If you were alive in 1982, then, whether you wanted to be or not, you were intimately familiar with the songs "Rosanna" and "Africa", two of the key tracks from Toto's mega-platinum fourth album, Toto IV.
The only album that was bigger during that period ('82-'83) was Michael Jackson's Thriller, which four members of the band also just so happened to have played on as well. For reasons that nobody could quite figure out, suddenly everything the band touched was turning to gold and platinum.
This was a welcome change after three years of trying to get back to the high watermark set by the success of their 1978 debut album. Though ambitious and musically varied to a fault, both Hydra (1980) and Turn Back (1981) lacked that monster single that, seemingly out of nowhere, Toto IV had in spades.
Then, in a move that can best be described as "ill-advised", the band decided not to tour in support of Toto IV. Not only would such a tour have been a huge moneymaker, it would have helped American rock fans put a face to the name of the band that was suddenly dominating the airwaves like no other.
Unbeknownst to the public at the time, taking singer Bobby Kimball on the road would have likely only exacerbated the singer's out-of-control drug addiction, which the band tolerated until it began to hinder his concert vocal performances.
Instead, the band took some time off - probably not enough, in hindsight - and then began work on their fifth album, Isolation. It became obvious early on that Kimball's vocals were not up to the task of singing songs that were all written at the top of his range by the rest of the band.
In fairness to Kimball, the easiest solution would have been to give him some songs in a register he could sing comfortably, unless his fellow bandmates actually wanted him to fail. I know, unthinkable.
Or is it?
These are L.A. session guys; as cutthroat a bunch as you'll ever see shy of the Jersey shore.
So, with Kimball now history, the band made yet another pivotal mistake by choosing Fergie Frederiksen (of the southern rock band LeRoux) over a field of otherwise worthy contenders that included Mr. Mister's Richard Page and journeyman singer Eric Martin (who would go on to form Mr. Big).
In hindsight, if they'd made Page "an offer he couldn't refuse", there would have potentially been no Mr. Mister. If they'd chosen Martin, there would have been no Mr. Big. Instead, we got both.
With MTV now all-the-rage, Toto was not a band you wanted to put in front of video cameras so the addition of a Page or Martin would have solved that issue, among many others.
The one aspect of Isolation's commercial failure that is hardly mentioned is just how weak the material was that the band assembled for an album that was going to soon have the eyes and ears of the world upon it.
How could a band that had proven themselves to be capable songwriters come up so short on material when it counted the most.
By not touring, they now had all the time and the resources in the world during those two years of not touring, not glad-handing, and not promoting their own music. Hell, they should have had a double-album worth of material at-the-ready.
Instead, I suspect, they snorted their way around town for two years, got to know a few supermodels, and then cobbled together whatever songs they could find at the last minute when the suits at CBS started sniffing around the studio.
Why else would Frederiksen, a singer who was reportedly brought in last-minute, get FOUR of his own songs on an album that was reportedly finished before he even showed up?
The band had a real stink-burger on their hands and, worse yet, the label knew it, too.
Famed film director David Lynch knew it, as well, creating an album cover based on the band's music that the band swiftly rejected.
Sadly, yours truly was unable to find any sort of representation of Lynch's artwork for the album online, but would it be safe to argue that it could not have possibly been any worse than the artwork that the band ultimately chose.`
In hindsight, there isn't one thing the band did right in the wake of Toto IV's success.
Keep in mind that this wasn't some starry-eyed bunch of newbs from Podunk, these were L.A. industry veterans who had seen it all and probably laughed at those who stumbled down the path of "too much, too soon" and blew it, only to do so themselves.
Oh, the irony.
As a fan of the band's first and third albums, Toto IV cast me aside in order to appeal to a largely secretarial audience at the time, so I, too, had hopes that the band's fifth album would see them find their distortion pedals again, among other things.
For this writer, hearing Isolation for the first time turned out to be the only time.
Adding insult to injury, two short months later, Toto hit us with yet another stink bomb in the form of the soundtrack to "Dune", the highly-anticipated, big budget, sci-fi flick that even starred Sting from The Police.
Despite liking just about everyone involved in the making of the film, from David Lynch and Kyle MacLachlan to Linda Hunt and Virginia Madsen, there are few films that flopped harder at the box office than this foul-smelling moon rock.
No matter how ambitious the band's work for the film had been, being attached to a monumental dud like "Dune" did them no favors.
Would our opinion of the band's musical contributions to this film have been viewed more favorably if the film hadn't been such a fetid chunk of detritus?
Probably not.
Many times over the last three decades, I have found myself driven to revisit both Isolation and the Dune soundtrack - not to relive any great musical moments, but to make sure that what I'd heard had really been that bad.
And every time I hit "PLAY", it was.
By 1986, Toto would be back with another singer (Joseph Williams, son of famed composer John Williams), another album (Fahrenheit), and another pair of Top 40 hits (the titles of which nobody reading this remembers).
Oddly, this time around, radio play did not lead to platinum album sales.
In the U.S., the band's sales plunged further with the release of The Seventh One in 1988, leading to their exit from the Sony/Columbia label roster in 1991.
Sadly, Jeff Porcaro would die a year later under suspicious circumstances; a tragedy from which the band would understandably never quite recover.
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