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DailyBoom Your Old School Music Authority

Saturday, May 21, 2022

Daily Boom 80's Throwback: Toto- '99'


"I never thought it would happen. I feel quite the same."

When I was a kid, Saturday afternoon usually meant a trip to the mall in the next city. My mom was always ready to shop and my dad couldn't hit the record store fast enough. There was a shop near our house, but this place was massive and it eventually turned into a local chain of about 12 different stores. But long before The Gallery of Sound was doing in-store hair band signings and meet and greets with freestyle artists, they were all about the vinyl. They also had a string of tv's set up to watch MTV, something that our cable provider wasn't yet offering. So dad would spend two hours talking to all of the same people that he had talked to the week before, clutching his new issue of Billboard as if his life depended on it. That hasn't changed at least. Getting your hands on a newsstand copy of Billboard is fairly impossible because stores that do carry it usually get a maximum of three copies in.

Anyway, I loved Saturdays because they were rooted in music one way or another. The Soap Factory Disco, Soul Train and of course, American Bandstand were all included before we even left the house. It's strange how the little things really with me because those Saturday car rides really make me smile even now. My dad had a huge gold Buick Skylark that felt (and sounded) like it could drive thru a building and come out the other side. In the summer he would drive with all of the windows down and his stereo was bumping. I realize that car radios probably sucked back then but he was forever playing with speakers and things. All I know is that I could always feel the music coming from behind me.

I soaked up Hall & Oates, Aerosmith, Tom Jones and I'm pretty sure my love of Latin rhythms first started with an extra loud extended version of Barry Manilow's Copa. There were also a lot of other songs that I fell in love with like Toto's "99". Yeah, I know there has always been a debate over the lyrics and what the song is really about. The band has changed their story a few times just to continue to throw people off and truth be told, I could care less. I can remember traffic being at a stand still just a few miles from the mall on one afternoon and not carrying because "99" was playing behind me and I could actually feel the guitar and keys. 

It's still a really beautiful piece of music to me. Check it out below.