Tonio K

Olé

Olé
Gadfly Records 1997

SJANGER ♦ classic rock/r&b/blues/folk

The «We Walk On» video, as featured on YouTube. As well, «That Could Have Been Me» Unplugged Live in Concert 1988.

Av og til dukker det opp en rock-personlighet du bare ikke skjønner hvordan du har klart å overse. Tonio K. er en slik en. Han startet opp i California på 60-tallet, var medlem av The Crickets (Buddy Hollys band) på 70-tallet, og debuterte med eget solo-album i 1978 (Life in the Foodchain), et album Stereo Review øyeblikkelig kåret til 'tidenes beste rock-album'. Selv ikke god omtale er alltid nok til å selge i bøtter og spann, og Tonio K's karriere tok aldri helt av sett med kommersielle øyne. Dette er hans siste studio-album, innspilt på slutten av 80-tallet, men ble et av disse albumene plateselskapet (i dette tilfellet A&M) uforståelig ikke fant det verdt å utgi. Tonio K prøvde sågar å kjøpe rettigheten til albumet for å gi det ut selv, uten å lykkes. Men i 1997 klarte indie selskapet Gadfly på mirakuløst vis å kjøpe rettigheten til å utgi albumet (det er nok ikke uten grunn at Gadfly betyr klegg!). Produsent for dette albumet er ingen ringere enn T-Bone Burnett, og musikerne kompisene Tonio K og T-Bone tok med seg i studio er for rock-historie å regne - når så du sist disse gitaristene i samme studio: Marc Ribot, David Hidalgo, Charlie Sexton, Paul Westerberg, Rusty Anderson, T-Bone Burnett...

"A&M shelved this during a guard changing in 1990, now unearthed, the T-Bone Burnett-coproduced Olé proves a career high for K. and is arguably better than anything A&M's put out these last several years." Rating: A [EW]

"Let us now ponder those who get lost in the shuffle, the great undiscovered artists who somehow never break through to the commercial surface. Many times they are just too good for their own good... Meet Tonio K. He defines undeserved obscurity. I know, I know: What the heck is a Tonio K? Obsessed with his own admittedly strong sense of humor, driven by devils that refused to let him write simple love songs, and unsparingly caustic while giddily romantic, Tonio K was and probably somewhere still is one damn fine songwriter who's also a pretty good singer. He rocked hard at times, didn't at others, and had a tendency to record with very good players who seemed inspired by the fact that they were getting paid to perform with a guy who was part goofball, part genius... Olé is pretty typical for a Tonio K album. The cover is a photograph of a bullfighter being absolutely overwhelmed by a bull, and that pretty much says it all. In «Stop the Clock» our boy is frustrated by time's passing, while in the strutting «Time Steps Aside» he stares in awe at innocent beauty. In «Maybe There Isn't» the introspective Tonio questions man's dismal history - "Now I don't need to change the world tonight / But I'd sure like to know / If it's too late to ever get it right." This is a man with no answers, but plenty of good questions... The early albums are hurdy-gurdy electric frenzied affairs, in his midperiod he reached for an audience, in his final efforts with Burnett he fell into a solid, more spare groove. But at all times Tonio seemed to think that music mattered, that pop could be more than a series of recycled trends set to a marketing scheme." [The Detroit News]