Comedy songs can make me laugh. Shaddap You Face is a riot. Likewise, Zappa when he's at his most subversive, channeling Lenny Bruce into song, can give me a titter. Phil Lynott's banter at live Lizzy shows is gold. But after considering all these options, I went with this one. It just tickles me every time.
Mostly, I must admit, I get my biggest laughs from one line: "Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the serengeti." It's a ridiculous line, shoehorned into a musical phrase that doesn't have enough syllables to carry it. But somehow it works, and it's really quite impressive. I don't laugh at the line itself (not any more, at least) but rather let out a satisfied chuckle when I hear it; a congratulatory chortle to the lyricist for his bravado.
Chortling aside, the seriously amusing aspect of the song is that the band seem entirely earnest about it. It's keyboardist David Paitch's lyrical exploration of the plight of third-world Africa as seen from the eyes of a middle-class American boy. It's an interesting idea, one that probably would be more at home in the pages of a Richard Ford or John Updike novel, but Toto take it on with aplomb.
Then it gets just downright absurd once you watch the video. Granted, it does make a lot more sense than most other 80s music videos. The band are in a library, singing a song about how they want to know more about Africa, then they hit up the encyclopedias during the keyboard solo. No problem. We've all done that at some point.
No, the real belly laughs come from the fact that the singer is seemingly in love with the librarian, who is (of course) a black lady, obviously standing in for all of Africa in some hamfisted, amusingly-ambiguously-racist attempt to pin a personal and emotional core on a wandering, almost-philosophical subject matter. Because, naturally, the first thing you think of when you try to personify the continent of Africa is a meek, bespectacled librarian in her mid-20s. As long as she's black I suppose it's OK. Right, Toto?
Oh, and then apparently the books come to life and go on fire and kill everyone in the building. I wasn't really paying attention towards the end; I was laughing too hard at this:
Next time you go to the library, beware of tribal warriors and mustachioed rockstars. They'll sing at you through the shelves, and haunt your dreams.
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