Entertainment For Lively Minds
Gong!
Under the intoxicating influence of Mrs Specs_Beard (steady), we recently brought home the latest 'Guilty Pleasures' compilation. It's certainly the heady mix of clunkers and genius I might have expected - and if nothing else, has really driven home to me how much I love this song.
The video, however, is hilarious. Treat yourself to these highlights:
1:32 - Gong!
1:57 - 'Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like an empress above the Serengeti'. Best line in rock and obvious simile for 'doing what's right'.
3:09 - After an entire song's worth of lacklustre detective work, Sherlock finally finds the book he's looking for. It's called 'Africa'.
I bless the rains!
*EDIT* - I had misheard that lyric for years. Thrillingly, Kilimanjaro actually rises like Olympus, not an empress. Thanks, daddyorchipsblog!
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Guilty Pleasures
spotify playlist note includes Africa
http://open.spotify.com/user/marbles22/playlist/5EWXpJ77WqDpWidteXOorw
An empress?
Isn't it (the even more ludicrous: "As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti"?
The hair, the lyrics, the book, the book...
Glorious!
My God!
I do believe you're right! I have misheard that for years.
But as you say - an improvement! Just when I thought it couldn't get any better.
I only know this because...
a friend thought it was 'rises like a lepress'. After discovering that a lepress is neither a female leopard or a female leper, we investigated further.
Guilty secret?
Never! That song is very special to me.
And 80s videos were the biz.
Bongos, traffic signs
and girl in a red dress "Not quite a year since she went away"
1:09 the globe!!
I suspect it took them a few takes until it stopped at the right place.I actually spoke to someone from Africa this morning called, in part, Toto. I thought of this tune and smiled, then Specs Beard comes up with this preposterous magnificence. Top work-loving the Biggins-style glasses especially.
Oh and the stop-motion bit at 3:15, and the drummer's 'tache. Especially the drummer's tache...
I was on an exchange trip in France
..the year this came out. It was a miserable, lonely experience, (and worse still for the good folk who put me up, no doubt) but Africa was on heavy rotation on French radio at the time. The fact that it was a song sung in English amidst a sea of French pop meant that it quelled the overwhelming sense of homesickness every time it came on, and for that reason it's always stayed with me. Terrible video, mind.
I prefer this version