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Thomas Dolby
The Singular Thomas Dolby
EMI Marketing UK – May 18th

This 2-disc CD and DVD (PAL) collection features all Thomas Dolby’s singles and videos. It is released in the UK on May 18th 2009 and is available worldwide as an import.

Thomas Dolby became one of the most recognizable figures of the synth-pop movement of early-’80s new wave. Dolby successfully harnessed the power of synthesizers and samplers, to make catchy pop and light electro-funk. Following the (1984) single “Hyperactive,” he put his own career on hold to some extent, as he began producing more frequently, including albums by Prefab Sprout and Joni Mitchell, working with funk maestro George Clinton, as well as exploring new synthesizer and computer technology but continuing to record into the ’90s.

There could be little to suggest this transatlantic future in debut single “Urges”, which along with flipside “Leipzig” was co-produced by that most peculiarly English of gents, XTC mainstay Andy Partridge. With the latter song still part of Thomas’s live shows today, even at this stage (1981), his song-writing prowess was well advanced.

Having broken away from touring with Lene Lovich, for whom he had written hit single “New Toy”, and with some money behind him from playing synthesiser for Foreigner and Def Leppard, Dolby set about turning some of his crackly demos into full recordings which became “The Golden Age of Wireless”. From here, of course, we meet “Europa and The Pirate Twins”, a semi-autobiographical romp about a French love affair; as well as “Airwaves” (presented here in its edited single form) and “Radio Silence” (which features Lovich); songs which fit the Dolby Modus Operandi perfectly. By this point, he had carved a niche for himself as a quintessentially British mad professor type – preoccupied with diodes and oscilloscopes – but also continuing (particularly in his videos) the themes of cold-war oppression and paranoia. Dolby’s own Uncle had been the subject of “One of Our Submarines”.

“Windpower” gave Thomas his first UK Top 40 hit, and consequent Top of the Pops appearance, with a song that pre-empts our need and preoccupation with Tipping Points and alternative energy sources, and lyrics that resonate even more today than they did then. Incidentally, the video included here is a rare treat for fans – a seldom seen cut from his 1983 concert, “Live Wireless”. But it was a song that didn’t even appear on original pressings of the album that both summed up Dolby’s personification in this era, and captured the hearts of the notoriously fickle American market. “She Blinded Me With Science” captured a Zeitgeist with its warm yet spooky synthesisers and intervention from eccentric pop-scientist Magnus Pyke. The single went Top 5 on the Billboard charts. Following on from this success was going to be no mean feat, and when “The Flat Earth” was released in 1984, its sophisticated sound was a battle cry to any doubters, combining Dolby’s signature keyboards into a more organic, layered sound. “Hyperactive!” –the result of a bizarre evening spent at Michael Jackson’s house — bore the most fruit, repeating the success of “….Science” in Britain, scoring Thomas his first UK Top 20 hit.

Whilst the epic “Dissidents” felt most at home as a 12”, the edit included here captures the spirit of the track – revisiting Dolby’s love of cold war espionage, and at the other end of the spectrum, the haunting Dan Hicks’ ballad “I Scare Myself” is turned into a piano-led affair with a sexy, sultry video. The latter is a solo embodiment of the shimmering, breathy sound that would form the heart of the Prefab Sprout sound he was integral to creating – production values which he has said he ranks amongst his personal career highs.

A year later, Thomas can be seen at the Grammys performing alongside Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder and Howard Jones – showing him not only to be at the height of his powers, but integrating perfectly into the Americas. However, at the same time, a very different collaboration was released. “Fieldwork”, was recorded with Yellow Magic Orchestra founder Ryuchi Sakamoto and accompanied by a high-concept short film, included on the (PAL) DVD in its single, and long-form versions.

In between working on several successful movie soundtracks, providing keyboards for Malcolm McClaren and Joan Armatrading, playing synth for Bowie at Live Aid, and producing albums for luminaries such as Prefab Sprout and Joni Mitchell, Dolby finally moved to America, where amongst his first endeavours was “Dolby’s Cube”, a project alongside funk legend George Clinton. This sci-fi saga of an alien peddling designer drugs is a pop masterpiece – complete with suitably silly visual version.

