Toto's Africa Performed a Different Way

The group featured in this video is Perpetuum Jazzile, a Slovenian a cappella group.

Notice there is no music being played.



The group’s website is found here

Of course, we are more used to the original version by the group Toto.

Have you ever heard the saying that we should only write about what we know?

With that idea in mind the inspiration for this song was a fictional situation where a white boy attempts to write a song about Africa, but since he had never been to Africa or didn’t have much knowledge about it at all he used what he had previously read or seen in movies or on television.

Here are the lyrics:

I hear the drums echoing tonight
But she hears only whispers of some quiet conversation
She's coming in twelve-thirty flight
Her moonlit wings reflect the stars that guide me towards salvation
I stopped an old man along the way
Hoping to find some old forgotten words or ancient melodies
He turned to me as if to say: "Hurry boy, it's waiting there for you"

[Chorus:]
It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in Africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had

The wild dogs cry out in the night
As they grow restless longing for some solitary company
I know that I must do what's right
Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti
I seek to cure what's deep inside, frightened of this thing that I've become

[Repeat chorus]
[Instrumental break]
Hurry boy, she's waiting there for you
[Repeat chorus]

Steely Dan….Do It Again

Eruption.....Eddie Van Halen

One of the first albums I purchased after I got my first car was the debut album by Van Halen. In 1978 you could still purchase 8-track cassette and since that’s what my car had….that’s what I bought. I loved every song, and still do.

Initially, Eruption was not considered a song for the album. Eddie Van Halen used it as a studio warm up; however, when a producer heard it he asked that it appear as a track on the album. Years later in an interview Eddie revealed that he had made a mistake at the top end of it.

Gee, a mistake?!?