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lemonade kid
Old Love
USA
9880 Posts |
 Posted - 04/03/2012 : 00:26:17
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TONIO K---aka Steven M. Krikorian
"Life In The Food Chain"..
If this doesn't knock you're socks off on first listen...you aren't wearing ANY!!
Called the best album of all time by one critic...well, he called "Food Chain" & every subsequent Tonio K album , "The Greatest Album Of All Time."! They are that good.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmHvSz6y9M4
Tonio K. (born , b. July 4, 1950[1]) is an American singer/songwriter who has released eight albums. His songs have been recorded by Al Green, Aaron Neville, Burt Bacharach, Bonnie Raitt, Chicago, Wynonna Judd and Vanessa Williams.[citation needed] His song, “16 Tons Of Monkeys,” co-written with guitarist Steve Schiff, was the featured tune in the 1992 Academy Award winning Short Film, Session Man. He worked with Bacharach and Hip-Hop impresario Dr. Dre on Bacharach’s At This Time, which won the Grammy for Best Pop Instrumental Recording in 2005.
As a teenager, Krikorian, along with friends Alan Shapazian, Steve Olson, Nick van Maarth, and Duane Scott, formed a surf-funk/psychedelic-punk band called The Raik's Progress, which recorded a single for Liberty Records, released in 1966.
Known for their Dadaist-inspired between-song routines, one reviewer described their performance while opening for Buffalo Springfield at San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium as being like “the Three Stooges playing strip poker with Iggy and the Stooges.”
A full-length album by the band, Sewer Rat Love Chant, was eventually issued on Sundazed Records in 2003.
In the early 1970s, Krikorian recorded two albums with Buddy Holly's original band, The Crickets. The group consisted of founding members J.I. Allison and Sonny Curtis, plus Rick Grech (Blind Faith, Traffic) and Albert Lee (Heads, Hands and Feet, Eric Clapton) and the Raik’s Nick van Maarth who would later join California rock ensemble Wha-Koo. Remnants (1973) and A Long Way from Lubbock (1974) were produced by long-time Holly and Cricket cohort, Bob Montgomery. In 2004, Krikorian reunited with the Crickets for a track on their star-studded (Eric Clapton, Graham Nash, Phil Everly) album, The Crickets and Their Buddies, singing lead on the Holly classic, "Not Fade Away."
In 1978, Krikorian went solo with Life in the Foodchain on Irving Azoff’s Full Moon/Epic label. Adopting the moniker Tonio K., a reference to the writings of Kafka and Thomas Mann, he was hailed as America’s answer to Britain’s Angry Young Men (Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, Graham Parker) and the “funniest serious songwriter in America.” The record was produced by Rob Fraboni (The Band, Bob Dylan, Joe Cocker) and featured a supporting cast that included Earl Slick, Garth Hudson, Dick Dale and Albert Lee. It was also the first Pop/Rock record to feature the percussive sounds of an AK-47 firing live ammunition. The album garnered much critical acclaim, most famously from Steve Simels at “Stereo Review” who proclaimed it "the greatest album ever recorded" and established K. as an artist to watch.
K.’s follow-up album, Amerika (Cars, Guitars and Teenage Violence), was released in 1980 by Full Moon (this time via Clive Davis’s Arista Records). Filled with literary and political references, the album was hailed as “Punk for academics” and once again pronounced by Simels to be “the greatest record ever recorded” (as was every ensuing Tonio K. disc).
After a move to Capitol Records in 1982, K. recorded a five-song 12-inch EP La Bomba, a live-in-the-studio album produced by Carter (Motels, Tina Turner, Paula Cole). Recorded in the famous Capitol Studio B, it featured K.’s touring band: George “Geo” Conner (guitar), Alfredo Acosta Alwag (drums), and Enrique “Eric” Gotthelf (bass). The song "Mars Needs Women" also appears on this EP.
Tonio next released Romeo Unchained on What?/A&M Records. Hailed by “Rolling Stone” magazine as “the best Bob Dylan album since Dylan himself lost interest in the Pop song form,” the album landed on numerous critics’ Top 10 Albums of the Year lists. Recorded during 1985 and 1986, it was produced, variously, by Rick Neigher, Bob Rose (Julian Lennon) and T Bone Burnett (Counting Crows, Wallflowers, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss). The musicians on these recordings included Neigher (on many instruments), Rose, Burnett, Peter Banks (Yes), David Mansfield, David Miner, David Raven, Tim Pierce, Tim Chandler, and Rob Watson. Notes From The Lost Civilization, again on What?/A&M, followed in 1988. It was concurrently released on the Word label, a gospel/Christian music subsidiary of A&M; reportedly, the Word version of the release did not include the song "I Know What Women Want" [2](presumably for the lyric " . . . they want sex, yeah that's true" although the point of the song is that women want love). Produced by Tonio K. and David Miner, with T Bone Burnett serving as Executive Producer, the all-star cast of supporting musicians included Burnett, Booker T. Jones on Hammond B-3, Jim Keltner, Raymond Pounds and Alex Acuña on drums and percussion, James Jamerson, Jr. and David Miner on bass, and Charlie Sexton and Jack Sherman on additional guitars. The video for the single, “Without Love,” marked Tonio’s first airplay on MTV.
