part series.



TODAY: The Top 7 Most underrated artists in my collection of 678-plus records

I’ll say it out front. This is a list story.

You know how much news sites love lists. You know why?

Because you, my readers love lists. This time we are going 7X7X7.

That means: Three lists, with 7 spots each. I feel lucky. I am starting No. 1 of 3 today on my blog. I will smooth it all into one long story for AL.com by the weekend end.

The collection I have been using on my website, www.myvinylcountdown.com to raise awareness to my fatal brain disease, Lewy body dementia. As  I count them down, I stop now and again to write something different or pull out a story like this. The rules are simple. I make the picks. I can’t have any one artist on more than one list. John Hiatt does not qualify because I wrote an earlier post pretty much anointing him the most underrated artists of the 1980s.

I will provide links, please listen to the music, especially if you haven’t heard it. When we talk about underrated we are mostly dealing with folks that have lower name recognition but deserve better. But a band of renown could have an underrated song or album, for example. Also worth noting that since these are from my vinyl records, there’s a good chance that most will be older music from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, although there are some exceptions involving cases where I bought new vinyl. So here we go.

The Top 7 Underrated Artists from MyVinylCountdown.com

  1. Tonio K. – Those who know me well won’t be surprised at this choice. Tonio K. aka as Steve Krikorian debuted with Life in the Foodchain, a punky, intelligent tour de force in 1978. It is a legitimate classic with the title song, Funky Western Civilization and H-A-T-R-E-D, <Note language in that song that may be objectionable to some>standing out. The rest of his body of work is excellent as he followed Foodchain with an almost equally angry album “Amerika’ and later some spiritually infused albums with songs like ‘You Will Go Free’ that, with exceptions, deep-sixed the anger — but let fly intelligent, socially conscious music elevated by great writing.

Excerpt:‘ Funky Western Civilization’

They put Jesus on a cross; they put a hole in JFK; they put Hitler in the driver’s seat and looked the other way; Now we got poison in the water; and the whole world is in a trance; but just because we’re hypnotized don’t mean we can’t dance.

(Queue Dick Dale chicken scratch guitar and a river of melodic metal by Earl Slick and Albert Lee.)

 (2) 10cc — A British band that walked a fine line between art school pretension and brilliant pop songs. The music is full of biting satire, irony and good playing. The album ‘100cc 10cc’ is a compilation of early songs that is top-notch from top to bottom, including Rubber Bullets and the Wall Street Shuffle. Later they had some well-known singles, ‘I’m Not in Love,’ ‘Dreadlock Holiday’and ‘’Things We Do For Love.’ But they never rose to levels  expected given the talent here. They probably lost the cool crowd with the high charting bubble-gummy ‘Things We Do for Love.” They had to pay the rent you know, but some of their work such as the record ‘How Dare You’ experimented with jazzy, multi-layered sophisticated sound and sharp as a stiletto lyrics. Queen, though brasher and more theatrical, was influenced by this band.

(3) War — The band had some hits. Cisco Kid, Low Rider, Why Can’t We Be Friends. Those first two were some of the best songs on Top 40 radio at the time. ‘Friends’ was just kind of a ditty. Those who heard only the radio and didn’t get the albums were missing out on an extremely tight funk/jazz/rock band. I don’t think they ever got their due as true pioneers, perhaps overshadowed by Earth Wind and Fire, Parliament, and Sly and the Family Stone. But they could jam like the best of friends in songs like ‘Smile Happy‘ and ‘Four Cornered Room.’ BTW my two old War albums have terrific sound with a heavy bottom as this music needs.

(4) Gayle McCormick/A Group Called Smith

McCormick had the kind of voice that made you marvel where it came from, powerful as a bullhorn when she sang ballads and straight ahead blues and rock and roll. Despite her obvious break-out talent, with Smith (and a Group Called Smith after legal conflicts with another group — and, no it was not the Morissey group that came much later out of the UK.) The group and McCormick scored big with a song “Baby It’s You,” later picked by Quentin Tarantino to be used in ‘Pulp Fiction.’

She went on to record a couple of albums that are hard to find. I got a used copy of her first solo album which has some decent covers of popular songs such as ‘Superstar’ and ‘You Really Got a Hold of Me.’