It was to be 2 years before another TD-LP – 1988’s “Aliens Ate My Buick”. It represented a huge departure. With his new backing band, the Bay Area based “Lost Toy People”, and a brand new sound, influenced in no small part by his work with Clinton, lead single “Airhead” was a funk-fuelled tribute to…. well, it kind of explains itself. “Hot Sauce” and “My Brain Is Like A Sieve” bring in elements of Salsa and Reggae respectively, the latter presented here in its radically different single mix.

Four years passed. Dolby was now heavily involved with the high tech industry, and was already becoming a renowned executive. His company Beatnik Inc. invented the first polyphonic synthesiser that could run natively on a mobile phone, and would go on to play a huge part in the advent of the multi-billion dollar ringtone industry. But he hadn’t turned his back on his music. And, despite his increased involvement in computer music during his day job, “Astronauts & Heretics” was his most organic to date. Lead single “Close But No Cigar” included guitars from Eddie Van Halen, featured soccer in the video, and became a Top 30 hit in his home country after being championed by an up-and-coming DJ named Chris Evans; perhaps the ultimate testament to his twin identities as an Englishman in America. “I Love You Goodbye” and “Silk Pyjamas” revealed heavy Cajun influences. Both videos, hitherto hard to find, and untouched even by the hand of You Tube, are included on this compilation, a treat for fans who haven’t seen them for years, if at all.

As Thomas’s involvement with internet music increased, the conventional music scene was left behind, save for a bit of soundtrack work from time to time. Though he has said on more than one occasion, the musical drought was not intended, it was a full 15 years before any suggestions of a new artist album began to surface. In the meantime, the music industry had changed beyond recognition, with ever more ways to access music in a variety of contexts and formats, a change that he had himself been in no small part responsible for, during his self-imposed exile. But that’s another story. Thomas is now back in Britain, with a wife and family who were mere twinkles in the Dolby eye at the time of “Urges”, and is hard at work in his own studio with many of his original collaborators. He’s back behind his synthesiser, and is playing live again, with a new album on the way. This return to his roots marks the end of a symbolic chapter of a remarkable music journey. What better time then, to sit back and listen as it unfolds before our ears, and for the first time in many years, our eyes – a living history of one of the great, but often unsung heroes of British (and American) music.

MICK HOUGHTON/BRASSNECK PUBLICITY
+44 020 7254 1112/Brassneckpr@aol.com

CD
1-Urges (3.41)
2-Leipzig (3.52)
3-Europa And The Pirate Twins (3.19)
4-Airwaves (3.45)
5-Radio Silence (3.50)
6-Windpower (3.53)
7-She Blinded Me With Science (3.40)
8-One Of Our Submarines Is Missing (5.12)
9-Hyperactive (4.12)
10-Dissidents (edit) (3.52)
11-I Scare Myself (edit) (4.59)
12-Fieldwork (London Mix) (4.04) with Ryuichi Sakamoto
13-May The Cube Be With You (3.50)
14-Airhead (3.43)
15-Hot Sauce (3.18)
16-My Brain Is Like A Sieve (3.58) (Bill Bottrell single remix)
17-Close But No Cigar (4.08)
18-Silk Pyjamas (3.04)
19-I Love You Goodbye (4.34)

DVD
1- Europa & the Pirate Twins
2-Airwaves
3-Radio Silence
4-Windpower (Live)
5-She Blinded Me With Science (3.43)
6-One of Our Submarines Is Missing (Live)
7-Hyperactive
8-Dissidents
9-I Scare Myself
10-Fieldwork (with Ryuichi Sakamoto) with Ryuichi Sakamoto
11-May The Cube Be With You
12-Airhead
13-Hot Sauce
14-Close But No Cigar
15-Silk Pyjamas
16-I Love You Goodbye
Bonus tracks
17-Hyperactive (12” version)
18-Fieldwork (12” version) with Ryuichi Sakamoto
19-Hot Sauce (saucy version)

Back in October, I posted some notes on a new song for a pedal steel guitarist in the US, Bruce Kaphan, that was about to play on a song of mine called 17 Hills. I mentioned to him that in addition to adding touches all through the song, he could take a crack at the solo section; but I warned him that I was trying to locate Mark Knopfler, who I thought would be perfect for a lead guitar part for that solo. Well, six months later my wish came true: I was invited to Mark’s studio in London where he took some time out of mixing his own album to play on my song.

