Tonio K. Loves His Dada

Tonio K. Loves His Dada

THE BEAT GOES ON

LOS ANGELES - "From time to time, my middleclass upbringing makes me a little uncomfortable with the word 'motherfucker'," admitted Tonio K.; who seemed a pretty regular guy. "I heard my parents took this, record over to their friends' house and listened to it, and I've been trying to envision how they reacted."

We're sprawling at the east end of the CBS West executive conference table in a room so cavernous and plush it eats the echoes before they hit the far wall.

The previous night, Tonio was in the studio altering his vengeance song, *'H-AT-R-E-D," at the earnest request of about ,50 radio stations who wanted to air it, but just couldn't get past the "you motherfucker" line. ("You philandering bitch" was evidently OK.) "The album stays the same," said Tonio, "but for radio I changed it to 'you trollop' which seemed to be in the same spirit. I wonder if all the 'motherfucker' fans in the country are gonna yell 'copout'. Well, fuck 'em."

Dylan: The CREEM Interview

OSAKA, JAPAN — The Guiness Book of World Records has officially given credit for the world's shortest (no pun intended) Bob Dylan interview to CREEM regular Jeffrey Morgan for the following exchange between Dylan (on stage during a recent concert) and Morgan (wjio was sitting in the front row at the time):

DYLAN: This liext number is a song I once did .with The Band. You remember The Band, don't you? It was on an album called Planet Waves. It sold twelve copies. CREEM: WHY?

Connect me with the underseas operator, please I

Tonio K. is a rock veteran who has a lot of people excited about his first Epic solo album, Life In The Foodchain, a musically conventional but lyrically bizarre bit of twisted wit and sociaL commentary. He's pretty good at the old anguished humor approach, and he has a nice instinct for a flashy concept—the only .keyboard on the album was wiped out by a burst of lead-filled "notes" from an automatic NATO-issue HK-91. (Keith Emerson used to be content with daggers.) His bio calls him "peculiar but amiable," and I'll buy that; a propensity for bent babblina doesn't

Too much caffglna will do it to you.

DYLAN: Get this guy outta here.

Even though he missed the rest of the concert, Morgan later called the exchange "a great rock 'n' roll momenta Almost as good as the time I asked Lou Reed if he was scared of death."

Dylan was unavailable for comment.

Machine Rock

make anyone a-genius, but the record is undeniably good for a few rueful laughs^

If it starts you "thinking" too deeply, though, you'd better put on your flippers and paddle out of there fast. That's because Tonio is a devotee of Dada, a violently satirical art movement in which anxious nonsense reigns supreme.

"Those people are like heroes, they did a real courageous thing. The movement was started by draft dodgers in Zurich in 1916 [the same year James Joyce's Ulysses takes place in Dublin], They looked around and said if 4,000 years of rational thought have led to this World War business, fuck it, let's be irrational. So they started throwing paint at canvasses, and* cutting up newspaper articles and putting the words in a bag and shaking it up and re-gluing them. My first introduction to them-was as a teenager into vandalism like most teenagers are. I used to deface books in public libraries—I drew the standard dicks and tits and whatever's good—so I grabbed this Dada book out of the stack and started defacing it, and suddenly realized there was great shit in it." (Inspiration, like love, strikes at the oddest moments,)

This transpired in Central California's San Joaquin Valley, where the OK one

was born and raised for 16 years before his parents moved out into the desert in,, the vicinity of Palm SPRINGS.T In high school, he was in-* volved with what his Epic bio calls "youth combos". (Combos?)

"Prior to 1965 I'm not real conscious of anything in particular musically. When Dylan came along, though, suddenly it occurred to everyone that there was something to write about." While Tonio's dizzying," politicized lyrics remind some people of Bob-the-Bard's more obtuse concoctions, though,•> our protagonist doesn't want to hear any comparisons. "The only thing I have in common with Dylan is that aside from him 1 may be the Worst guitar player that's ever entered a studio."

