IS THIS MALIBU'S SID VICIOUS?

[Reprinted from somewhere]

"I wish I was as mellow as for instance jackson browne / but 'fountain of sorrow' my ass @#$%¢&-(*&)$#, I hope you wind up in the ground."—"H-A-T-R-E-D," Tonio K.

LOS ANGELES—"Everybody loves those lines," snickers Tonio K. "Obviously, they're not meant to be taken seriously. I'm just wondering what Jackson's going to think when he hears them."

Tonio K.'s sense of the absurd in scrutinizing relationships, as in "H-A-T-R-E-D," and the American way of life gone sour, as in a song he calls "Funky Western Civilization," abounds on his debut album, Life in the Foodchain, produced by The Band's long-time associate, Rob Fraboni.

Today, though, Tonio K. (whose real name is Steve Krikorian) is quite mellowed out. He stands placidly near a window at a stripped-down office complex 42 stories up in a tower near the ocean. Grim-faced, he surveys the smoke and ash that envelop the California coastline for as far as the eye can see. The day before, he'd been in the thick of the killer fire, hanging out at Shangri-la Studio in Malibu. When flames arrived at the studio's fence, he grabbed the master tapes to Foodchain and Dylan and The Band's Basement Tapes and fled. The Band's Garth Hudson, who played accordion on Foodchain, lost his home in the blaze. "It was just like a war," Tonio K. shudders.

That was, ironically, just what Malibu police and sheriffs thought was happening a few months earlier during a recording session at Shangri-la for "H-A-T-R-E-D." To give the song a fitting climax, Tonio K. had Roger Nichols, Steely Dan's Grammy-winning engineer, blew an organ to bits with an HK-91 semi-automatic rifle. While those present listened to the results on tape, nine police units closed in with guns drawn. Luckily, Nichols' roommate, a sheriff, was among them. "They wound up writing it up as kids playing with firecrackers," cracks Tonio K.

Though "H-A-T-R-E-D" is only one of many songs on Foodchain that deals with Western man's penchant for cutting throats, Tonio K. insists he is not Malibu's Sid Vicious. "Actually, I abhor violence," he states, dusting off a seat on some unused building materials. "Almost anyone, including most girls, could beat me up."

During his youth, Tonio K. got beat up regularly. Raised in the same Central California farming area as Sam Peckinpah, Tonio K. was exposed early to redneck justice. "I was in the first grade," he recalls, "and these three guys—they billed themselves as the Three Musketeers—came up to me and said, 'Why don't you get out of this school, you goddamn Armenian.'"

Tonio K. later had the good sense to take leave of the Central Valley. Living in a school bus in the San Fernando Valley, he joined an incarnation of the Crickets that included noted British musicians Rick (Blind Faith) Grech and Albert (Heads, Hands and Feet) Lee. (The cover photo of Foodchain was taken from a home movie shot by J.I. Allison, an original member of the Crickets, shortly after Buddy Holly's death.)

Now affiliated with Eagles' manager Irving Azoff, Tonio K. is lambasting a society that leaves most of its members physically or mentally wounded. The anger, intelligence and sarcasm he brings to his material has led some of Mailbu's finest to dub him as "the next Dylan." Tonio K. groans, "I could kill people for saying that."

—Michael Barockma