Musical poets mangle words to make it all fit

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

Music fans of a certain vintage only have to hear the first few notes of Toto’s classic smoothie, Africa, to be swept back to some glitter balled disco and the slow set that would determine if this was to be a night to remember or forget.

But once the nostalgia or the nightmare has settled, you might try to work out what the hell it’s all about – because, apart from the fact that Toto want to bless the rains down in Africa (and who wouldn’t) it’s as clear as a post-match interview with Giovanni Trappatoni.

“The wild dogs cry out in the night/As they grow restless, longing for some solitary company” – that’s fine….African dogs crying out because they want to be on their own.

But then our hero needs something that rhymes with ‘solitary company’ – this “I know that I must do what’s right/As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti.”

And a generation of young men who wouldn’t know the Serengeti from the Seven Dwarfs bellowed Toto’s pretentious poetry into the inner ear of some poor unfortunate teenage girl who was doing her damnedest to wrestle her way out of his vice-like grip.

A couple of decades on you wonder just what Toto were thinking – particularly in an era when the height of lyrical sophistication involves being up all night to get lucky.

Did the boys swallow an atlas at an impressionable age? Or were they too simply trying to impress the opposite sex with their knowledge base that saw the Serengeti as an obvious follow up to ‘solitary company’?

The initial idea for the song came from the perspective of “… a white boy trying to write a song on Africa, but since he’s never been there, he can only tell what he’s seen on TV or remembers in the past.”

But clearly he’s a man of the world – albeit from the confines of his own bedroom – and was anxious to include more geographical references than you’d find on the weather forecast.

Of course it’s unfair to single out Toto for what is, after all, one of the anthems of our youth – and it’s better than the ‘I’ve got soul, but I’m not a soldier’ doggerel passed off by the Killers.

As someone wittier than I once said, the obvious follow-on to that is ‘I’ve got ham but I’m not a hamster’.

But the golden era of pretentious lyrics was back in the glory days of bands like Procol Harum and the utterly impenetrable Whiter Shade of Pale or Al Stewart and the Year of the Cat.

A fandango is a Spanish dance and one presumes a light version of it means you’re not heavy on your feet – but how do you skip one? Would it be by turning cartwheels across the floor? And that’s clearly bound to make you seasick, even if the crowd are calling out for more.

The Year of the Cat is about a chance encounter with a nubile young woman who tells you that she came in the Year of the Cat, which is a revelation on so many levels.

Neil Diamond struck up a conversation with a piece of furniture for his entry: “”I am!” I said/To no one there/And no one heard at all/Not even the chair.” It should have surprised him more of course if the chair had answered him back.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.