I’ve been lucky to work with some of the world’s most iconic guitarists—including Jerry Garcia and Eddie Van Halen, two guys that were possibly past their sell-by date… but Mark’s playing is a gorgeous as ever, and he’s matured as a storyteller and songwriter, which made him the perfect choice for 17 Hills. He really grokked to the fact that his guitar helps propel my story. The song is nearly eight minutes long and has an epic, road movie type feel; it’s very dreamy at times, but his guitar brings it sharply into focus. I think very cinematically, and Mark’s entrance is like a jump-cut. One minute we’re in a wide shot of a car kicking up the dust on a distant desert road; suddenly we cut to a closeup of to the radio in the car’s dashboard.

British Grove studios ars a perfect blend of old and new. He has a couple of EMI desks with levers instead of faders; an ATC board beloved of guitarists (Steve Vai also has one, and swears by the mic preamps); a more modern Neve board, and of course a ton of Avalons, Fairchilds and LA1076s, all going to classic 1″ and 2″ analog machines or state of the art hard drive recorders, as the project requires. Presumably has has more guitars than God lurking behind closed doors, though only two or three emerged for our session, and the chosen one was a custom Don Grosch. Its tone was somewhere between a Strat and a Les Paul, though of course in Mark’s hands it could sound however he wanted. At one point while transitioning between sections I asked him if he’d changed his tone–no, of course not, it was all in the fingertips!

I was relieved that my song sounded pretty accurate on the big monitors, as it was the first set of tracks I’ve worked on in the Nutmeg and brought elsewhere. It was a pleasant, relaxed session. I always skirt the line between letting a musician like that just do his thing, versus giving too much direction and cramping his style. And I’m a keyboard player after all so I don’t really have the vocabulary to explain what I’m looking for. But our communication was good, and I think we got something great. Mark gave me upwards of 12 takes, and we did a fairly hasty comp while I was there, though such is my reluctance to let anything great slip away, I think I’ll give the rest of his takes a good going over tomorrow and make sure no sweetness slips through the cracks.

As there was no TED House Band this year, and many people told me they missed us, I decided to post a single MP3 of the pieces we played in 2008. Thanks to all who enjoyed it while it was posted!

Here’s the running order:

Mocha Swing (originally performed by Quadro Nuevo)
Tubas In The Moonlight (originally performed by The Bonzos)
Hello Cruel World (sung by Rachelle Garniez)
War Games (originally performed by Special AKA)
Somewhere Over The Rainbow
I’ve See That Face Before (originally performed by Grace Jones)
Hell I’d Go (originally performed by Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks)
Pre-Post Apocalypse (sung by Rachelle Garniez and others)
The Canyons Of Your Mind (originally performed by The Bonzos)
La Bombe D’Amour (Cajun cover of Whole Lotta Love feat. Kaki King))
We’ll Meet again (feat. Vusi Mahlasela, Nellie MacKay)

TED House Band 2008 (L>R Mark Stewart, Rachelle Garniez, Rufus Capadocia, Thomas Dolby)

One of this year’s TED Prize winners is José Antonio Arbreu. What an astonishing story. In the seventies Arbreu, a symphonic musician, started a program in his native Venezuela to get empoverished kids off the streets and transform their lives through classical music. He called this program El Sistema. Thirty years later his youth orchestras are considered some of the finest in the world. And last night we found out why: When a satellite link took us to Caracas for Arbreu’s very poetic acceptance speech, we were treated to a live performance by an orchestra of world-class teenage musicians, conducted by his protegé Gustavo Dudamel, now famous as the music director of the LA Philharmonic.

