Ep 60: Toto

This week CFX switches gears to evaluate the pop culture impact of the world’s most innovative maker of toilets, the Japanese company, Toto LTD. Just kidding! We are of course talking about the band Toto. Started in the late ‘70s by a bunch of San Fernando Valley high school friends who also happened to be some of the most accomplished studio musicians in the world, Toto would peak in 1982, creating one of the biggest selling albums of that year in Toto IV, and, arguably, one of the most popular songs of all time in “Africa”. They won every Grammy in sight and then played a huge part in the recording of THE biggest selling album of all time, Michael Jackson’s Thriller. The members of Toto would split their time between the band and continued session work for just about every major artist in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s and beyond. That said, we’re not going to focus on the session work other than in passing. No, this week CFX puts the entire discography of Toto under the Evaluato-scope and we decide whether it has and will continue to “rise like Olympus above the Serengeti” or “become frightened by this thing” they’ve become. We decide that, and along the way we also learn… Which member of the band is most likely to sell you cocaine or a bag of Taco flavored Doritos How Toto once crossed the Alan Parsons Project with Dokken to create a song that nobody listened to Why listening to Toto made Slip realize he was really too hard on Billy Joel (in Episode 3: Glass Houses) Which musicians Steve Lukather thinks are really “great cats” and who he is “still really good friends with to this day” (i.e everybody except Rivers Cuomo) Why a band with faces made for radio, and who hated making music videos, wound up making so many of them Which member of the band turned a geographic exotica-inspired fantasy wank in a public library into one of the most popular songs/videos in history How Toto’s not-so-great looks led to an all-time funny burn from Jeff’s wife Why it's not only Toto's fault that dance fighting got "fucked out" Why Cynthia Rhodes still has PTSD from the making of the Rosanna music video (Hint: It’s related to Bobby Kimball’s offensive mustache) Check us out on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/culturalfutures/) for links and additional content related to this and other episodes as well as clues to upcoming shows or write to us at [email protected] All audio clips are used under the "Fair Use" Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act in 1976; Allowance is made for "Fair Use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use. All rights and credit go directly to its rightful owners. No copyright infringement intended.