Olé was Tonio K.’s final record for A&M. Recorded in 1989 and 1990, it didn’t see release until 1997 on Gadfly Records. (The reasons for this are well documented in the liner notes to the CD.) It was produced by T Bone Burnett and David Miner with a core band consisting of Marc Ribot, Booker T. Jones, David Raven and Bruce Thomas (Attractions). Additional guitarists included Jack Sherman, Charlie Sexton, Rusty Anderson, Los Lobos' David Hidalgo and The Replacements' Paul Westerberg. Although Olé was K.’s last major label recording, several other compilation and live CDs have been issued (see discography below).
[edit] Songwriter
Tonio K. continued as a performing singer/songwriter into the 1990s but gradually withdrew from live concerts and focused more on crafting songs with and for other artists. His biggest commercial success, “Love Is,” was co-written with long-time collaborator John Keller and recorded by Vanessa Williams and Brian McKnight. It was a #1 Pop and AC (Adult Contemporary) radio single and one of the most-played songs of 1993. (K. has been quoted as saying that his first choice for vocalist on the song was the famously gruff-voiced Tom Waits). He also co-wrote, with Bob Thiele, Jr. and John Shanks, the Bonnie Raitt AC hit, “You.”
Tonio and close friend Charlie Sexton have written many (mostly unreleased) songs since Sexton first recorded K.’s “Impressed” and “You Don’t Belong Here” on his debut album, Pictures for Pleasure, in 1985. “Graceland (Never Been To),” opening track to the Quentin Tarantino-written and Tony Scott-directed movie True Romance, is one of their more notable, albeit obscure, cuts. K. was involved in writing six songs on Sexton’s Arc Angels debut on Geffen Records. He also co-wrote with Sexton for his Under the Wishing Tree release on MCA.
Tonio K. is almost certainly the only person to have written lyrics for both Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols and Burt Bacharach. In addition to several years of collaborating with Bacharach, Tonio co-wrote eight of the nine vocal tracks on the aforementioned Grammy-winning CD, At This Time.
Tonio K. film credits include “Nobody Lives Without Love,” co-written with musician/writer/producer Larry Klein (Joni Mitchell, Herbie Hancock) and featured on the multi-platinum-selling soundtrack to Batman Forever; the quasi-Disco semi-hit, “I’m Supposed To Have Sex With You,” from the Carl Reiner film Summer School; “Stop The Clock,” co-written with T Bone Burnett for the early Vince Vaughn/Joaquin Phoenix/Janeane Garofalo vehicle, Clay Pigeons; the above mentioned “Graceland” from True Romance; and his song "The Tuff Do What?" from 1985's movie Real Genius. 2002's Van Wilder featuring Ryan Reynolds... song called Okay written with the band Swirl 360.
Tonio K.’s first known “cover” was a song called “Hey John,” recorded by Johnny Rivers in 1972, but never released. In addition to the cuts mentioned above, he was written with and for Brian Wilson, J.I. Allison, The Crickets, Al Green, Bette Midler, The Pointer Sisters, Tanya Tucker, Diane Schuur, Percy Sledge, Phoebe Snow, Jules Shear, The Runaways, Patty Smyth, Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Italian superstar, Richard Cocciante. Recent covers include songs by Irma Thomas ("What Can I Do?" co-written with Burt Bacharach) on her Rounder Records CD, "Simply Grand" and several songs co-written with pedal steel prodigy Robert Randolph for his CD, "We Walk This Road," produced by T Bone Burnett.
The Funky Western Civilzation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7B238iwAmw&feature=related
TONIO K.: MINDFOOD
Ladies and gentlemen -- I give you....the greatest album ever recorded!
I can hear you already -- nitpickers, musicologists, the small-minded, owners of Book of Lists toilet paper. What, you cry, of Dennis Brain playing the Mozart horn concertos? What of Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain, B. B. King's Live at the Regal, Bruno Walter's Mahler Fourth, Sgt. Pepper and John Coltrane's A Love Supreme? Not to mention Nervous Norvus' "Transfusion," John Wayne's "America: Why I Love Her," and the Singing Dogs' "Jingle Bells."
Oh, all right. So I lied. But, honestly, it's the kind of lie that Life in the Foodchain inspires even in as responsible a critic as me. Its creator, Tonio K., is easily twice as angry as Elvis Costello and about six times funnier, and though he spent this decade's middle years in a Southern California booby hatch, rest assured that his songs sound nothing like James Taylor's. What they sound like, actually, is Loudon Wainwright if he'd O.D.'d on the absurdity of American life and then been drafted as the lead singer for Led Zeppelin. Beyond that, it's hard to describe the songs because to do so, or to quote the lyrics, would be like giving away the one-liners in a Woody Allen film.
