As far as 80s rock albums go, Toto IV is an absolute monster.
Not only do the songs that charted sound incredible, but there isn't a single bad song on the album, which is kind of a hard thing to accomplish for an 80s album. Most 80s albums had a few hits on them, but the rest of the songs were mediocre at best. But my ears tell me that while some songs on Toto IV are better than others, it's all pretty damn good. It won the Grammy for Album of the Year, and "Rosanna" won Record of the Year. And Toto won four other Grammys that year. And "Africa" became their first #1 song on the charts, which happened about ten months after the album was released.
In non-music industry awards, Rosanna also won the award for song I would most likely sing in the high school hallway during class time in a loud, high-pitched voice--ala Eddie Murphy's "Roxanne" in the movie "48 Hours."
And I did exactly that one spring day at the end of my junior year of school. As I walked down the hall, I screeched out "Rosanna! Rosanna! I never thought that losing you could ever hurt so bad!" I did this to make some girls in the hall laugh at my musical idiocy, which they did. But then something happened that was even more satisfying than making girls laugh. My arch-nemesis, Rand Greaves, walked out into the hall to find out who was making all that racket and disrupting his perfectly quiet class. When he saw it was me, he just turned around and walked back into his classroom without saying a word and shut the door behind him.
That's right, Rand! You better walk away! Or I'll unleash the full might of my falsetto voice to move your desk and filing cabinet out of their regular spots! And then you'll have to compulsively realign them back to their original positions the next time you come into class late after the bell rings.
Yes, yes. I know. Moving furniture slightly out of place was not a very sophisticated mind game to play on a teacher. I really should have come up with something more clever to torture the man. But sometimes a simple annoying thing done repeatedly over a long period of time can produce some surprisingly good results.
At some point in my junior year, Rand eventually caught on to my furniture nudging activities. (Somebody ratted me out.) And one day just as the bell rang and we were getting out of our desks to leave a lecture on some ultra-depressing story, he said something to me like, "Hah! Daren! You moved my desk today, but I didn't straighten it out this time! Gotcha!" I just looked at him, shrugged my shoulders, and said truthfully, "It wasn't me," and then I walked away like I didn't even care what he thought of me (because I didn't). He had accused me of the act to let me know that he was on to me and to discourage me from moving his stuff around in the future. But it had the opposite effect. I became even more encouraged, because now someone else was into the mind game and doing my dirty work for me! It took the mind game to a new level, because although someone else had committed the crime, I still got the satisfaction of watching him suffer from it just as if I had done it.
Back to the song.
Although "Rosanna" won Record of the Year, I am obliged at this point to admit that the video sucks. While we are severely divided as a nation, I believe we can all agree that the punishment for creating a Jets vs Sharks dance/fight sequence in a music video should be much harsher than just putting the offending musicians behind a minimum security chain-link fence. At minimum, there should be some flogging.
There should also be some extra flogging for Ron Hendren, Mary Hart's cohost on Entertainment Tonight during 1982-83. For some reason, I used to watch the show. (It probably came on just before "Dukes of Hazard" or some other appointment television show that had a show-opening song that I liked to hear.) Ron Hendren was the first person that I ever heard utter the word "supergroup," and it was in reference to Toto. What a douchebag!
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| Ron Hendren--what douchebags looked like in the early 80s. |
Is Toto "super?" It could definitely be argued that they are, indeed, super. They might even be super-duper. Toto IV was a super album. And "Hold the Line" was sure as hell a super song. So, yes, the band is super.
Is Toto a group? Undeniably, they are a group. They might even be grouper-duper. After all, they still played in other bands and worked as session musicians even after Toto was formed. So they weren't just part of one rock group, they were part of many groups.
But even though Toto is super and a group, it is NOT is a supergroup! And for douchebag Ron's sake, I'll repeat that once again. Toto is NOT a supergroup!
Now you might ask, how do I know this, and what gives me the authority to make such a declaration? Well, Greg, I can say it because I've listened to Toto IV at least three hundred times since it came out. And although I have no idea which box in my garage or attic contains my old Walkman, I can tell you for sure that there's a Toto IV tape inside it. However, I can't tell you the name of a single member of the band. Nor can I tell you anything about their lives, except that there's an urban myth that the song was written about Rosanna Arquette. It wasn't. But that didn't keep the band or Rosanna from claiming the myth was true (as a joke).