To describe this orchestra as spirited is an understatement. They are magnificent. They play music the way the Brazillians play football: it’s like a lifeline to them. And, as Chris Anderson pointed out, for a country like Venezuela to have a world class orchestra is good incentive to learn how to do a world class orchestral TV production—the camerawork and editing were exemplary. It’s usually pretty hard to get a talking head to work over a satellite link, let alone a live orchestral performance. It was simply breathtaking, and everybody around me was in tears, myself included.

(Pic: Larry Johnson)

I now have a date set to go to EMI’s offices in London to go over possible photos and artwork, and review the sleeve credits for the first planned release, which is an album of my singles with an accompanying DVD containing all the videos. From EMI I will go to Abbey Road where I’ll supervise the mastering of this album. All I really need to do is to decide on the gaps between songs, and make sure the song volumes all balance up, and none are too tinny or too bassy sounding in relation to each other. For those of you who understand the nuances of remastering, I should say that I am opposed to lots of adaptive limiting, which has the effect of making a CD very loud, but at the expense of subtlety and dynamics.

On the same day I will go over the track listings for ‘The Golden Age Of Wireless’ and ‘The Flat Earth’. I’m glad to say EMI are very open to doing this with my input—in fact they have hired an independent consultant, whom I know from way back when he was still an employee there, to oversee the project, and have pretty much given him free rein to define how the re-releases look and sound—and he is very eager to take direction from me as to the specific choices. It’s been very helpful getting feedback from people on this blog, and it reinforces my view that the main aim of these re-releases should be to reproduce the albums they way they originally appeared, but to add in good rarities that have been hard for fans to get hold of over the years. It’s not however a reason to cram everything and the kitchen sink onto a disk, regardless of whether I feel it’s up to scratch musically. Nor do I care much for faddy formats that can only be enjoyed by a small minority of people, and which may well have been swallowed up within a few years.

There may be a different running order for the US version of the re-releases, where people are accustomed to a different version of several of the songs, as well as a whole other running order.

I’m pleased that I get to supervise this and make sure it’s done right. But as I’m writing this blog, I’m watching a bounce go down to disk of some guitar parts Kevin Armstrong played on a brand new song of mine, and it’s sounding fantastic. I have to confess there’s a thrill and a buzz about doing the new material that surpasses anything I can muster for rehashing old material! What’s done is done, but this is the future we’re talking about now.

On another note altogether, Kathleen and I felt it was high time we initiate our kids (17, 15, and nearly 13) into the delights of This Is Spinal Tap. Considering Graham, our youngest, is now a drummer in a hard rock band at school, it was inevitable. He was getting fed up of us quoting the Tap at the supper table, and wanted in on the joke. So I ordered a DVD off Amazon, the special edition one with an hour’s extra footage plus commentary by the band, and we made a bowl of popcorn, projected it on one of the big screens from my tour, and sat back to enjoy it. The kids have been quoting from it all day, and it’s hard to dodge the old cliches as I sit here blogging about my former glories while some cool guitars bounce down on my G5. Currently residing in the ‘where are they now’ file? Let’s hope not.

My old record label EMI have asked me for input on the running order for the proposed re-releases in 2009 of my first two albums.

Firstly, I’m glad they want to do this. It seems crazy that these are out of print and quite hard to find even in indie record shop bargain bins! And the re-releases will give us a chance to remaster the audio and generally give the songs a bit of French polishing. Not to mention bringing together the various alternative versions and B-sides in one place.

It’s important that this does not take away any of the limelight from the new music I’m working on. I suppose that’s always a risk, but overall I think it can raise the awareness that the old material has stood the test of time, BUT I’m doing new stuff. (And considering how good the new stuff is sounding, it’s a risk I’m willing to take!) The timing is hard to judge as EMI have not given me a firm date for the re-releases yet, nor do I have any clue if/when in 2009 I might release a new album. Or indeed whether EMI or any other corporate entity will be involved.