More recently, Tonio played with the last incarnation of the post-Buddy Holly Crickets from 1973 to 1975. "There weren't a lot of valid rock units dealing in valid issues, discussing something other than their 'baby,' and my idea was to bring some new material into the group. Didn't work out, though. We had this fascist producer, we kept getting bullied by the record company, and even by audiences in England and Europe who just wanted to hear 'That'll Be The Day'. Which is great, but the original drummer in particular was getting tired of of playing it~as his sole get-by."

When the Crickets disbanded in 1976, Tonio sat around until he was broke, and then' set out to make a publishing deal. "I write a lot—I'm a windy son-of-abitch—and I figured some of these songs were surely commercial. I went to ASCAP, and they sent me over to Chappell , because they thought they were looking to contemporize the company —Chappell had all these Broadway musical scores. So when I walked in, halfway through the second song the J guy said, 'You should have a recording ^leal—your own, not with five neurotics— what do you want?' Hell, I didn't even know at the mpment."

Once that was settled, Tdnio went to work on Life In The Foodchain (including "Funky Western Civilization" and "The Ballad Of The Night The Clocks All Quit") and a second side subtitled "Love Among The Ruins."

"In spite of what anybody might think, 'H-A-T-R-E-D' isn't about my ex-wife; it was a goof. My main romantic involvements have all been negative, though. I don't know anybody that's been happy very long with their romantic/marital partner. Love is relative to and a symptom of the whole other socio-political thing; I think it's directly affected by it.

"We're on such shakey ground globally, and we have literally nothing to fall back on. They've pretty well blown the Judeo-Christian ethic apart, so Western'man isr\'t left with a great deal to believe in. You can name so

many things that don't make it. It's actually too bad, because if everybody had been able to maintain their roles prior to the industrial revolution going out of control and all this free time coming up—if housewives and husbands and children played their traditional roles to the best of their abilities cind didn't go for some option—maybe the family wouldn't have broken down and therefore society wouldn't have gone down.

"Now I try not to even listen to global politics anymore—I can't stand it. I don't read the paper, I don't own a television. I get literally dizzy when I hear some of that shit—it scares me into anxiety attacks.

"I have this thepry that somewhere around 1916 everything changed radically. I suppose the whole Dada approach, including this kind of humor, is pathetic when you think about it. But for me, and a lot of cynical people, it's the only way of dealing with the situation." NEW YORK—By now, everybody but Bonnie Bramlett's dog have given their side of the Columbus, Ohio brawl between the forces of Stills and the forces of Costello.

Stephen Demorest

ORIGINAL SPIV UNCOVERED 111

Shoe fetishes seem to run In the Jackson family, as this rare shot of the Infamous Chicago Black Sox outfielder, "Shoeless" Joe Jackson indicates. Why was he infamous? Hint: It has nothing to do with his .356 batting average, the third highest in major league history. No, in true spiv fashion, Joethrew the 1919 World Series for a paltry pay-off of a few hundred bux, thus giving birth to a new Americdn eaten phrase, "Say it ain't so, Joel" Will this year's model Joe Jackson be stricken with congenital spivness? See this month's feature for the startling facts ...

He'd Rather Be Anywhere ElseBnt Here Today...

Naturally we find that the whole story hasn't been told, and leap into the void to offer you our thoughts on the events.

Elvis, of course, gave a rare — uh, unprecedented press conference on March 30th at the CBS Building, to^. "make just one statement— that l am not a racist."

He went on to make a shoi^ summary of his feelings ; then answered questions from the assorted New York music and general news reporters hastily gathered for the event. In regard to the racist remarks about Ray Charles and James Brown attributed to him by Bramlett and several others, Elvis said:

"I was misquoted out of context. I don't really want to get into a trivial feud with another act, but I think it's, necessary to point out in what context these remarks —although they weren't strictly reported — were made. In the course of this argument, it became necessary for. me to outrage these people with about the most obnoxious and offensive remarks that I could muster, to bring the argument to a swift conclusion, and rid myself of their presence.

