The topography of womens’ underwear is quite beyond me.

It’s so bloody cold here in England that I have been wearing a set of silk longjohns, with several layers of clothing on top. Last night, with an arctic blizzard raging outside, I kept my longjohns on to go to bed. When I woke up this morning the long john tights were around my ankles, and my underpants were wrapped round them in the most curious way. The crotches were intertwined and the underpants dangled, like one of those metal puzzle rings, unsolved. I stared and stared, and for the life of me could not figure out how my underpants ended up in that position—unless some devious mathemetician sneaked in in the night, took the whole lot off and deliberately rearranged them in a configuration guaranteed to boggle my feeble waking mind.

And this led me to thinking about women who are able to take off their brassière without removing their top. Who invented/discovered this awesome trick? Was it perhaps some feminists in the 60s who felt it added drama to the bra-burning ritual? And is there indeed a whole slew of other cunning manoeuvres women know about and don’t share with us? Are you all out there sniggering over my longjohn puzzle, thinking to yourselves “ah, Dolby’s stumbled onto Womens’ Underwear Manoeuvre #37″?

Pic: NASA/GSFC, MODUS Rapid Response

This is how Britain looks at the moment from space. And where’s the Nutmeg of Consolation? Roughly under the centre of that snow cloud vortex over Eastern England.

Last night temperatures reached as low as -21 degrees centigrade in parts of Britain. It’s still snowing. The wind is expected to pick up today and though that gives me plenty of power, it’s hard to stay warm in a wooden lifeboat in these conditions. Fortunately this month I’m able to work in the house, on a laptop at the kitchen table. I’m taking a break from my album as I prepare for the TED Conference next month. I’ll be doing the House Band again this year, along with Ethel, a progressive string quartet from New York. We’re doing a short instrumentals to introduce each of the 12 sessions. I really enjoy arranging for strings, and though my knowledge and experience is limited it works surprisingly well to just write the parts in Logic using samples and then display the score as musical notation. I’m hoping to debut a brand new song there, which we’ll later record for my new album.

It’s serenely beautiful here. There are sand banks out to sea that are completely covered in snow. It’s truly starting to look like the Arctic, and I half expect to see a pod of orcas swim by. Maybe my polar bear dream was a premonition?

By the way when I told my kids about that dream, they broke into a routine. ‘Hold me?’ ‘what?‘ ‘nothing.’ And cracked up laughing. You have to be a Mighty Boosh fan to understand.

Last night I had a dream. I dreamed was alone in the frozen white wastelands of the Arctic. There was no food. I spotted the skull of a seal, with the brain still in it. This I knew was the only food for miles. Just then, a polar bear appeared in the distance. He stopped in his tracks, and we locked eyes. He was hungry too. I turned and began to run. I could hear his feet thundering behind me. Of course I knew he was much faster and it was only a matter of time before he caught up with me. Right before he pounced, I turned around and said, ‘look, I can share this with you! How about I break a bit off and share it with you?’ He stared at me for the longest time, sizing me up. Then he slowly broke out in sly smile and said, ‘okay, why don’t you do that?’

There was a big snow storm last night and today, and much of the East Coast of England lost its electricity. My beach was covered in snow, which is a rare and beautiful occurrence. We had no power in the house from midnight last night till about 3pm this afternoon. But with periods of sunshine to drive my solar panels, and a light northeasterly wind turning the turbine on my mast, I was able to keep working in my renewable energy-powered lifeboat studio, warmed by a potbellied stove burning hexagonal logs of reconstituted sawdust. Boy do I feel smug!

new Thomas Dolby photo by NKGuy  [nkguy.com]

A slight correction about the Lucas thing that my friend Paul Sebastien pointed out to me: he’s actually not aware of any movie plans, and was just talking about the live action TV show that George had talked about in an interview with an Australian TV station a while back. Paul is only working on the games side, and I know from past experience that he’s very professional and discrete, and would never leak confidential secrets, even to a close friend.

Sorry to throw a bucket of water on it, Star Wars fans: I should have chosen my words more carefully given the ultra-sensitivity of your blogosphere!

