Tonio K. - Life in the Foodchain

A new-to-me release.

Many years ago I picked up Romeo Unchained and Notes from the Lost Civilization (not in that order), mainly because they were on WHAT?/A&M, where Mark Heard's iDEoLA project was released. So I figured it was a guilty-by-association sort of thing. It was an indie label after all, so that had to mean something.

I remember liking Notes from the Lost Civilization, but honestly, I was getting so much music back then that unless something really blew my hat off, I gave it a listen or two and then filed it away.

Here I am years later, and up pops a rather water-damaged copy of Life in the Foodchain. It made me sad looking at it. The vinyl was in surprisingly good shape, but any liner notes and credits were long lost to the gods of misplaced socks. Still, this was an album I had always been curious about, so I brought it home, where it joined the queue of treasures waiting for a turn(table).

I popped it on, and the title track was cranked in the cave (everyone was out, so why not?). The big riffs were just starting to hit when I said to myself, "Holy cow." It's at this point I sorely missed the credits and lyric sheet. I also saw, in small print in the bottom left, the date of the release: 1978. Figures.

Musically, I was hooked right off. Whereas Romeo Unchained is very much of its time, and to a lesser degree Notes from the Lost Civilization, the songs on Life in the Foodchain feel more timeless, like something you could hear today. I don't know if "How Come I Can't See You in My Mirror?" was a nod to Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London," but it's pretty darned funny. Most of the songs are played straight but are often scathing, if not actually really funny. Take that, Randy Newman!

That was a few days ago, and I'm still playing the album over and over. I am not the most objective listener, and my ability to actually discern whether something is good or not kind of blurs into a soupy fog. Things are enjoyable, or they're not. Of course, I'm always cognizant of high points, since they stand out.

To badly paraphrase a saying paraphrased by J.F.K.: "A great song lifts up the rest of the album." Of course, others will espouse: "One hit, the rest shit!"

Earlier I mentioned the missing liner notes, so it was off to the internet to read the lyrics and get a list of credits. Wow, there were a lot of names I knew. Among them: Dick Dale, Albert Lee, and Earl Slick on guitar, Garth Hudson from The Band lending accordion, and drummer Curly Smith. The album was produced by Rob Fraboni, who was known for his work with Dylan, Eric Clapton, and The Band.

Apparently, this was the first album to feature an AK-47 firing live ammunition as part of the big rock ending in "H-A-T-R-E-D," which is probably one of the more honest post-breakup songs ever written.

Like Tonio K. writes on the title track:

Kind of like mowing the lawn
Everything gets to this certain dimension
Winds up on a customer's plate and then gone

But it's not gone is it?

Styx - Paradise Theater

Styx was hands down one of my favourite bands as a kid. They were a strange band, even back then. They were a hard rock band, almost progressive at times, who had a penchant for sucky ballads. I know there's a tendency for people to zero in on "Babe" as the song that killed the band's credibility. The roots go way back to almost the beginning when Styx released "Lady" on their second album. It showed a side to the band that needed to be kept in check, and for the most part the band kept things on a pretty tight leash. The band had been setting a gruelling pace, releasing an album a year (two in 1972) and by the time they released Paradise Theater (if I end up writing theatre later it's because that's how we spell it here) in 1981 they'd dropped ten albums in less than a decade. I snapped this up as soon as I saw it, and it became a fixture on my turntable. Like the band had announced on "Borrowed Time" from 1979's Cornerstone , ...

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