Imagine if you will, a 15 year-old Boring Old Man, in the winter of 1983. My Sophomore year in high school, and I’d had my musical world turned upside down the previous year being introduced to a plethora of punk rock and early “new wave” bands like B-52s, Talking Heads and Wall of Voodoo.
The house I’d spent most of my life in ’til then didn’t have Cable TV, much less MTV, so aside from college radio my introduction to unusual music came from places like Friday Night Videos, or a weird American Bandstand-type show called MV3 that played on broadcast stations.
It was here on a gloomy winter afternoon that I first heard (and saw) Europa and the Pirate Twins by a Mr. Thomas Dolby.
I was completely floored. I had never in my life heard music like that. Not even close. And I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of ONE GUY making all this music by himself. Now, of course by this time I knew what synthesizers were and I was aware that drum machines existed (though I hadn’t yet seen one, let alone put my hands on one!), but I had no Earthly idea of what could be done with them. I didn’t know anything about sequencers or any of the technical stuff behind the music. I had never seen a computer in real life and didn’t know they could be used to make music. It honestly just seemed like magic. It’s really difficult to get across just how ground breaking this stuff was unless you lived through it. Not only were there new styles of music popping up, seemingly every week, and new technologies at work, but there were new SOUNDS being invented and put on records that had never been heard before. I think it did something to my brain, hearing all these new sounds and musical textures. Once I had been exposed to it, I was never the same. And to this day I hold a certain reverence for this era and style.
All of which is taking the long way around to say, I’ve been a fan of Thomas Dolby literally since the very first time I heard him. I also consider him more than simply an innovator, he leans toward genius in my opinion. And honestly if all you’ve ever heard from the man is She Blinded Me With Science, you’d likely think this statement is simple hyperbole. You have to look at how and when he made his music as much as the music itself to recognize the genius.
I have no idea how often he toured back then, but I never once saw him billed to play anywhere near me. I’m sure he must have at some point, but we didn’t have the interwebs and e-mailing lists like we do today, so it was a lot easier and much more frequent to miss out on shows up until 10-15 years ago. But at long last, I saw the advertisement for the show, I didn’t have a scheduling conflict AND I had the money for tickets. The stars had aligned! And the cherry on top was his show was in Menlo Park at a great venue! Once again avoiding San Francisco, which is always a bonus in my book!
The opening band was Halou, whom I’d never heard of. The Mrs. looked them up and deemed their sound “music to cut yourself to”, which made me laugh but also piqued my interest. I looked them up myself and found a clip of them at the same venue from this past December… The Mrs was spot on. I got through a single minute and had to shut it off. I’m sure it appeals to someone, but not me. Not by a long shot. So I went to the show late and thankfully missed their entire set. Sadly, the Mrs wasn’t feeling well and at the last minute decided not to attend, saving her diminished energy to make it to work on Friday.
Mr. Dolby got started late due to technical difficulties, which was a bit of a drag. We were packed in like sardines in a can and it seemed as though the AC wasn’t working, and I started wondering if I hadn’t made a mistake coming to this show. But finally, after what seemed an eternity, the House lights dropped and the man himself came on stage and launched into…Blue Monday by New Order. “What the Ham Sandwich?!?”, says I. A very curious decision to say the least.
Next up was Europa, the one song above all others I’d hoped he’d play. At that point, I figured I was good and could leave at any time. But then a funny thing happened – I became, somehow, mesmerized.
I’ll admit, for the first 10 minutes or so of the show, I was a little disappointed. The energy was a bit low. Watching one guy on stage behind a bank of gear is not terribly exciting. It was somewhat akin to watching a DJ “perform”. But then I kinda dropped my hyper focus of what the man himself was doing and took in the big picture . He essentially was running a full on multimedia show. He was building songs on the fly, using loops and samplers and keyboards, while simultaneously synced video clips were running behind him with a full light show as the cherry on top. And this turned out to be a show whose sum was greater than its parts. When taken in whole, it was very creative and interesting.
He managed to pull together an on-the-spot “mash up”, layering Gary Numan’s Cars on top of One of our Submarines… and then added a melody from The Cure on the same song. It was pretty impressive.
In another artistic intersection, he had a perfectly synced Jason Mraz doing a vocal track on video to My Brain is Like a Sieve, which was performed flawlessly.
After that Mr. Dolby put forth a bit of a tribute to David Bowie, covering Heroes instrumentally, with spliced in video of Mr. Bowie at the Live Aid concert from 1985.
He ended his set with a double- whammy of Hyperactive and She Blinded Me With Science. The former was a little lackluster if I’m being totally honest – without the female vocal parts and the horns, it didn’t have the same impact as the recorded version of the song. But the latter fused in a bunch of cameos and clips pulled from TV and the News with a bunch of famous faces and voices adding “Science!” at the appropriate spots. Again, unexpected and very creative.
And before I knew what hit me, the show was over…
He came out for an encore and pulled out one more song for the crowd, a very down tempo number, Airwaves. Again, a curious choice. But it was done very sincerely and well.
All in all, I can say wholeheartedly that it was a good show. Great? No, not really. But very creative and unique. I can honestly say I’ve never seen anything quite like it, and I’m glad I went.
Mr. Dolby sounded great – all his years of work have turned his once quirky and kinda weird voice into something of a crooner’s voice, and while the edges may have been softened, he still sounded fantastic. And I must add, he looked great too. I hope to hold up as well when I’m in my late 60s!
It’s not every day you get to see a living legend in the flesh and I’m grateful that I finally got the opportunity to see Mr. Dolby do his thing in front of an audience.
He stated that this was the first night of a “mini tour” (hence the technical problems that delayed the start of the show), and I don’t know how many more opportunities there will be to see him on stage, but if he’s coming to your town I’d say his show is definitely worth the price of admission.
Thanks to the Guild staff and Mr. Dolby for the fun and unique night of sights and sounds!
Thank you reader, for stopping by!
