We had four great gigs this week, in New Hampshire, Massachusets and New York. The audiences were warm and the technology worked! Here’s a nice review from Boston:
http://theedge.bostonherald.com/musicNews/view.bg?articleid=159930
I’m looking forward to a spot of sailing tomorrow, then a few days to finish up mixing the Sole Inhabitant audio CD, while Johnny Dekam finalizes the editing.
I think this has to be one of the sweetest venues I’ve ever played. It’s the Tupelo Ballroom in Londonderry, NH.
Tonight’s gig at the Iron Horse in Northampton was excellent as well. Everything just seemed to fall into place. Also a very sweet town, and a warm sellout crowd. New Englanders are spoiled for fine architecture, and the fall colours are just starting to appear along the roadside, which we don’t have in California.
My only regret about tonight was that I came offstage, ravenous, got back to the dressing room and scoffed half of a chicken sandwich that poor Darin (my keyboard tech) had been saving especially!
I can’t imagine Eminem has these problems.
I’m off to Boston, Ma. at 4am tomorrow (ugh!) for three gigs in the area followed by one at the Canal Room in NYC on Friday night. Hoping to make up for the unfortunate exclusion of the Boston area from my Spring dates. Also looking forward to playing the Berklee School of Music performance venue, and doing a clinic for their students during the day on Thursday. For anyone that’s coming to one of the four gigs this week, you’ll get to see pretty much the same show as I played earlier in the year. I’ve added in one fun song from ‘Aliens Ate My Buick.’ I’d like to have played some brand new songs but I’ve been busy with post production on my live DVD that will be out in early November and not had time to work them into the set.
I did an interview with a radio station there this week–you can link to it here:
http://www.grep-fu.net/amw/amw-9-23-06-thomas-dolby.mp3
It was late in the evening and I was waffling a bit (polite British term meaning, I was talking out my ass!) but there’s a killer remix of ‘Airhead’ included which I’d forgotten all about. Was I involved in that or did someone do it without permission? Maybe someone can enlighten me. Either way it’s great.
I dropped by the Red Devil Lounge in San Francisco last night to watch The Human League. The last time I saw them was in about 1979 at the Marquee Club which was then on Wardour St in Soho, London. I remember then that they were the first band I ever saw using synchronized slide projections, and Phil Oakey had a flock of black hair down one side of his face. That was well prior to the two female singers, whose arrival took the band out of the electronic underground of the likes of Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire, and thrust them into the international limelight. I thought they were great last night. Phil looks and sounds terrific and the lads did very faithful reporductions of so many songs I listened to back then: ‘Empire State Human’, ‘Fascination’, ‘Open Your Heart’ and ‘I’m Only Human’… each line as it unfolded turned out to be one I knew off by heart. They have a very pure sound that they have guarded well over the years, so much warmer and more laced with irony than most electronic pop acts.
This pic is not actually from last night night’s show but it captures the atmosphere. They get to play the Hollywood Bowl on Saturday, for which I envy them even though the stage sound is notoriously nasty. Glad to see Phil is sporting the Dolby/Moby/Eno/Rudess haircut these days. The road to MIDI hell is paved with bad hairpieces!
There’s a Green Arrow radio interview I did about my upcoming Boston area shows here:
http://www.greenarrowradio.com/wp-content/thomasdolby.mp3
“Lauper appeared early on, wearing a naughty school girl uniform to take on “Another Brick In The Wall, Pt. 2.” Her idiosyncratic vocals sound a little over the top at times, and may not have been the best fit for this song, but her character was perfect for the show. Thomas Dolby joined her midway, and his strange appearance made everything else look comparatively normal.”
Someone uploaded a clip to the new Google Video of me playing the solo in ‘Another Brick In The Wall’ Live in Berlin in 1990. I have mainly good memories of that show. It was a fantastic feeling being in front of 350,000 people, especially as it was so close to the real Wall which was about to come tumbling down. Cyndi Lauper sang the song, dressed as a saucy schoolgirl. I think Cyndi hates me because on the rehearsal day she saw me at my absolute worst, arguing with Joni Mitchell in bratty fashion (over credits on her CD or something trivial) and after that Cyndi steered well clear of me backstage. But it was quite a star-studded green room, what with Sinead O’Connor, Bryan Adams, Van Morrison, Utte Lemper, Tim Curry, and various Scorpions all tripping over each other. I remember Marianne Faithful and Jerry Hall off in a corner having a little tete a tete… oh to be a fly on that ceiling! I got on pretty well with Roger Waters, and I suggested that they put me in a puppet costume with 15ft arms and legs to play the evil teacher. So I was rigged up with a mountaineering harness and I climbed horizontally into the costume in a kind of moat at the bottom of the Wall while paratropers in jackboots abseiled down it all around me. They attached a wire to my harness that went up over the wall, over a pulley and down to attach to a sandbag that weighs just 10lbs less than me. All they had to do was yank on it and ka-pow! I was 60ft up the wall, thrashing wildly and screaming at the top of my lungs in a Scottish accent. I had quite a view of the Potsdamerplatz and beyond into East Berlin.
Also notable on Google Video is a very fun (and totally unauthorised!) video montage someone made themselves for “Key To Her Ferrari”. And no, that’s NOT my mother.