Description
Romeo Unchained, sub-titled Big Heroes, Tiny Brains, is the third full-length studio album by the American singer and songwriter Tonio K., released on the brand new Word imprint What? Records in June 1986. Also manufactured and distributed by A&M Records in the mainstream market. The album was recorded at: Lawrence Welk’s Champagne Recorders, Baby-O, Cherokee, Eldorado, Hitman, Fingerprint, Redwing (R.I.P.), and God knows where else. All in exciting Hollywood, CA 90028.; with Rick Neigher, Bob Rose, Howard Steele, and T-Bone Burnett producing. Engineered by Billy Taylor, Joe Chiccarelli, Larold Rebhun, Mark Heard, Nick Van Maarth, and Rick Neigher. Mixed at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles, California. (In actuality, Romeo Unchained consists mostly of publishing demos recorded by Tonio K. and his producer-friend, Rick Neigher.)
“You Belong With Me” features (uncredited) vocals by Maria McKee of Lone Justice fame. According to an article featured in the October 10, 1987 issue of Billboard Magazine, “What? released only three albums, and all of them received a great deal of airplay and critical acclaim: Tonio K., Ideola and Dave Perkins.” (According to Tom Willett, head of A&R for Word Records’ LA office at the time, planned releases by Robin Lane, Milo Carter & the Lucky Stiffs, and Pat Terry “never materialized for the usual reasons.”)
On the album Tonio K. covers the spectrum in relations lost and found. His songs leave an impression. Whether it’s the perfection in relationships, sought between man and woman or between man and God. The words and emotions are the driving force behind the music and Tonio K does an outstanding job of blending the two.
It’s tempting to trumpet Romeo Unchained as the best Bob Dylan album since Dylan himself lost interest in the pop-song form. Tonio K., the exceptional singer, songwriter and guitarist whose long-delayed fourth release this is, resembles Dylan vocally and, like Dylan at his midperiod best, writes rock & roll songs that actually say something. What they say, however, is so distinctively provocative that comparisons can only be misleading. Tonio K. is an arousing original.
Tonio (real name: Steve Krikorian) became a critics’ favorite with the release of Life in the Foodchain, his 1979 [sic] debut album. A razor-edged alloy of walloping rock and life-is-shit lyrics, Foodchain was tough stuff – too tough, perhaps, as massive sales did not ensue. Since his last record, Tonio has, happily, discovered a reason to live: true love – or at least its promise – which it pains him to see subverted at every turn by impossible sex-role expectations and the general emotional trivialization of modern culture. “What happens to people in love is some kind of mystery,” he sings in «You Belong with Me». “But what passes for love on the street these days is a joke.”
Getting back to love’s possibilities – and away from the current “world gone crazy / Where the men won’t grow up / And the women get so hard” – is what Romeo Unchained is mostly about, and it’s a gripping trip. Tonio’s contempt for traditional romantic cant precludes any woozy platitudinizing, and his compositions (bolstered by strong instrumental input from string virtuoso David Mansfield and guitarists Charlie Sexton and T-Bone Burnett) underline the seriousness of his intent.
The way to straighten out all the confusion between the sexes, Tonio contends, is renunciation of socially engineered romantic expectations; every love story has its own script. In the drolly titled «Impressed», he lists the alleged great lovers of history and concludes, “I am not impressed / I love you the best · And we got nothing, nothing to live up to.” In the Springsteenish closer, he allows that the path to true love may be uphill all the way, but the view from love’s true peaks is unbounded, and “when we get sprung / From out these cages, baby / God knows what we might do.”
Although the album’s hardest-hitting rocker is a thematically unrelated track called «I Handle Snakes» – a wicked barbecue of religious fundamentalists – Romeo Unchained derives its considerable artistic stature from the sincerity of its romantic concern, as well as the high quality of the music. Hooks abound, borne aloft by rich, meaty rhythm tracks and shrewdly deployed synth riffs and embellished with everything from frantic thrash-guitar leads (on «Living Doll») to free-floating surf flourishes («You Don’t Belong Here»). But while Tonio’s eclecticism is exhilarating, it’s his determination to address real human issues within the context of rock & roll that compels admiration. [Kurt Loder, Rolling Stone Magazine, September 1986]
Tonio K. is the funniest serious songwriter in America. Readers with long memories may recall that I declared each of his previous LP’s to be “the greatest record ever made,” but since this is a conservative era I’m going to restrain myself on the subject of “Romeo Unchained,” K.’s latest effort on What Records. Let me simply say up front that while it retains the sardonic wit and general rock-and-roll savvy of its predecessors, it also reflects a certain optimism about the state of things in the closing quarter of the twentieth century. There’s a newfound subtlety and vulnerability in the vocals, too, and a thoroughly modern production gloss that doesn’t hit you over the head with how hip it is. In short, “Romeo Unchained” is the kind of album that will sound good on MTV and make you think anyway.
As the title suggests, the album deals with relationships between the sexes. K. has been down this particular cul-de-sac before. He is, after all, the songwriter who once threatened an unconstant lover with the prohibitive cost of a private hospital room. But where previously his musings had a misogynistic edge (tempered with a certain measured irony, to be sure), here he seems to be taking the woman’s side. «Living Doll», for example, is a wry and compassionate account of a young girl’s progress from victimization to independence, and «You Dont Belong Here», a semi-surrealist tale of a singles-bar encounter, absolutely skewers the self-pity and self-destructiveness of its male character.