We’re running a t-shirt design contest for my Feb 28th gig at the Union Capel, Islington, London! There are details on my Forum.

I’m in Tiburon, CA, jetlagged and wide awake at 5am. I’m looking across the Bay to Angel Island and the city of San Francisco, which is glittering under the first glow of the dawn. It’s a bit weird coming back here this time, but I had some administrative things to do. I chose to avoid my ‘home town’ down the Coast, and yesterday when I had some time to kill I explored some places I’d never been: the Marin Headlands, Mill Valley, and the Bay Model in Sausalito. This is a 4- acre scale model of the SF Bay, built by the Corps of Engineers to simulate the twice daily flood and ebb of the vast estuary every 14 minutes. Of its 1600 sq miles of water, 2/3 of the Bay is under 18 ft deep. A lot of this is down to the ‘hydraulic mining’ done in the Sierras during the Gold rush in the late 19th century. You can see all the little eddies and backwaters. The model is rather serene and lovely, and very interesting to a sailor like myself… or anyone trying to escape from Alcatraz.

My host is friend and former collaborator Paul Sebastien, who over the years has worked for Xbox, Playstation, and now LucasArts. Last night he was telling me a little about the forthcoming Star Wars-related TV show, movie and online games—very cool indeed. I’m not a huge fan myself (and definitely not a gamer) but it sounds like Mr Lucas has got his head into a good place. I met him several times when I was working on a movie in the 80s called [name suppressed to protect credibility!] and he’s a decent chap, but I could have done without the last three SW movies.

There’s a big storm in the British Isles today. I just measured a wind gust of 81mph! It is rocking the Nutmeg to her foundations…. er, bilges. Small domestic animals flying past the windows. No ships to be seen on the North Sea, which is unsurprising seeing as the waves look to be about 12ft.

I just finished a remix for Interscope/Geffen. It took me five full days, which is what I budgeted to get it done. I thought it would be a welcome break from work on my own album, provided it went smoothly. The biggest ‘gotcha’ was if the label wanted changes. Fortunately I heard back from them that it’s a super-hot remix and they love it. It’s a pop tune, kind of peripheral to the Lady Gaga family (not her.)

I don’t often get approached to do remixes. It’s the first paid work I’ve done for a record label in about twenty years. I feel if I ever go back to producing, I might need a reel including a few songs from the 21st century. But I did enjoy it, and it gave me a chance to explore some recent sample library acquisitions, including the rather intriguing RA which is a collection of exotic instruments from around the world, published by EastWest. My remix featured Dubuk, Tambur, Thai gongs, and Panaang.

Getting this done and dusted in five days reminded me that I have to not be too precious with my own stuff. I should be willing to take chances, have fun, get it down—there’s always the <undo> button. Unlike in life.

Am now making a little video of the lifeboat to send to our friend Abdellah in Marakesh. Our gardener is going there for a holiday tomorrow, and Abdellah offered to show her around. So we’re making a little DVD for  her to bring him. Walking round the lifeboat trying to do a commentary in French, and struggling to translate words such as Wheelhouse, Rotten Wood, Pot-bellied Stove, Wind Turbine. Thank heavens for online dictionaries.

Then later off to see ‘Amelia’ starring Hilary Swank. If only because she was the subject of one of my all-time favourite Joni Mitchell songs. I’m sure she won’t mind if I reprint the lyrics:

Amelia

I was driving across the burning desert
When I spotted six jet planes
Leaving six white vapor trails across the bleak terrain
It was the hexagram of the heavens
It was the strings of my guitar
Amelia, it was just a false alarm

The drone of flying engines
Is a song so wild and blue
It scrambles time and seasons if it gets thru to you
Then your life becomes a travelogue
Of picture post-card charms
Amelia, it was just a false alarm

People will tell you where they’ve gone
They’ll tell you where to go
But till you get there yourself you never really know
Where some have found their paradise
Others just come to harm
Oh Amelia, it was just a false alarm

