Is desert ‘sound installation’ a step Toto far?

Sorry, just checking... where are we meant to be blessing the rain again..?

What was the most streamed song in 2017? Something by Ed Sheeran, maybe? Or Adele?

Nope. It wasn’t even a song from that year. It was quadruple platinum, soft-rock, 1982 epic “Africa” by Toto. Yes, the vintage track saw off all the newcomers a couple of years ago, continuing it’s relentless march through a rhyming desert landscape of baffling lyrics and impassioned vocal pleas. And repeated blessings of the rain.

Definitely in the ‘Marmite’ category (you either love it or hate it), the classic continues to make the headlines, and there’s nothing a hundred men or more could ever do to stop it.

Just two months ago, a DJ in Bristol went for the “ultimate guilty pleasure” track as his choice for a same-record-all-night charity gig. After five hours on loop, I bet the drums really were echoing that night.

Even the band’s Steve Lukather suggested in a Tweet that the Africa marathon “could be worse than waterboarding”, before pointing out to anyone who thinks they’ve heard the tune too many times, “You think YOU are sick of it?”

But that’s nothing compared to the song’s latest adventure – it’s going to be playing for the rest of eternity in a desert in (you’ve guessed it) Africa. The song with the catchy line “as sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti” will be on loop in a sound installation, somewhere in the Namib desert.

Fancy popping by for a listen when you’re passing? Good luck with that – the Namibian artist who has created the aural installation isn’t letting on where it is, and the Namib is 81,000 sq km of the sandy stuff, so don’t expect to stumble across it whilst out for a stroll.

With an MP3 player on loop built in, and powered by solar panels and rechargeable batteries, the timeless track is set to become just that... presuming it doesn’t get buried by wandering dunes. Should it manage to play for as long as the desert has existed, then you’ve got just 55 million years to track it down. Long forgotten words and ancient melodies, indeed.

So if you’re seeking to cure what’s deep inside and fancy trying to find the art installation and it’s eternal tune, catch the 12.30 flight, stop an old man along the way but hurry boy – it’s waiting there for you.

This post first appeared as my 'A wry look at the week' column, in The Mail, on Friday the 18th of January 2019. The version used on their website (yes, it reappeared online this week!) used the same title, and contained a fetching picture of the band.

I've been enjoying a bit of an 80s reminiscences thing recently, haven't I? The Die Hard column over Christmas, this, and I picked up a copy of the Tiger Annual from 1980 yesterday - my comic of choice as a kid, and featuring fictional F1 ace, Skid Solo. Hell, why not eh? This current point in time sucks, and getting older is rubbish...

(Tape Time this week: Cassette 23 - a heady mix of stuff from (surprise!) the early 80s recorded off Radio 210 and Radio 1, plus some 7" singles... including all 3 Star Sound outings, and ELO's "Twilight". Lovely. And terrible quality.)

Shouting in the social media mirror

It was always tricky to fit everything you wanted into the intentionally short character count of Twitter, especially when, like me, you tend to write ridiculously long sentences that keep going on and on, with no discernible end in sight, until you start wondering what the point was in the first place. The maximum length of a text message originally limited a tweet to 140 characters, due to it being a common way to post your ramblings in Twitter’s early days. Ten years later, we’ve largely consigned texting to the tech dustbin, and after a lot of angst, the social media platform’s bigwigs have finally opted to double your ranting capacity to 280. Responses ranged from “You’ve ruined it! Closing my account!” to the far more common “Meh” of modern disinterest. As someone rightly pointed out, just because you have twice as much capacity doesn’t mean you actually have to use it. It is, of course, and excellent opportunity to use the English language correctly and include punctuat...

A fisful of change at the shops

A recent day out reminded me how much the retail experience has altered during my lifetime – and it’s not all good. I could stop typing this, and buy a fridge, in a matter of seconds. The shops are shut and it’s 9pm, but I could still place the order and arrange delivery. I haven’t got to wander round a white-goods retail emporium trying to work out which slightly different version of something that keeps my cider cold is better. It’ll be cheaper, too. But in amongst the convenience, endless choice and bargains, we’ve lost some of the personal, human, touches that used to make a trip to the shops something more than just a daily chore. Last weekend, we visited a local coastal town. Amongst the shops selling over-priced imported home accessories (who doesn’t need another roughly-hewn wooden heart, poorly painted and a bargain at £10?) was one that looked different. It’s window allowed you to see in, rather than being plastered with stick-on graphics and special offers calling ...

Making an exhibition of yourself

Now and again, it’s good to reaffirm that you’re a (relatively) normal human being. One excellent way of doing this is to go to a business exhibition. Despite what you might have surmised from reading my previous columns, I am employable, and even capable of acting like a regular person most of the time, even joining in the Monday morning conversation about the weather over the weekend, and why (insert name of footyballs manager here) should be fired immediately. The mug! True, there are times, often involving a caffeine deficiency, where it is like having the distilled essence of ten moody teenagers in the room, but I try and get that out of the way when people I genuinely like aren’t around to see it. As part of my ongoing experiment with what others call ‘working’, my ‘job’ involves me occasionally needing to go and see what some of my colleagues get up to outside the office, and what our competitors do to try and make sure that they do whatever my colleagues do better than ...

grumpyf1

Search This Blog