Since this is a Tonio K. album, of course, there are also some inspired japes with only passing relevance to the grand theme. «Romeo and Jane» is a wonderful meditation on the unlikely romance between characters created by Shakespeare and Edgar Rice Burroughs (“I’ve heard of unfaithful lovers, but this is outrageous’” K. huffs). And at least one number, «I Handle Snakes», dispenses with the theme altogether. A sort of heavy-metal theological treatise, it features such inspirational verse as, “I handle snakes/ I hug ‘em and I kiss ‘em/ I handle snakes/ And if they kill me I’ll sure miss ‘em.”
Musically, meanwhile, the album is as sharp as a tack. The songs are concise, tuneful mixtures of blues-based guitar grit and electronic glitz. K.’s singing achieves heretofore unsuspected levels of nuance and feeling. The various supporting players, including co-producer T-Bone Burnette on «You Will Go Free» and what sounds like an uncredited Maria McKee of Lone Justice on «You Belong with Me», perform as if their lives depended on it. Altogether, “Romeo Unchained” is a thrilling piece of vinyl, and as Robert Schumann is reputed to have observed upon first hearing Chopin, “Hats off, gentlemen.” Let me add, at the risk of repeating myself, “This is the greatest album ever recorded.” [Steve Simels, Stereo Review]
[Brian Quincy Newcomb, CCM, July 1986]
> Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/romeo-unchained/1165977665)
LP tracklist:
Side One
A1. “True Confessions” – 3:40
A2. “Perfect World” – 4:12
A3. “Romeo And Jane” – 3:46
A4. “You Belong With Me” – 4:50
A5. “Impressed” – 4:24
Side Two
B1. “I Handle Snakes” – 3:36
B2. “Emotional War Games” – 3:53
B3. “Living Doll” – 3:44
B4. “You Don’t Belong Here” – 5:51
B5. “You Will Go Free” – 6:37
Note: Simultaneously released on cassette, 12-inch vinyl LP, and CD by What? Records/A&M Records. Re-issued on CD by Gadfly Records in 1996.
A full-page advertisement for Tonio K.’s album Romeo Unchained was featured on the back cover of the May 1986 issue of CCM Magazine.
What exactly is “Christian music” anyway? Is it music about Christ? Or is it music about the entire spectrum of human existence – love, pain, relationships, trivia, death, salvation – from a Christ-centered world view?
The folks behind What? Records are hoping to make a case for the latter and broader view as the new label’s maiden release, Tonio K’s Romeo Unchained makes its way into stores both secular and evangelical via the Word/A&M distribution hookup.
The unveiling of What? reflects the determined belief of a few of Word’s West Coast executives that it’s possible to make records that appeal to and have value for both the mainstream pop market and the Christian market without forcing artists to tailor their material to satisfy or condescend to either audience. If it works, it may be the first real chance to break artists in both markets simultaneously without “crossing over” from one to the other. [Excerpt from “What?’s New: This label has a real point of view,” an article featured in the June/July 1986 issue of CCM]
In actuality, Romeo Unchained, K.’s first release on A&M, consisted mostly of publishing demos recorded by K. and his producer-friend, Rick Neigher. Prior to his signing with A&M in 1986, K. — along with T-Bone Burnett, Stephen Soles, Mark Heard, and the alternative band the Lucky Stiffs — had toyed with the idea of establishing an independent label, and releasing a compilation album in both the secular and the religious markets. “We were going to make our records for ourselves,” says K., somewhat amused by the notion today, “and take out ads in the back pages of Rolling Stone and BAM, as well as in some gospel publications, since a lot of us were known to be Christians. The idea was that we would own the product ourselves, and we wouldn’t have to answer to anybody.” To manage the label, Heard suggested he and the others enlist the services of Tom Willet, a close friend who was then overseeing the A&R department at the well-known Christian label, Word Records. Convinced such a project was destined to fail, however, Willet dissuaded K. and the others from going through with their plans, and suggested instead that they simply release the proposed album on both Word and in the secular marketplace. As things turned out, the compilation never came to fruition, but both Romeo Unchained and its follow-up, Notes from the Lost Civilization, were released concurrently on both A&M and the Word imprint, What? Records. Not surprisingly, this unusual arrangement led some people to conclude that K. was a “contemporary Christian” artist, although the label fits loosely, at best, and is much too narrow to be applied to his music.
“During that particular time,” K. explains, “I think Word was looking for something that wasn’t really contemporary Christian or gospel, by definition. They wanted something that was cool, but that their marketplace could also relate to, on a theological and philosophical level. Everybody was aware that Bono and The Edge were Christians, and everyone knew that Dylan had recorded those three gospel records — and Word was hoping to release something along those same lines. They were looking for something that was outside the scope of the typical vanilla, contemporary Christian band.
“Still, it’s kind of weird,” he continues, “because I never really had anything to do with that marketplace. I had never performed a [gospel] gig, for instance, or anything like that. It’s true that those albums were sold in the Christian market, however, and I continue to get fan mail from Christians, as well as from many Jews and a few Buddhists. But never a Moslem, that I know of. Actually, it’s mostly atheists and agnostics who write. And I also got a letter once from the Communist Party N.A. — very nice people.
“The fact is,” he continues, “from the beginning I’ve felt my albums contained fundamentally moral themes, even though I do use naughty words and so forth. As I got into my 20s, I became a little more philosophical about life in general, and more conscious of spiritual matters. I’ve always believed that the universe isn’t just some accident; it’s a little too finely tuned for that. And I’ve always believed Jesus was probably who he said he was. Beyond that, though, I hesitate to say, ‘Yes, I’m a Christian,’ because people tend to immediately connect you with those imbeciles on television.”
[Excerpt from an interview with Tonio K by Russell Hall, featured in Goldmine Magazine, May 7, 1999]
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