"It worked pretty good— it started a fight ... I did say some things that, taken out of context, were really offensive towards the people whose names I was taking, you might say, in vain.

". . . These people [the Stills/Bramlett contingent! have now chosen to seek publicity at my expense by making it a gossip item. It's been very understandably confused, and I suppose it will be quoted even more out of context as time goes on,

and it worries me that people are going to think about words that I have said, and presume that those were my opinions.

The questions started.

Can you Be any more specific about 'the circumstances that caused you to say something so outrageous?

"Yeah. I'm sure that everyone has had the occasion to go to real extremes, to say something that you don't believe. Ask Lenny Bruce."

Incredibly, one journalist confessed to never having heard the album, but insisted on questioning Costello on specific words he'd heard about in the lyrics, like "checkpoint charlie, itchy fingers, white nigger, Johannesburg darkies" ... "Is that in your record?" he asked.

"Yes, and once again, those wbrds have been taken entirely out of context. That's what I'm saying—you use emotive words in a song, or in a conversation. If you're then quoted out of context, they can make you look anything from an angel to . . r Adolf Hitler."

What was the original argument? 1 ;

"We were just talking about conflicting opinions about music and about the way we work—you know, usual barroom talk. I'm not

saying it was a profound .conversation—that's why I'm saying it's so ridiculous— that you're all here, and I'm answering questions about this thing. It's basically just a conversation that went on in a bar in Columbus, Ohio."

Do you have a low opinion of Americans?

"No. I have American friends ... I don't have an overall low view of Americans—there's a lot wrong with England, there's a lot wrong with the world! Surely I don't have to say that?"

Elvis capsulized my feelings on all of this when he answered someone who brought up an interview where Elvis had said: "But then again I agree with them —I'm not a mature, balanced person as far as I'm con-' cerned."

Elvis responded: "Yeah, but theri nobody said that to make records you've got to have a certificate that says you're ^nice and wopderful person." 1

But that probably went against the grain of the basically 30-ish, 60's-sensi-, bility journalists packing the room. Whatever one's opinion of the content of Costello's remarks, the self-righteous tone of the questions (which disintegrated into sarcastic baiting) was offensive.

His remarks went against .their grain, because it's an

idea dating from the 60's that rock.stars are not only literate and well-informed, but basically utopian in belief (well, hippie-utopian), benevolent in intention, and flaming nice guys to boot.

But as a recent letterwriter to the Village Voice pointed out, that's how you get ostensibly "liberal", longhaired types like Eric Clapton, aligning himself with racial purist Enoch PoWell, and shocking the Wits out of his old hippie fans. Why? Just because the guy used to be a brilliant guitarist? Seemed to stand for something in the 60's? The artistic thrust of a lot of artists like Costello would seem to be: if | you're that naive about your | "rock heroes", then you're $ really fupked.

There seems to be a cultural gap here, too. It seemed wildly improbable to the American. journalists that a person could respond, "I think I'm crazy all the time" to the question, "Were you Crazy when you made the statements?" One isn't supposed to do that, better to murmur something more calculated to make the people gathered like you. It's inconceivable that Elvisreally didn't care if they thought he ■was a nasty person or not— his only concern was explaining the quotes attributed to him.

The conference kept coming back to the basic question of racism, though. The major irony is that so many of those present, awash in self-righteousness, were—are major participants in the New York "new wave scene", which can be lethally racist. Lester Bangs wrote a primer on new wave racism in the April 30th Voice, describing the special insidiousness of it in that scene, because it's on the lips of the hip elite, more often than not.

People Who wrote off the Rock Against Racism movement a year ago as a peculiarly English answer to a peculiarly English problem might think twice about it now. They might ask Elvis about Rock Against Racism —he played for one of their biggest rallies in September.

Susan Whitall