I wish that he was here tonight
It’s so hard to obey
His sad request of me to kindly stay away
So this is how I hide the hurt
As the road leads cursed and charmed
I tell Amelia, it was just a false alarm

A ghost of aviation
She was swallowed by the sky
Or by the sea, like me she had a dream to fly
Like Icarus ascending
On beautiful foolish arms
Amelia, it was just a false alarm

Maybe I’ve never really loved
I guess that is the truth
I’ve spent my whole life in clouds at icy altitude
And looking down on everything
I crashed into his arms
Amelia, it was just a false alarm

I pulled into the Cactus Tree Motel
To shower off the dust
And I slept on the strange pillows of my wanderlust
I dreamed of 747s
Over geometric farms
Dreams, Amelia, dreams and false alarms.

(c) Joni Mitchell

A belated note about the latest Prefab Sprout album, ‘Let’s Change The World With Music’, which was released a few weeks ago. It has a curious history. Paddy McAloon wrote the songs at the beginning of the 90s, intending to make a follow-up album to 1990’s ‘Jordan: The Comeback’. As he liked to do, Paddy made demos of all the songs in his home studio, and sent them both to me and to the band’s record company, Sony. I immediately fell in love with the songs, especially ‘Ride Home To Jesus’ and ‘I Love Music.’ I was keen to produce them and we’d started to make plans. However Sony’s head of A+R, Muff Winwood, who had always been a huge supporter of the Sprouts, was a bit negative about the album, saying that the religious overtones of many of the songs would create a perception of a ‘Christian rock’ band, which would destroy their credibility and commercial appeal. He was very aware that U2 had narrowly dodged a bullet round about the time of songs like ‘Pride (In The Name Of Love)’ and ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’ when many accused them of veering towards ‘God Rock’—even though those titles were referring to something completely different.

Ultimately it didn’t do U2 any harm though, did it. And Paddy’s songs were not actually promoting God or religion. If anything they were an analysis of faith and integrity. They seemed to aspire to a love of something above, beyond ourselves. In ‘Music Is A Princess’, for example, the author characterises himself as a lowly boy in rags, willing to die for Music but unworthy to carry her flag. In ‘Ride’, Paddy praises people who work thanklessly for the greater good. I thought the songs were excellent, with great chords and melodies, and it was  very refreshing to hear some subject matter that wasn’t just about sex, relationships,  money or starvation. But the band felt unable to deal with the friction caused by the record company’s push-back, and Paddy decided to move right on and start from scratch. I believe Muff Winwood has since claimed that he only wanted a few changes to the words and titles and perhaps the addition a couple of extra songs that were not so controversial.

It’s easy in retrospect to say that the original decision not to release ‘Let’s Change The World With Music’ did irreperable damage to the band’s career. Certainly it threw a spanner in the works, because the next twelve years saw only two more Sprouts albums, neither of which approached the critical or commercial success of their previous four. There were several other song projects that never got off the ground, including a musical about Zorro and an album of Michael Jackson-themed songs. Paddy or his managers at Kitchenware would send me the tapes and I always enjoyed them and was impressed by how good his home studio recordings were becoming.

During those years, which also ushered in the era of Internet music and self-publishing by artists, I repeatedly told Paddy I thought he should ditch his major label contract altogether and just release his stuff himself via the Net. His output was so prolific that he could easily have released two or three albums per year, maintained a great mailing list (his brother Martin having become something of a Web expert), and made a perfectly good living without any interference from A+R men and radio promotion people. But he is quite conservative in his view of the music business, and always felt that success had to include the conventional trimmings of commercial acceptance, like seeing your poster in the window of WHSmiths, getting played on BBC Radio 1, and so on. He’s perfectly entitled to cling to that view. In this day and age though, what’s survived of the Industry star machinery is reserved for celebrity-hungry 20-something hotties that can sing, dance and disrobe like world champs. Paddy’s health is not good and he’s in no mood to be out there under the spotlights, so perhaps now he will reconsider my suggestion and make some new music to release softly on the Internet for the legions of devoted Sprouts fans to enjoy.

