Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

Sunday night saw marypcb and me in a queue outside the Union Chapel, ready for a gig I thought I'd never see - as the last time the band that were about to perform had been together had been the mid 80s.

The Union Chapel was the right place for the gig, an intimate venue, in a part converted church. The audience were all fans, and the band knew it - the banter flew backwards and forwards to friends they knew in the crowd - and members of a tribute band ended up on stage, playing alongside the musicians they emulated.



Thomas Dolby had had a "let's get the band back together" moment, and had brought together the musicians that had recorded and toured his second album, The Flat Earth, for a one off. With no rehearsal they'd reconstruct (and update) the songs, turning a reunion into a story about the album and the dynamics in the group that had built the songs. Dolby may be best known as a solo musician, but the process of recording and performing an album is much more complex...

The result was something rather wonderful, with rough edges that polished up into a gem of a gig.


Dolby at the piano

Then there were the special guests, who came from different periods in Dolby's career. Martin McAloon and Wendy Smith from the wonderful Prefab Sprout (another band I though I'd never see any of live) joined on bass and vocals for some songs, while Trevor Horn and Bruce Woolley (from the first band Dolby had been in, Woolley's early synth-pop construction The Camera Club) added vocals, bass and theremin to Dolby's song Airwaves.


Dolby with Wendy Smith and Martin McAloon

Best gig of 2010? Definitely a candidate!

According to his blog, Thomas Dolby will be playing a UK gig that day at the ICA to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of Sputnik.

Ticket details will be announced soon, along with other UK dates.

w00t. More Dolby in London, and somewhere less awkward than the Scala too!

...my Sole Inhabitant DVD and CD have turned up (with nice low numbers and big loopy signatures).

So today I shall mostly be listening to...

For all the Thomas Dolby fans reading, TMDR just announced on his blog that the Sole Inhabitant DVD and CD are now available - on CD Baby and iTunes (I'm not sure if it's on the UK iTunes store yet).

Order quickly to get one of the limited edition signed copies!
I did!

Thomas Dolby has posted a new track online, performed at the TED conference last year.

One of the presenters this year was Peter Gabriel, who was there to talk about a cause that’s dear to his heart. I’d met Peter before and found him very affable, so I took the liberty of sampling one of his most famous tunes and mashing it up with a new piece of my own. The session was entitled ‘The World Flattens’ so I triggered some sound bytes from my own Flat Earth Lecture. I think Peter was sitting in the front row when I played it. As TED is for a good cause I’m sure Peter won’t mind if I put a recording of my performance up online! Download it, link to it if you like, but please don’t recirculate it without asking me.

Good stuff.

[Link to the track on his blog entry].

Little camera at the back of the hall - what else do you expect!

Last Friday Thomas Dolby played another small gig at the Scala in London. Like the earlier concert marypcb and I saw back in March in San Francisco it was an intimate event, with a lot of interaction with the audience. TMDR is obviously playing because he wants to, not because he has to...

And last Friday night he was coming home...

The set started out with a system reboot a few chords into Leipzig, so TMDR gave a short talk about his life, his music, and why he was playing again. Then on with the songs. Leipzig was followed by One Of Our Submarines. The video rig that was being tried out in SF had matured over the tour, and I Live in A Suitcase and Flying North, two of my favourite travel songs, showed off the mix of live images and video clips.

Much like the video clip from TED he blogged a few months ago, The Flat Earth showed how he used his collection of equipment to build up songs from snippets of sounds. Windpower introduced a little experimentation, that led on from some of the work on his studio last album, The Gate To The Minds Eye, turning data from the SOHO satellite into sounds to build a new introduction to a familiar song. Europa and The Pirate Twins was a blast (as always), and we were in the home straight with a ride through Hyperactive, She Blinded Me With Science, and a complete reworking of the George Clinton collaboration Hot Sauce.

The show ended with a final blast of Airhead. Unfortunately the Scala's early curfew brought things to an end too quickly, though we did get nearly two hours of prime Dolby.

It's been a blast seeing TMDR twice this year. Well worth the 23 (or is it 24?) year wait, from those Saturday afternoons with an early interview and session on the Stereo Sequence, and then finding a cassette of The Golden Age Of Wireless.

And of course the evening rounded of nicely with a drink with drpete and sneerpout...

Yes, I have ordered the T-shirt. Both of them!

...at least according to research...

The study suggested the warm weather, outdoor activities, and time spent with friends and relatives were the vital ingredients for a happy life.

[...]

The equation was broken into six variables: being outdoors, nature, social interaction, positive memories from childhood summers, temperature and holidays and looking forward to time off.

Add to that the "thank goodness it's Friday" feeling as the weekend beckons and the ingredients add up to the happiest day of the year.

Of course, it's also interesting to note that the research was sponsored by an ice cream company, and its publication is in the tradition of lazy PR-pushed survey-led journalism...

Actually, today is a pretty good day. My voice is starting to come back, my tooth is hurting a lot less, and tonight I get to see Thomas Dolby play live for the second time this year...

The Sole Inhabitant will be at the Scala on the 23^rd of June.

Oh yes. Having seen him once this year already at a warm-up gig in San Francisco, I am going back for the full tour experience...

It's cheap - only £12.50. It's also early - doors open at 7.00 and the gig will be over at 9.30

A day later and at the other end of the Bay, time for a quick write up of the Thomas Dolby gig at Mighty in San Francisco last night.

What can I say - apart from that it was well worth waiting 23 years for.

Mighty is an anonymous warehouse under the flyover where the freeway merges into the streets of San Francisco. Go in the door, and you're in a reasonably sized (but still small and intimate) space - probably comparable to the old Mean Fiddler back home in London. The small stage was set up with TMDR's kit, including what turned out to be a vocoder hidden in an old oscilloscope casing. Keyboard at the front, and a Mac at the back loaded up and ready for bear...

The place slowly filled up (there can't have been more than 150 or so people in the end), while the DJ played slabs of excellent electronica.

TMDR came on-stage at about 11, dressed ion dot-com mufti and wearing an elaborate headset rig, with attached video camera. A video mixer used the camera to provide live video effects while he played. It was obvious that he enjoyed being back on stage, and proceeded to give us about an hour's worth of music,

So, the set list:

Leipzig
I Live In A Suitcase
Flying North
Europa (and the Pirate Twins)
She Blinded Me With Science
Hyperactive
Airhead

He'd only programmed up the first few tracks, so he had to set up "Hyperactive" and "Airhead" from scratch. Amusingly he played a riff or two from "Eastern Bloc" in the middle of "Europa". A nice touch. The jam that led into Airhead was fun, too.

The venue didn't seem to mind photography. Click on the mosaic for the Flickr photoset...

Short but oh so sweet. More details and photos to follow, but suffice it to say: "Europa" and "Flying North".

The man still has it.