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 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, honesty. 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 thelyrics (tempting. tempting!), 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, that his lyrics are so absurdly literate and corrosively cynical that they have reduced me to rolling on the ftoor 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.

Stero Review - Letters July 1979 I believe there's a touch of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest in the political and relgious overtones of the "serious" humor of Tonio K.'s lyrics in "Life in the Foodchain" (reviewed by Steve Simels in the April issue) The musicianship is definitely heads-up, straight-on rock-and-roll. At first I thought Tonio K. was just a clone of the early Frank Zappa, but after listening to the whole album I went back for seconds to see what I had missed on the first go. As a part-time DJ, I considered violating our format and giving Tonio K. a little airplay (one night I snuck my copy of Nervous Norvus' Transfusion as a filler), but I don't think our program director is progressive enough for The Ballad of the Night the Clocks All Quit (and the Government Failed). "Life in the Foodchain" is my pick as the best thing to come out of the trash pile in a long time. Vic Woot, Centerville, Ga August 1979 Steve Simels' excellent review (Apnl) of Tonio K. 's "Life in the Foodchain" has not only relieved my most complex anxieties about the future of rock in the eighties but has given my mind nourishment that should last well into the twenty-first century. But please, who is George Metesky? Danny C. Lail, Shelby. N.C. Steve Simels replies: George Metesky was, of course, the so-called "Mad Bomber" who terrorized the people of New York City for well over a decade with a series of strategically placed explosive devices. Comparing Tonio K. with Metesky was my idea of a joke, son. 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.