Here’s my proposed running order. I’m sure there will be some controversy, because people tend to think of the version they have as THE original version. The best solution I can think of is to include all versions in the sequence in which they first appeared. For example, there are two very different renditions of ‘Radio Silence.’ I originally recorded it with the same rock band as had played on many other GAOW tracks—Kevin Armstrong, Justin Hildreth, and Mark Heyward-Chaplin. But I had second thoughts about it after listening to the album in toto and decided it was too ‘rockist.’ About the same time the opportunity came up for me to work with Daniel Miller (Depeche Mode’s producer and supremo of Mute Records) plus Akiko Yano was in town! so I decided to take another crack at it. The result seemed to fit in with the GAOW ethos, and made for a nice little SW radio-driven sequence on side two. Today, I am fond of both versions, so they are included on this list. But it’s unavoidable that some folks will feel they’re in the wrong place. What can you do? put them in you iPod and make your own running order.

I’ve added selected ‘side’ projects, collaborations and so on. There may be a few omissions, including a lot of 12″ versions that I don’t feel add very much to the song itself. But I think everything here belongs here.

Anyway here’s my proposal. If you have suggestions or want to debate the pros and cons, feel free to post a comment here, or perhaps somebody could copy this list to the Forum.
The Golden Age Of Wireless (2-CD set):

CD1

3:50 Flying North
4:15 Commercial Breakup
3:45 Weightless
3:18 Europa and the Pirate Twins
4:20 Windpower
3:30 The Wreck of the Fairchild
5:12 Airwaves
4:32 Radio Silence (synth version)
5:45 Cloudburst At Shingle Street

CD2

3:42 She Blinded Me With Science
5:14 One Of Our Submarines
3:43 Radio Silence (guitar version)
3:52 Leipzig
3:42 Urges
4:04 Therapy/Growth (Europa B-side)
3:18 New Toy (Live Wireless)
3:52 The Jungle Line (Low Noise)
3:36 Urban Tribal (Low Noise)

The Flat Earth (one CD)

4:56 Dissidents
6:41 The Flat Earth
5:34 Screen Kiss
5:20 White City
5:00 Mulu The Rain Forest
5:40 I Scare Myself
4:14 Hyperactive!

Bonus tracks:

4:09 Puppet Theatre
5:24 Get Out Of My Mix (edit)
4:03 Field Work (london mix)
7:17 Dissidents (The Search for Truth Part 1)

A very timely piece of software has become available for me to use on my album. It’s called Virtual Glass and it’s a plug-in you download from a web site/service called eSession.com.

The subscription-based eSession site handles all administrative aspects of auditioning, negotiating with, and recording with, a huge number of top professional musicians, all without leaving the comfort of your own home studio (or in my case, DIScomfort as it’s not finished yet!)

Virtual Glass is a plug-in for the high-end recording software we use such as ProTools, Logic and so on. On the surface it’s just an audiovisual chat client, similar to iChat, that lives in the recording environment. But it’s very nifty in that it enables me to do a recording session with, let’s say Kevin Armstrong, who lives in London which is several hours away from me. Kevin has his own studio and uses the same software as me. So we can connect, open the same song, and Kevin can overdub guitar parts. We can discuss them, agree on retakes and so on, while hearing each other in real time. His face and/or his studio appear in a video window on my screen, and we have a ‘talkback’ system. The experience is actually not very different from me being in the control room and Kevin out in a booth. I can hear a low-res version of his part, then once it’s done he just drops the new recording into a bin online, and I update it on my end in hi-res. The software can keep track of the time we spend and even issue an invoice based on a pre-agreed fee.

Then let’s say I really need someone to play a jaw’s harp. I do a search for that keyword in the eSession talent profiles, and find out that Tony Levin as well as being a killer bassist is an ace jaw’s harpist (?!) and right now he’s got a mid-tour day off and he’s sitting in a hotel room in Nashville, Tenessee. I approach him and fix the fee. We can work together using Virtual Glass in real time over ADSL, or he can just work on it in his own time and send me a few takes to peruse offline.

eSession was created by music industry professionals in conjunction with some hot software engineers. It’s a fabulous piece of kit, and a great tool in this era of home recording; though I bet they are facing the challenge all early adopters face, in that people may be slow to change their working methods, and they need eSession to catch on before they burn through all their investors’ millions! I’m going to try to help out by using the sofwtare extensively on my album, and helping them publicise it a bit. Later this week one of the founders Gina Fant-Saez will be in Japan doing public demos of the product, and I’m going to let her connect to me in the UK and we’ll work on an overdub for one of my new songs.

