Description
Life in the Foodchain is the debut album by the American singer and songwriter Tonio K., released on Epic Records in 1978. The album was produced by Rob Fraboni. Featuring a supporting cast that includes Earl Slick, Garth Hudson, Dick Dale, and Albert Lee.
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 the lyrics (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 floor 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. [Steve Simels, Stereo Review, April 1979]
> Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/life-in-the-foodchain/717234890)
LP tracklist:
Side One
A1. “Life In The Foodchain” – 4:11
A2. “The Funky Western Civilization” – 4:10
A3. “Willie And The Pigman” – 5:11
A4. “Ballad Of The Night The Clocks All Quit (And The Government Failed)” – 8:41
Side Two
B1. “American Love Affair” – 3:49
B2. “How Come I Can’t See You In My Mirror” – 3:00
B3. “Better Late Than Never” – 4:32
B4. “A Lover’s Plea” – 3:50
B5. “H-A-T-R-E-D” – 4:21
Note: Simultaneously released on 8-track tape, cassette, and 12-inch vinyl LP by Epic Records. (Also released as a promo only picture disc.) Re-issued on CD by Gadfly Records in 1995.
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