'Gig' announcement!
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!
Now there’s something to look forward!
That weekend is something to look forward to!!
What a fantastic idea! The tickets are bought and I’m looking forward to it already.
(looking on maps to see just where this venue is..)
Awesome news. What a novel, interesting idea for a concert!! The Twins must be on cloud nine, too. Thomas you’re a genius.
Pirate Twins are indeed on cloud nine. Allow me to introduce myself as Andrew, one half of The Pirate Twins.
A huge thank you to Thomas for mentioning out Golden Age of Wireless event on his blog. Our event takes place on Saturday 27th Feb 2010 at the Aldermaston Manor Hotel near Reading in Berkshire.
We’ve devised our event as a unique opportunity for Thomas’s fans to meet up, enjoy an afternoon of Dolby related fun and games, and spend the evening with The Pirate Twins as we perform of the entire Golden Age of Wireless, in its original running order. We’ve got lots of surprises in store and we’d like to take this opportunity to thank Thomas for all his help and support.
We hope as many of you as possible will be able to come to our event and then make the short trip up the M4 for Thomas’s gig the following night for what will be a amazing weekend of music. Tickets for our show are limited and selling fast, so please do book now here:
http://www.the-pirate-twins.co.uk/tickets.html
Thanks again,
The Pirate Twins
PS. you can hear a couple of songs on our site and we also have our own blog too.
Excellent!
Are the tickets for the Sunday night available yet?
Wow, the venue is an excellent one. Union Chapel is a great place.
The nearest tube is Highbury & Islington. Angel tube is not far either.
Lots of good pubs and restaurants in the immediate vicinity too for early meet-ups on Sunday.
The venue is in Islington N1 and not far from the Academy where Thomas played 2 years ago on THE evening during the Sole Inhabitant tour which featured Lene, Les, Mathew and Kevin. Now something even more unique’s going to happen in the same postcode!
The live rehearsal idea is fantastic. To know to expect an event of probably about 4 hours total duration with chat and stories, guests and so on. What a result!
The Golden Age of Wireless by The Pirate Twins (a.k.a. Tom-less Dolby!) on Saturday and then the whole nine yards with the original Flat Earth band on Sunday…
I walked on out and made me
a few small purchases!
The whole weekend is now all booked and what a weekend to look forward to.
Union Chapel tickets available now:
http://www.ticketweb.co.uk/user/?region=gb_london&query=detail&event=353609
Christmas came early today.
Jon
I had already booked my ticket to the Pirate Twins. that was the cake…
Now for the icing Wow all I can say is I am totaly gobsmacked.
But what a amazing concept and I am so looking foreword to being there.
I missed out on ‘live wireless’ so this will be the ultimate Dolby-fest.
What an amazing weekend.
I hope Graeme is on drums !!
See you there Thomas
Lindon
GREAT NEWS SEE YOU ALL IN N1 FOR ANOTHER GREAT NIGHT.
Yes!
I’m in. just ordered my tickets, will work out the details later!
I’m so excited!!!
I would love to hear a version of Close But No Cigar.
IOr a cover of one of your hero’s.
Maybe a sneak of new stuff, Ocenea as an encore…
What ever you want, we will all be so happy to have you perform such a unique performance.
PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF!?!?!?! (me spraying my monitor with hot chocolate)
What an AMAZING idea! Having seen the Flat Earth show back in ’84, this would just be a terrific way to revisit that part of your repertoire. Not particularly confident that I can travel all the way from Austin, but just salivating at the possibility!!
I second Bawdsey’s idea of some hints of the new album. Thematically, I feel like it would connect well (Flat Earth/Map of the Floating City).
Great news Thomas!
OOOHHH, if you still have the video of the Flat Earth ‘Lecture’, that would be great fun for people to see, moving seamlessly into White City…
Beech
This sounds amazing and I wish I could go, but alas the economy has crunched my out-of-states travel budget. I’m looking forward to seeing everyones feedback and photos.
Any chance you could have someone film this for a “fan club” exclusive DVD for those of us stuck in other countries? It would be great to see this documented and availble if you approve of the final cut. Just my two cents since I’m stuck stateside.
Best of luck of with the gig!
- Brian
Brian, just touch the screen and feel the love! Sell Sully! Get over for this or you’ll regret it for ever!
My suggestion is that Commercial Breakup be one of the tracks to be done. IMO this is THE track for the band to let really rip with. There’s plenty there for Kevin, Mathew and Graeme (guest drums?) to get busy with in that track. I’ve a couple of bootlegs of gigs where this was played and I would so love to hear and see you perform it live.
Oh yeah, that would be great. Just thinking about that makes Finland a much lighter and warmer place to be this morning.