The two Smith group albums, however, should be better known. There’s good hard rock and roll on these. Highlights: ‘Tell Him No,’ ‘Last Time,’ Let’s Get Together,’ ‘What Am I Gonna Do‘ and ‘Take a Look Around.‘ Oh and did I mention there’s some nasty organ and dirty horns on these, not to mention a bass player who gets under the songs and lifts..

(5) Peter Himmelman (Solo; Sussman Lawrence)

OK get the ‘newsy’ thing out of the way, his wife is Bob Dylan’s adopted daughter. On to the music which Catherine, my wife, and I would agree has been at many times the soundtrack of our lives — from Mission of my Soul to Rich Men Run the World ; from Woman With The Strength of 10,000 Men‘ to The Boat that Carries Us; From Raina (beloved Raina) to Angels Die.

When Peter learned I had Lewy body dementia, he sent me three vinyls of his music. Listening right now to ‘Fear is Our Undoing.‘ Brilliant song off of the brilliant record ‘There is no Calamity.’ )

A Minnesotan by birth now in California, Himmelman played in an indie band called Sussman Lawrence before going solo. He has been nominated for a Grammy for a children’s album and has written music for several TV shows. His songs are great and I can hear between the notes and words a search for that elusive truth that connects us.

(6) Ronnie Lane (Small Faces, Faces, solo)

Ronnie Lane was an elfin man with a lilting voice that worked to perfection when he was harmonizing, Lane embodied happy music, and yes probably happy hour music. He played his long necked electric bass like he was hugging a woman taller than he was.

The bass player was a founding member of Small Faces and Faces, two highly influential rock bands. ItchyKoo Park and All or Nothing were sizeable hits, at least overseas. And Ooh La La is a classic.

Listen to his music and try not to smile. You’d follow him out to the country side and he would lead like the pied piper to his dilapidated country farm. When Steve Marriott left Small Faces, Rod Stewart joined. Because the band’s name was based on Lane’s and other group members’ stature — they were all under 5-foot-5, they dropped the ‘Small’ when the 6-footer Stewart joined. Faces.

In addition to his fabulous singing and writing and playing with both Faces incarnations, he also had successful collaborations with Ron Wood (Mahoney’s Last Stand) and Pete Townshend solidifying his status as a top-notch collaborator and creator. The songs ‘Stone,’ ‘The Poacher’ and ‘Brother Can you Spare a Dime’ are standouts on his Ronnie Lane’s Slim Chance album, which I have. (I also have Mahoney’s and Rough Mix plus lots of Small Faces and Faces, including the experimental concept album Ogden’s Gone Nut Flake.) The beautiful song ‘Annie‘ was one of the best on his Townshend project ‘Rough Mix. After battling Multiple Sclerosis for 21 years, Lane died in 1997 at 51.

(7)Joseph Arthur (Solo, Joseph Arthur and the Astronauts)

It’s hard to describe this prolific musician other than to say he’s been writing some of the best songs of the millennium. But there seems to be a million of ’em. His latest — or probably not latest at this point — but a recent one teaming up with REM’s Peter Buck. The album, ‘Arthur Buck,’ approaches ear weevil stages at about the fourth listen. It’s good and gets better the more you listen and figure out what’s going on. Arthur has a good two decades behind him. I’ve seen him in concert a couple of times in the SF Bay Area and he’s the real deal. As I said, he has so many great songs including, ‘In the Sun,’ in which he recorded several versions, one featuring REM’s Michael Stipe and the other featuring Coldplay’s Chris Martin — all for Hurricane Katrina relief. Other songs that he’s known for include ‘Honey and Moon,’ ‘Temporary People,‘ and ‘The Smile that Explodes, ‘I Miss the Zoo‘ and ‘Say Goodbye.’ Albums include. ‘Nuclear Daydreams,’ ‘Redemption Son,’ and ‘The Ballad of Boogie Christ.’ He is well worth exploring because even if you run into songs you don’t like if you keep looking you’ll find something that will change your life — or, at least, your week. And one close to my heart, a tribute to Robin Williams.