Old Enough to Forget

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 m...

I've been squirrelling down a rabbit hole the last couple of days. When I pulled out the Randy Stonehill record I found myself going back and playing a bunch of stuff tangentially related to Larry Norman through his old Solid Records imprint. To say that Larry was like the Kevin Bacon of my rock world, especially in the "Christian" market, is understating the connection to so much of what sits on my shelves. Like many of Mark's fans I started with his 1979 release Appalachian Melody . Even then you knew there was something special about this guy. However the depths of his talents as a musician, writer, and producer were never fully plumbed as his was a life cut far too short. Mark Heard's initial golden run ran from 1981 to 1985, and I have to say I am more than a little partial to Stop the Dominoes and Victims of the Age, his first two albums on Home Sweet Home. By the time he had released Mosaics in '85 I had become a little less enamoured with where he wa...

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 I really had something blow my hat off, I gave things a listen or two and then filed them. 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 the joined the queue of treasures waiting for a turn(table). I pop it on and the title track is cranked in the cave (everyo...