Tuesday, June 05, 2018

Peter Bence by way of Justin Yoshida

My friend Justin Yoshida, who always finds the best links, just embedded the following video in a blog post of his. This video comes from the channel of Peter Bence, who apparently does peppy piano covers of certain songs. Below is his cover of Toto's 1982 "Africa," a song that definitely takes me back a few decades. Justin's comment: "Making piano tuners cringe since 1828!" Watch what Bence does to the piano, and you'll get that comment. Piano abuse aside, I like Bence's cover of "Africa," and I whistled exuberantly along with it. Bence cleverly inserts a non-Toto interlude that can nevertheless be harmonized with parts of the song; he then returns to the song itself. All in all, it's a fun and all-too-brief ride.






5 comments:

Charles said...

That was awesome.

Sometime back in the 90s, Toto came to Seoul and played in Olympic Park. HJ and I went to see them. That was pretty awesome, too. "Africa" was only about a decade-and-a-half old back then. Heh.

Kevin Kim said...

I think "Africa" is the only song of theirs that I know.

Charles said...

I can almost guarantee you know "Hold the Line," too.

Kevin Kim said...

Just watched the video on YouTube, and... yes, I do know that one, although this is the first time I ever tried listening closely to the lyrics.

hahnak said...

"africa" is definitely having a moment. weezer just published a boring, uninspired cover, at the request of a fan (which was made as a joke). weezer also covered totos "rosanna".

anyway, much preferred bences cover of "africa" to weezers.