A couple of years ago Keith Armstrong, the Sprouts’ manager, talked Paddy into the idea of reviving ‘Let’s Change The World With Music’ and releasing it independently. With the help of engineer Callum Michael, Paddy cleaned up the recordings and replaced a few parts, though he stuck with the original vocals. It’s a pretty sweet-sounding record. Of course, I feel it would have been even better if the mainly programmed backing could have been replaced Martin, Wendy Smith and Neil Conti, and the whole package produced by me. After all it’s been billed as a Prefab Sprout album, not a solo project like Paddy’s beautiful ‘I Trawl The Megahertz.’ But this release needed to be swift and the costs kept low. One of the challenges of the new music business landscape is how to pull off a project that requires several musicians and expensive recording studios, without going heavily into debt with a label who will then demand their pound of flesh in return. There’s not really a new system in place for compensating musicians and producers without incurring the huge ridiculous costs of accounting and royalty calculations.

Still, what we’re left with is a gorgeous piece of work. I’m really glad it saw the light of day, and hope that its warm reception from fans and critics alike will encourage Paddy to do some new work, despite the problems he’s having with his hearing and eyesight. If you want to feel inspired, just read his sleeve notes, about Brian Wilson and ‘The yawning caves of blue.’ He’s a brilliant writer and would make a fine novellist. There’s a very candid interview with him transcribed here which explains the album much better than I can. Do seek it out if you can. I notice it’s not on iTunes for some reason but it is on Amazon.

Announcing:

THOMAS DOLBY AND FRIENDS: Circumnavigating ‘The Flat Earth.’
Union Chapel, Islington, London
Feb 28th, 2010

The other night I met up for a drink with my friends from the Flat Earth live band I took with me on my world tour in 1983-84–Justin Hildreth, Lyndon Connah, Matthew Seligman, and Lesley Fairbairn. We thought it would be fun to get back together and play for one night. It was great when Matthew and Kevin Armstrong joined me onstage at the Academy a couple of years ago, and this would be the full touring band. A quick email round to Chucho Merchan, Debra Barsha and Kevin confirmed that everyone was up for it.

But instead of a yet another 80s reunion, I thought we could do something a little more contemporary, a little more Reality TV. So here’s the plan. We won’t rehearse the show at all. Instead, we’ll meet up onstage, completely unrehearsed. We’ll re-learn songs like ‘Hyperactive’, ‘Windpower’, ‘I Scare Myself’ and ‘One Of Our Submarines’, chatting and telling stories as we go. It’ll be very interactive and the audience can chime in with questions, comments and requests, like a cross between a masterclass and a talk show. And I’ll try to arrange some cameo walk-on appearances from celebrated musicians I’ve worked with over the years. At the end of the evening we’ll play a short set of the songs we’ve practiced, back-to-back.

With the help of promoter Adrian Gibson, I have booked the Union Chapel in Islington for the evening of February 28th 2010. This is a lovely venue with seating for around 700 and a somewhat wrap-around stage which I feel will give a warm atmosphere for the show. It’ll be quite an early start, with 2 to 2.5 hrs for rehearsing and chat, followed by a break and then a short concert set.

The Union Chapel ‘gig’ will round out an exciting weekend for Dolby afficionados: the previous night, Feb 27th, there will be a show in Aldermaston by excellent duo The Pirate Twins, who could loosely be regarded as a ‘tribute band.’ I saw these guys play once before at a semi-secret 50th birthday bash, but since then they’ve expanded their repertoire and they will be performing The Golden Age Of Wireless in its entirety. They do an amazing job of re-creating my sounds and production, but many of their arrangements go beyond that as they explore ideas that my originals only hinted at. I decided to make my show the same weekend as theirs, because I know that a lot of fans and Forum members will be traveling specially for that show. Between the GAOW performance on Saturday and ‘Circumnavigating The Flat Earth’ on Sunday, it’ll be quite an action-packed 48 hrs. There’s more info about The Pirate Twins gig here.

I’m wide open to ideas for the show, so feel free to post your comments below!