If you’re a musician you can register for a free account, though some of the features may be a bit limited unless you sign up for a paid subscription–but that is is very reasonable starting at under twenty bucks a month, considering that just the gas for one drive to someone else’s studio would cost you a lot more!

I dragged myself into the kitchen some time in the middle of the afternoon and began to make myself some breakfast. “What time did you guys start yesterday?” asked my wife. “Around 3.” “What time did you finish?” “Oh, around 4.” She briefly looked surprised, as if to say, that was an extremely quick recording session! Then she did the math and realised we were at it for 13 hours straight.

When I was twenty-one I could pull off a 15 to 20 hour session and bound right back the next day. Nowadays 13 hours is quite draining. However, a lot depends on how much you get done, and the quality of it. In this case I’m very happy. We got four backing tracks down—three with bass, drums, guitar, guide piano and vocal; and one with just two guitars, Neill MacColl joining Kevin Armstrong on a couple of nylon string acoustics.

When the band are learning the song as you go along, it makes things quite exciting. You get a rough sound for each instrument, which doesn’t need to be the final sound, just in the ballpark. You need a good headphone mix so everyone can hear themselves and each other. Plus sightlines that allow you to see each other, even though you’re in different spaces. I’d routined the songs with Matthew and Kevin, but drummer Liam Genockey was playing them for the first time. The first few run-throughs are usually stop-start affairs, working out feels for different sections, where to put fills and ‘punctuation’, and so on. I kind of mumble the vocals because I’m listening to everything else. Then there comes a point where it’s feeling ready to record. There’s a magical window where the ‘tape is rolling’ (an obselete term in this day of digital everything) and any take you play could turn out to be THE take.

On a couple of the songs I opted not to use a click track. When you do, it makes it easy to add sequenced keyboard parts later in a program like Logic. It also puts all takes at the same tempo and makes it very easy to overlay takes and intercut between them—so for example, if Take 2 was generally great but you messed up the first chorus, you can cut it in from Take 3 instead. However, the disadvantage of playing to a click is that everyone has one ear open for it and that can lead to a slightly stiff and restrained feel, less natural. Recording without one is living a bit dangerously. But with the latest technology and a bit of elbow grease, you can generally find a way to add a tempo track later, cut and paste between takes and so on.

You can’t go on recording take after take. The energy and freshness start to drop off, yielding diminishing returns. Plus, the more takes there are, the more sifting though I’ll inevitably have to do, given that I like to leave no stone unturned. There might be one drum fill in Take 12, or a bit of guitar in Take 8 that has just that little bit of an edge. I don’t like ending up with so many options. If I’ve got two takes that I’m very happy with, I prefer to stop there, knowing I can always move notes around, fix timings and tunings later. So you need to have the courage to say ‘ok let’s move on!’

The main thing I’m looking for with a ‘tracking date’ (several musicians all playing together) is that intangible magic that you can never achieve when you build songs up a bit at a time. For example, one of the new songs is over seven minutes long, and has 12 verses that tell a story about a prison break, almost like a folk lament. One approach to that would have been to create a long sequence in the computer, then look for different textures and sounds for each section, perhaps adding real instruments along the way. That’s the way I recorded ‘I Love You Goodbye.’ But on this one, I decided to keep it looser. We worked on the song for most of the second day, breaking it down into different verses and joining the dots. Then we finally took a crack at playing it straight through. The first take was so-so, we were glad to get through it to the end. We went into the control room, poured ourselves a glass of wine and gave it a listen. Everything was in place, but it was somehow lacking the narrative quality that was in the lyric. Back out there—second take–bingo! The song had taken on a shape and a life of its own.

I deliberately chose to play real piano and sing a rough guide on the backing track. This means that the piano tracks will have some vocal spill on them, and vice versa, rendering them both unusable—unless, of course, I happened to play and sing absolutely perfectly. But I know from history there’s a zero percent chance of that happening! I’m just not that adept in either department. What the rough vocal hopefully does do, though, is inspire the other musicians to play at their best, while defocusing them from their own part, so they become part of the accompaniment for the vocal, rather than an instrumentalist. It also sets me a yardstick for the phrasing and tone of the final vocal. My vocals evolve as I learn to sing my own song, and as the feel and character of the track develops. When I go in to do the final vocals I often find I’m listening back to the guide vocal to remind myself of how I sang that night when I had the whole band.

