Tonio K. - Romeo Unchained

Tonio K. is one of those artists you need to spend a little time with before you get to the payoff. I'll freely admit I came to Tonio K. through iDEoLA - more specifically because of the connection to WHAT? Records that was distributed by A&M. For whatever reason I still tend to think of Romeo Unchained and Tribal Opera as musical bookends. Which of course if pure unadulterated nonsense. Other than a heavy dose of '80s production the album's are nothing alike.

Romeo Unchained was an album I didn't give much more than a cursory listen to when I first got it. There were some catchy songs here and there and musically this was a mid '80s mix of alternative and techno - it was very '80s, with all of the trimmings. It was sparkly and new. I'm not sure what I was expecting but after a couple of cursory spins it got shelved. 

Which was a shame and frankly my loss.

A couple years ago I found a copy of Life in the Food Chain, and I took the time to listen, I mean truly listen to the record and I really got into it. As fate would have it, I found a copy of Romeo Unchained on vinyl a few months ago I snapped it up ... then I lost it in the pile of records that were accumulating in the basement.

I was just flipping through some of the stuff in the corner, and came across Romeo Unchained, and figured now was as good a time as any. 

Speaking of time, you may not be able to tell, but it's been a couple of days and I've been spinning this pretty constantly. Sometimes in the background as I fart around, and then while I sit on the chesterfield with the liner notes reading along as the songs play.

A couple of things stand out right away, first the songs are excellent, and second the production has not aged well. What was once sparkly and new sounds old and dated ... not necessarily in a bad way. There's something fun in listening to an album sounds like a classic '80s album but still feels oddly out of time lyrically as the songs are so well crafted and the lyrics while seemingly bouncing and full of sunshine have more going on that you realize.

The other cool thing about the passage of time has been all the trivia and bits of bric-a-brac I've accumulated. I've always been borderline obsessive about digesting the credits. When I first got this, the big names for me were T-Bone Burnett, and Tim Chandler the bass player from Daniel Amos. Of course now reading through the credits is even more impressive, drummer Burleigh Drummond who anchored so many awesome Lost Dogs albums, and bassist Phil Chen whose name I first saw on Brian May's Star Fleet Project back in 1983. Of course there were more, like Charlie Sexton on guitar, David Mansfield and David Miner, if you know - you know.

Romeo Unchanged oddly enough calls to mind David + David's '86 debut Boomtown. Albums where there was more going on under the hood than you'd expect. Romeo Unchained was one of those albums that should have been huge. It had all of the ingredients ... except luck. 

Listening now is still a really enjoyable experience, and there's always a bit of woulda coulda shoulda when you wonder why certain records catch and others don't. Seems like being critically revered seldom translates into sales, and maybe that's how it's supposed to be. 

Still, when you hear something that seemed to be tailor made for the time it's sad to think of the album as a swing and a miss. Rather, like so many wonderful artists, this was embraced by those who cared, and maybe that was enough. Those who know, know and the album is worth your time.