My Amazon Reviews: Toto "The Essential Toto"

Oh So Toto  
3 Out of 5 Stars

Toto is one of those bands only the late 70's could have produced. Studio cats one and all (they made their bones backing Steely Dan and Boz Scaggs, among others), they were slick, skilled and polished professionals. They made music that was slick, polished, and just as professional. They meshed hooky rock with R'n'B styles, and when they finally hooked up with CBS Records, "Hold The Line" shot to the top five almost instantly.

Over the course of seven albums for Columbia and a few since for the CBS Legacy subsidiary, they've made a bevy of hits and walked off with a few Grammys. The Band's prime was the first four albums, culminating in "Toto IV." Apart from "Hold The Line," it was this album that made the band radio favorites. The singles "Africa" and "Rosanna" are the calling cards from that period, with the songs "Make Believe" and "I Won't Hold You Back" also scoring. By then, though, the band was beginning to splinter.

There was a new vocalist for the album "Isolation," and the two singles from that album ("Stranger In Town" and "Holyanna") are left off this compilation. Toto then recruited Joe Williams, the son of John Williams, and scored another pair of hits with "I Won't Hold You Back" and "Pamela." (From the albums "Fahrenheit" and "The Seventh One," respectively.) If a song called "Pamela" would make you think of "Rosanna" (or even "Holyanna), you're right. It's little more than a re-write of the band's biggest hit.

There are three other songs from the albums after; you probably don't need them. Given that the albums "Turn Back" and "Isolation" are ignored for this set, the three later-day songs could have been replaced with selections from two earlier albums, or even an extra selection from "Hydra," the band's most progressive sounding album. ("99" is here, though.) I have also never been fond of "Georgy Porgy," which sounds like a song Boz Scaggs laughed off from "Silk Degrees." These omissions drag this "Essential" collection down to a C Grade/3 Star rating.