The song with Kevin and Neill was unusual for me. I’ve never used two guitarists simultaneously on a song before. It’s a very gentle poetic song (you may have read an early version of the lyrics here on my blog a few months ago!) but the middle section is such a complete and utter surprise, the first time you hear it you’ll think someone changed the radio channel on you.

We did a few small overdubs, to fix obvious mistakes or to add cymbals, fills, more ‘out there’ approaches and so on, so that I have options. The next stage for me is to work through the four songs, getting familiar with what’s there, and knit together the ultimate version of each. But of course, that’s just the beginning. I will still be miles away from anything finished. There will be synths and keyboards to add, in some cases other instruments altogether (eg harmonica, fiddle), then vocals, backing vocals, and days and days of final mixing. And this is just four songs remember—perhaps one third of the album.

Still, I feel like the album is truly underway, and now when I go to work each day it’s with a clear idea of what I’m going to be working on. And I am delighted with the songs, which have really come along. There’s no way they will be a repeat of anything I’ve done in the past. After all, a big chunk of my life has gone by since I last recorded new songs. I’m older, wiser. The old adage is that when an artist does his first album, he’s had twenty years of real life to sing about. He does his second, he’s got six months of touring, hotel rooms and press interviews to sing about! But as Matthew pointed out, I’m back to the twenty years of real life thing.

And music has moved on too. I don’t believe making cool sounds and grooves is very interesting any more, because we’ve had a couple of decades of that and there’s very little left to do. What I come back to is that first and foremost I’m a songwriter. I can actually write interesting lyrics and great melodies. And that’s a rare thing these in days of bleeps and blips. So that’s where I’m focusing my energy.

A good motto for me right now is this: ‘Only do what only you can do.’

On this day in 1982, I released my fifth UK single, ‘Windpower.’ It reached #31 in the UK charts, and not long afterwards I performed it on Top Of The Pops. I think the teen audience (and Sylvian-esque DJ Kid Jensen) must have been very confused! Most of them must be in their 40′s by now. After all, it took quite a few years for renewable energy to catch on, didn’t it? You can see the video here:

I was emailing back and forth with my old friend Grant Morris, a mad New Zealander. I remember when he was an alternative DJ in New Orleans and he’d play my song ‘I Love You Goodbye’ and people would call in and complain about the fact I said ‘county sheriff’ when in fact Louisiana has parishes, not counties; and they’d marvel at how I could drive all night to the Everglades (Florida) and then crash the car and stand there listening to the bayou (Louisiana!) rain. I could only reply that when you’re writing song lyrics, the historical and geographical (and even grammatical!) precision of the words is less important than how it SINGS. Grant wrote me this back today… very pertinent on the lyrical front, but ending with a classic quote about 4th July that could only have come from an elderly New Zealand mum.

“I agree with you 100%. Better that it sings well than makes any literal sense. I’m not sure that you even WANT a song to make literal sense. Even country songs that are the most literal of all aren’t really. What the hell is a “ring of fire”? When you “walk the line” how do you actually keep your “eye out for the ties that bind”? What does that even mean? It would be a pretty funny SNL sketch to sit down with some of the most famous song lyrics in a meeting with an executive and his results of a focus group test. “Do you have to WANT to hold her hand? Couldn’t it be something a little more ambitious? Could you want to hold her “bag”? It could be about shopping and everybody loves to shop don’t they?” Looking at lyrics cold without music is crazy. Hey, you know who you might like who sings some pretty good narrative songs, Rodney Crowell. Do you know his stuff? If not check out a 2001 album called The Houston Kid and listen to I Walk The Line (revisited) and you’ll be hooked from there.

Happy 4th of July! I was talking to my mother on Skype yesterday and she asked me “Who does the United States celebrate independence from?”. I told her “The British”. She looked genuinely surprised and said, “Did they have the Poms over there as well?”.”