![\"Notes](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/276\/2012\/04\/tonio-k-notes.jpg\")
<\/a>I first ran across Tonio K.\u2019s music<\/a> when I was sorting through a pile of LPs and CDs at a rummage sale around 1992. There, among all the scratched vinyl and broken jewel cases, I found a disc titled, \u201cNotes from the lost Civilization,\u201d issued by What?\/A&M Records in 1989. The album was packed with intelligent political and social commentary (rare for pop music) and even clever satire. Who was this guy? Never heard of him before. And it didn\u2019t seem likely that I\u2019d hear of him again later, either. At the time, I figured he was just of many one-album wonders.<\/p>\n I was wrong.<\/p>\n After a fleeting bit of fame in the late \u201970s and early \u201980s \u2014 during which he received praise from Rolling Stone<\/em> for two albums that Stereo Review<\/em> called the greatest recordings ever<\/em> \u2014 Tonio K. slipped off the musical radar screen, popping his head up only here and there and never for very long. He had his core fans, but by and large the mainstream paid about as much attention to him as any other guy you never heard of.<\/p>\n After making the rounds, record label to record label, and becoming the victim of the music industry\u2019s version of corporate downsizing (one of his albums got canned because his previous release didn\u2019t sell enough units), Tonio K. retired almost exclusively to songwriting. Pity. While he was writing music for, and with the likes of, Wynonna Judd, Charlie Sexton, Bonnie Raitt, Al Green, T-Bone Burnett, Aaron Neville, Tanya Tucker, and Vanessa Williams, it was still a shame. Sure, he was finally getting decent pay, but what\u2019s money when you\u2019re one of the most caustic, satirical, wry-witted, scathing social critics and solo artists alive?<\/p>\n That\u2019s of course who Tonio K. really is. One music critic described him as \u201ca one-man, rock-and-roll wrecking crew.\u201d Another, writing for Stereo Review<\/em> claimed he was \u201ctwice as angry as Elvis Costello, and six times as funny.\u201d<\/p>\n And thanks to Mitch Cantor and Gadfly Records<\/a>, you can now get nearly all of Tonio K.\u2019s music catalogue, including smash hits like \u201cThe Night Fast Rodney Went Crazy,\u201d \u201cOne Big (Happy) Family,\u201d \u201cWhere is That Place?\u201d and the classic, \u201cWhat Women Want.\u201d Also available are long lost favorites like, \u201cNew Dark Ages,\u201d \u201cMars Needs Women,\u201d and \u201cEverything, Including You, Disgusts Me.\u201d You can even get the epic saga, \u201cThe Ballad of the Night the Clocks all Quit (and the Government Failed).\u201d<\/p>\n Christened with the very unlikely handle of Antonio Vladimer Stephen Michael Krikorian, Tonio K. (for short, I imagine) was born in central California in 1950 into the home of two lovely parents who kept him properly incubated until he could be released upon a world of feather-headed disco fiends, introspective, drug-addled hippies, and singer-songwriters amply demonstrating that they could neither sing nor write songs.<\/p>\n As an angry retort to the Love Generation, musically K.\u2019s a cross between Elvis Costello, Bob Dylan and Frank Zappa, and one steady theme runs through every album he\u2019s ever cut: humanity has generally run amok and gone completely bazoo. The song, \u201cIndians and Aliens,\u201d from his just-released \u201cYugoslavia\u201d album, gives a pretty clear picture of this. The scene is a wedding taking place on a front lawn. From out of the blue a spaceship lands and an alien steps out and says,<\/p>\n There is a rumor circling deep space You can also hear it in \u201cThe Funky Western Civilization,\u201d a cut from the \u201cLife in the Foodchain\u201d album, and which might be the only dance tune ever recorded that bothers to address the general decline of societal values in the Western World:<\/p>\n They put Jesus on a cross Somewhere in passing I had read that Weird Al Yankovic was a fan of K. I couldn\u2019t figure out why. \u201cNotes\u201d was, overall, a serious album \u2014 even the humor was dark, satire noir. The rumor, however, made terrific sense after hearing \u201cFoodchain.\u201d Along with dance songs about societal decline and a ballad about a bad union deal, the second half of the album is a collection of bizarre love songs, including one \u2014 \u201cHow Come I Can\u2019t See You In My Mirror?\u201d \u2014 about a vampire and her ignorant boyfriend.<\/p>\n As the song goes, at some point in their relationship the guy gets a little puzzled about certain habits of his gal \u2014 picking her teeth in public, wearing only black and red, staring at his neck \u2014 and decides to ask her some questions:<\/p>\n How come I can\u2019t see you in my mirror? You never get an answer in the song, but in the context of K.\u2019s general spin on love and relationships, the guy probably gets bit.<\/p>\n Most folks would say after hearing a few of K.\u2019s love ditties that he\u2019s a bit cynical about male\/female relationships. Some folks even call him a misogynist. I don\u2019t think so. I think he\u2019s just doing what social critics do \u2014 bringing up things that irritate us and make us realize that we\u2019re jerks.<\/p>\n In \u201cStudent Interview (With The Third Richest Man In The World),\u201d another track off \u201cYugoslavia,\u201d the rich man notes that just having a red Ferrari is enough for women to \u201cpractically fall into bed.\u201d The sentiment echoes K.\u2019s earlier hit from the late \u201980s, \u201cI\u2019m Supposed to Have Sex With You,\u201d in which he satirizes the low rung sex occupies on the relational ladder. A guy dances with a girl at a party, doesn\u2019t even know her, and then says, \u201cI\u2019m supposed to have sex with you.\u201d Forget love, forget relationship, forget marriage<\/em>. Anyone wonder why men and women are so messed up?<\/p>\n \u201cThe hippie ethos of \u2018Have sex with everyone you want to; it will be OK as long as you\u2019re not hurting anyone\u2019 is utter jive,\u201d K. told Harvest Rock Syndicate<\/em> in a 1988 interview.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the ideal of peace and love, without defining terms, was bound to fail.\u201d Why? \u201cBecause what peace and love in the \u201960s meant and continues to mean, under other guises these days, is completely self-indulgent and selfish grasping and greediness. What was meant by a lot of that hippie ideology and philosophy was, \u2018I\u2019ll do what I want to do, when I want to do it, and with whom I want to do it, and screw you if you don\u2019t like it.'\u201d<\/p>\n What \u201cdefining terms\u201d should we use? \u201cI think the only ideals that are worth holding to and will stand a chance of working are Christian ideals.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a>
\nAbout a planet, about a race
\nOf whackos and losers, weasels and jerks
\nThey say this planet was once called the earth
\nI think we\u2019ve found it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nThey put a hole in JFK
\nThey put Hitler in the driver\u2019s seat
\nAnd looked the other way
\nNow they\u2019ve got poison in the water
\nAnd the whole world in a trance
\nBut just because we\u2019re hypnotized
\nThat don\u2019t mean we can\u2019t dance
\nWe\u2019ve got the funky
\nThe funky Western Civilization<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nHow come you never come around here in the day?
\nHow come you start to hiss when I say my prayers
\nAnd you wear those stupid capes
\nAnd every time you see a cross you run away?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/a>