To be a "supergroup," people that listen to your music three hundred times should know the names of the people in the band, and they should know at least a few pieces of juicy gossip or mindless trivia about each member of the band. If they did, then the group might famous enough to be considered a supergroup.
But let me be clear on this point. Just because fame is a defining criteria of the individual members of a supergroup, that doesn't mean a group of famous musicians can get together to record a song and than call themselves a supergroup. "We Are the World" was not sung by a supergroup!
Members of a true rock supergroup should have also been well-known for their previous work in another band or from their successful solo careers. They bring what they learned from that experience to enhance the sound of the supergroup. That doesn't mean that the supergroups songs sound like a collection of songs from the old bands. The supergroup has their own distinct sound, but you can also hear echoes of the former groups' sounds in the music. For instance, I can hear ELO-like sounds in songs by The Traveling Wilburys. And I can also hear George-Harrison-and-The Beatles-like guitar and Tom-Petty-and-the-Heartbreakers-like guitar. But The Traveling Wilburys have their own unique sound that wouldn't be mistaken for the sounds of these other bands.
Also, a supergroup isn't a band that adds a new member to it that was already famous, but then keeps the same name and has basically the same sound as the band did before the new addition. Sorry, Van Halen, but adding Sammy Hagar didn't make you a supergroup. Don't get your hopes up, AC/DC, because adding Alex Rose as the frontman on your tour definitely didn't make you a supergroup.
And a supergroup isn't a band with members that, after the band splits up, they all go out and have successful careers as solo artists or create their own band, and then, after a decade or so, the band gets together again and starts making music that sounds like their old band. Sorry, Eagles. You're not a supergroup.
A band cannot be a supergroup if a complete unknown is one of the principle members of the band. Sorry Damn Yankees. Your drummer didn't get even slightly known until after he had joined the band. But lets face it, the drummer isn't their biggest problem. With Ted Nugent in the band, that automatically disqualifies it as a supergroup. The Nuge is good for one thing, and one thing only--embarrassing Republicans. The only reason Republicans put up with him is because they know he's packin' heat, and they don't dare ask him to leave the room. And if you show up at a Republican rally and the Nuge takes the stage, you better have your Kevlar vest on. Why? Because apparently, the Nuge is impervious to bullets. The proof is in the following scene from their video for their highest charting song "High Enough." In this scene the cops show up at the house and draw their guns as the Nuge comes out on the porch in some kind of body-length zebra cammo. The police then proceed to unload their revolvers into...pile after pile of cans. There's a pile on the window sill. Gone! There's a pile on the porch. Blown away! There's a pile on a cooler by the window. Shot to hell! There's even a pile of cans on a chair inside the house that gets taken out with some kind of exploding bullet. Ka-blammo! While the rest of the band members duck hard to avoid the hail of bullets, the Nuge just keeps on playing on the porch, his zebra guitar forming a protective sonic shell.
But I digress again. Back to the supergroup rant.
And the group can't consist of someone that got famous doing something other than music and then decided they wanted to be in a rock band, but they didn't have enough real talent to hit the charts. Sorry, Hollywood Vampires. You'll NEVER be a supergroup with Johnny Depp as a core member.
So with these criteria, it is clear that a true supergroup is a rare thing. What bands qualify as a supergroup then?
The Traveling Wilburys. They are the epitome of a supergroup.
The Million Dollar Quartet. Roy Orbison joined after Elvis died, making Roy a member of two supergroups!
The Highwaymen. More country than the Million Dollar Quartet, but the exact same ratio of Johnny Cash.
Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young. They couldn't come up with a catchy name for the band? How about Long-Haired Geriatrics?
Okay. Four examples should be enough for us to arrive at the following key conclusions.
Conclusion #1. Toto is NOT a supergroup!
Conclusion #2. Ron Hendren is a douchebag!
Conclusion #3. Rand Greaves is a douchebag!
Conclusion #4. Ted Nugent is a dou--
Phew! Phew! Phew-phew! Phew! 'Merica! Phew! Phew!
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