Let me simply say, then, that Tonio K. thinks that humor is a serious business and that the next big dance craze will be "The Funky Western Civilization." Let me also say that he is the only rocker in memory whose album contains a cameo vocal appearance by Joan of Arc, that his music is bone-crushing rock-and-roll as manic as any punk band's but infinitely more sophisticated, and that his lyrics are so absurdly literate and corrosively cynical that they have reduced me to rolling on the floor from the mere reading of them. To hear them declaimed by Tonio in his marvelously twisted voice while the band conducts an aural demolition derby behind him is the most exciting experience I expect to have in my living room for the remainder of this year.
The bottom line? Tonio K., if not the future, is certainly at least the George Metesky of rock-and-roll. As a matter of fact, I think I'll have to take back my earlier disclaimer: this IS the greatest album ever recorded. -- Steve Simels
Okay, for starters, I should add that three months after the review appeared, we ran the following Letter to the Editor from the man himself.
Has Simels gone mad? "Life in the Foodchain." while certainly a good, great, maybe even swell album, can't possibly be the greatest album ever recorded. James Brown Live at the Apollo is. This can be substantiated with actual documentation. so don't argue with me. And what about the Seeds' first album? And is the cat still in the freezer?
Tonio K., Calabasas, Calif.
I should also add that while, as you may know, I am not cool enough to have my own Wikpedia entry, I am referenced at Tonio's, specifically in regard to his second record.
K.’s follow-up album, Amerika (Cars, Guitars and Teenage Violence), was released in 1980 by Full Moon (this time via Clive Davis’s Arista Records). Filled with literary and political references, the album was hailed as “Punk for academics” and once again pronounced by Simels to be “the greatest record ever recorded” (as was every ensuing Tonio K. disc) [emphasis mine].
And I'd obviously be remiss if I didn't post an audio clip, so here -- courtesy of an mp3 graciously supplied by Tonio himself -- is my personal favorite song from Foodchain, the immortal "H-A-T-R-E-D." In case you're wondering, among the sounds you'll hear at the song's conclusion are an AK-47 firing live ammunition into an accordion played by Garth Hudson of the The Band. To our knowledge, this marks the first occasion such a feat was ever attempted on a pop or rock record.
Two remaining notes: Over the last few months since I've been posting audio, I've not really worried about copyright questions and pesky little moral issues like that. This time, since I actually sort of know Tonio, I'm feeling a little queasy about putting that clip up for free, so let me try to assuage my guilt by giving you the Amazon link to go buy Foodchain, which obviously no home should be without.
You can find it over HERE, and, equally obviously, unless you're a complete schween you will order it immediately.
I'd also like to add that last year Tonio put together one of the coolest single CD blues samplers ever. I wrote about it in these precincts back in September; you can read the piece HERE, as well as find another Amazon link to the CD. Plus: there's a YouTube clip of the aforementioned "Funky Western Civilization," my second favorite track from Foodchain.
That Could Have Been Me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4157QIQdQwE&feature=related
Were You There...."Notes From The Lost Civilization" 1988
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI3tVMKmMM8&feature=related
I can only say...on first listen (thx RW), my mind was blown!
Worth checking out as much as any artist I've heard in decades!
________________________________________________
We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers & discoverers-
-thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses.
Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams.
-Peter S. Beagle 1973
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Edited by - lemonade kid on 05/03/2012 01:27:56 |
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bob f.
Old Love
USA
1308 Posts |
Posted - 04/03/2012 : 06:23:15
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Yeah, I've enjoyed my CD Raik's Progress (Sundazed), and see the talent! excellent and it fukking rocks!
I saw him play at, The Palamino, here in the San Fernando Valley in about 1983-84.
...what the world needs now... |
Edited by - bob f. on 06/03/2012 02:02:27 |
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SignedRW
Fifth Love
USA
280 Posts |
Posted - 04/03/2012 : 20:23:20
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Tonio live was always a most enjoyable, and many times unforgettable experience. Never has there been a concert experience (for me, anyway) filled with as many flying tortillas, sailing frisbee-like, between stage and audience, as the band smoked through scorchers like "The Ballad of the Night the Clocks All Quit and the Government Failed." I always viewed it as kind of a Tonio/California contemporary version of feeding the multitudes, minus the fishes and loaves, but rather, with no shortage of highly aerodynamic corn tortillas. Killer live rock and roll, ever so slightly twisted with obvious nods to the influence of Dylan and Zappa, at their best. I've played his music on commercial rock radio continually since 1978, most recently only a week or so ago; it's my job to make sure that music this strong continues to be heard. Oddly enough, I discovered, years after the fact, that Tonio had been managed by a guy whom I went to high school with, and had played football with, Gary Heaton, and that he had been road managed by a guy with whom I had frequently crossed paths in the never particularly stable world of California rock radio, Chuck Randle. It's been decades now since I've had any contact with either, but I'd bet that if they are still among us, that they each continue to "fight the good fight" to see to it that music as strong, as worthy, and as excellent as that of Tonio K. continues to be exposed to those who might actually "get it" and appreciate it.
-RW |
Edited by - SignedRW on 04/03/2012 20:33:19 |
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lemonade kid
Old Love
USA
9880 Posts |
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TONIO K..Flying tortillas!!All time best album(s)
