TOTO "africa" classic or dud

That video doesn't work for me, but I know exactly what it is and it is a jam.

Don't think those count as keytars though, I suspect we are maybe in the pre-keytar era and that those are just keyboards hanging heavy around their necks.

Love how the Y in GARY gives him cat ears in the shots with the backing singers

No, he just had cat ears.

I suspect we are maybe in the pre-keytar era and that those are just keyboards hanging heavy around their necks

They're sort of proto-keytars. If you wanted, back in the mid-70s, Moog could split your Minimoog in two and provide you with the keyboard as a separate unit, that could be connected via a long multi-core cable to the sound-generating half of the instrument. They probably got the idea from seeing Edgar Winter perform 'Frankenstein' with the keyboard for his ARP 2600 hanging from his shoulders. (The 2600's keyboard was designed to be free-standing.)

https://i.redd.it/crbwxzla0ow01.jpg

from https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/8hygq4/currently_africa_by_toto_is_winning_for_our/

The school I attended in the woods voted to have "Through the Years" by Kenny Rogers as our song. In 1991.

I transferred to Little Rock Central.

Happy? WTF is this kindergarten graduation?

xpost waht

that is abominable

"africa" by toto is a great song

these kids today smdh

the lyrics are so bad, one of many hopeless sentences:
the moonlit wings reflect the stars that guide me towards salvation

Mountain = mountain

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuiwIFLKa2I

thought this bump was gonna be about the weezer cover stinking up yr local alternative station's airwaves

this song is getting run into the ground so quickly it's alarming. on its way to being the new "don't stop believin'"

Yeah, I've seen so many halfassed covers and memes of this once glorious song

its v easy to avoid this song and its imitators if u dont push play on shit automatically

the difference b/w this and "don't stop believing" is that "africa" is a good song

Trying to picture what it would look like for an old, wise man to turn as if to say “Hurry boy she’s waiting there for you!”

xp otm & otm

i'm not among them but many people still think (or once thought) "don't stop believin'" is a good song!

chop them in the throat

no that would hurt!
i am one of those people. i don't really like "don't stop believin'" much now but there was a time when i would enjoy it if it came on the radio. same for "africa"
when things become so laden with quasi-cultural meaning that they stop being enjoyable is a sad time really

"sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti"
^^prog rockers very much in character

^ I was thinking the same thing: "Africa" is the last mainstream hurrah of prog, along with maybe "Eye in the Sky." The next year, you've got "Owner of a Lonely Heart", popular progrock highly adulterated by new wave jolts.

What was ever prog about Toto?

first 2 albums iirc?

Seems like a reach, but ok.

Genesis were still having US top ten hits in the late 80s iirc xps

Yeah but they weren't ridiculously conceptual, like "Africa". Though that Mike and the Mechanics hit was about space travel or something right? Maybe that's the last hit of the prog impulse.

If "Africa" is conceptual in the prog sense, then so are other things like "Rock Me Amadeus" and "Bullet the Blue Sky."

Genesis' Tonight Tonight Tonight?

I've gotcher conceptual art rightcheer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9_WG7eXelo

"Africa" is the last mainstream hurrah of prog

Idg this at all. I'd sooner call Queensryche's "Silent Lucidity" prog than "Africa" and that hit the top 10 in 1991, even if we're not going to count Radiohead's European hits in the 00s.

I'm kind of enjoying the idea that "Georgy Porgy" is a prog rock classic, though.

If prog just means "radio-friendly mainstream rock perpetrated by people who have classical training, who have played technically complex music at various times in the past, and who are widely regarded as having 'chops' in the guitar-mag sense," then that is pretty meaningless.

The Toto dudes moved in a chops-centric world, and a lot of them made music that can safely be called prog at various points in their careers. But "Africa" is all in one even-numbered time signature, in a major key, not that many chords, the harmony is okay but nothing flashy. It was well suited to the radio of the day - I got a Walkman for my tenth birthday and I strongly suspect this was the first song to issue from it.

just to clarify I meant their prog roots/past ambitions showed in that ott line about something being as sure as THE KILIMANJARO RISES LIKE OLYMPUS

Fair enough, niels.

That said, one of these days I will have to start an S&D thread about misplaced syllabic emphasis. In all my thoughts about rock lyrics (as well as in my own lyric writing) I have generally disdained awkward, non-idiomatic, non-conversational stresses.

In my view, English has a big enough lexicon that you should be able to say interesting things without tortured backward syntax or misplaced stresses. Even otherwise great songs, by otherwise talented songwriters, suffer when this principle is ignored.

"NoBODy OF it is WORTH"

"If you FALL i will CATCH you i'll BE waiTIN'."

"SURE as KILimanJARo RISes like a MEMphis above the SERengetEEEEE."

(This last being my tweenage mis-hearing of "Olympus," and I am sticking to it.)

"serengeti" in this song is def one of the best examples of extremely tortured stresses

tell me about it, I'm singing these awkwardly stressed syllables in my community choir!

decent topic for a thread, 0wen P4llett had some otm points about the stress in the Get Lucky chorus in some column a while ago

I always thought lines like that were the lyrical equivalent of
https://plus.maths.org/content/sites/plus.maths.org/files/puzzle/2012/hammer.jpg

can anyone think of some examples of where that type of tortured syntax actually works?

i feel like it can be a useful and unexpected flourish if the lyrics actually work

can anyone think of some examples of where that type of tortured syntax actually works?

Yes at the end here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fxBZkC1vkw

the first one that came to my mind was xtc's "burning with optimism's flames," but since that comes at the end of the phrase during a musical rest, it's not the cleanest example.

the toiLET
starts flushING
Sets ME
Off aGAIN

"all the LONEly STARbuck's LOVers"

See pretty much any Stereolab song with English lyrics. Can be awkward, but I let it slide because ESL

The production on Jeff is like a blurry photograph. Still great

disagree, i love inappropriate syllabic emphasis on songs, makes them sound more musical

Guys don’t kid yourselves. Toto is in another league than journey. Though Steve Perry is all time in a way that no single personality in T is.

disagree, i love inappropriate syllabic emphasis on songs, makes them sound more musical

It gets your attention, which is why I think it's best used sparingly and not over and over like "unCONdiTIONalLY"