The ultimate Dolby weekend has turned from many an idle dream into full blown reality, and then some! Fantastic news. I’ll be wearing a Readybrek glow all through Winter! Roll on February!
All tickets booked for ‘The Pirate Twins’ and ‘Thomas Dolby & Friends’.
I hope that some of the overseas FES members can ‘Circumnavigate the Flat Earth’ for the very special weekend next February.
Tickets booked for both events!
Whoo hoo!
I second White City Jon’s recommedation of Commercial Breakup but only on condition you don the white mullet wig you wore on the Oxford Road Show (i think) for the keytar solo!!!
PS-If you cant find the wig, I have one you can borrow
And I have a keytar you can borrow (which, incidentally I’ll be using to play the solo in Commercial Breakup the night before)!
A (Pirate Twin)
Just learnt about your additional guests, prefab guys, bruce woolley, possibly Eddie Reader and Trevor Horn!! My brain can only take so much…….Super stuff
OMG!! I just bagged my ticket and am so completely and absolutely looking forward to this night!
)
Sadly, won’t be able to make the Pirate Twins gig
(
What a night of complete Musigeekgasm!!! ;o)
People keep saying ‘Thomas, you’re brilliant!’ but I have to say, Matthew Seligman was really the instigator of this. Matthew, you’re brilliant!
Start thinking about a t-shirt design for this event. I’m going to print and sell some to try and raise $800 so Lunesse can fly over from Portland! Either a joint one for the whole weekend, or separate ones for my show and the Pirate Twins’.
I would be more than happy to donate my services to help video the event.
In that case, Matthew Seligman? You’re a genius!
Thomas,
i think most people who attend wouldnt mind pitching in a couple of pounds towards lunesse air fair, shes done a great job with the forum over the past few years.
sorry that should of been air fare… the news of the gig has got me all worked up……..
Some of us are trapped in Arizona by the economy and won’t be attending, but we’d be happy to purchase a t-shirt or two to help ensure Lunesse’ passage . . .
Can’t you netcast these gigs live Thomas – given all your IT connections in Silicon Valley, TED and Abbey Road ?
I’m in Portugal …..and the team’s fans are, lets face it – all around the world ….
and this deserves to be a live global cast of some kind.
Still several months to go to organise it ……
You want to explore new models for distribution ….
We all want to and are willing to pay …..
If the model works – you could next year stream a weekly evening session from the lifeboat.
Not sure how much it would cost but I’m sure we have the geek power here to discuss if the idea is a runner or not?
Any comments anyone?
From the rather run down urban outskirts of North Lisbon Portugal at 01h35am GMT.
Greetings to all TMDR fans from around the world who haven’t got a hope in hell of attending either of these great gigs but whom would be willing to participate in a gobal web cast test experiment.
Come on Tom its time you broadcast something live ….
I’m certainly up for webcasting it if someone has a good contact/company they can recommend. It would have to pay for itself, obviously. I’d also be grateful for a few volunteers to videotape the show with their own camera and tripod, and send me the content to edit–we did this at the ICA gig a couple of years back and it worked very well.
Looks like Lunesse (Lunesse sneaks in an edit… MAYBE) will make it over from the US and even–gasp–Merujo!
Both gigs would be so wonderful to be a part of.
I checked out the Pirate Twins site and they sound fantastic.
I love living in Australia, but it’s things like this that can make it suck.
I’ll be there. Oh heck yeah!
Tickets Booked. Roll on the 28th February.
Another Aussie here going a bit green with envy at the moment
C’mon Thomas…we’ve recently had Gazza Numan, Stranglers, Devo, John Foxx, Howard Jones, Police, Cure and others over here recently for some gigs…please consider for the future
The webcast idea sounds great.
cheers Chris
I’d be glad to tape with a tripod for you and send you the content.
very cool of you for thinking of the fans who cannot make it!
If only I could get over from the ‘States.. I’m a newcomer to your music, Thomas, but I’m already hooked. Oh, well. If there’s a livecast, I’ll definitely tune in.
Best of luck.
I am getting the horrible feeling that I am not going to get to this gig because of work commitments. So I live in hope that it may be recorded for posterity. Any chance Thomas?
Hi, I’d be delighted to help video this.
Have a 1080p camcorder, also a Canon 5dII SLR that 1080p video clips, Would also be happy to do stills as well if you like.
Great! Anyone that reckons they can help with the video, please contact lunesse@thomasdolby.com.
I wish I could be there. Best idea I’ve heard about from a real performer attempting something real for an audience. It’s the next step beyond live, whatever it can be called. It reminds me of the way music is part of community in southern american countries. Shame to miss it.
Oh my God another great night in tow roll on Feb!!!
My previous post has been deleted can a mod tell me why?
Cheers
Richard
I saw Marc Almond live at Union Chapel in December 2000. That show was webcasted and later released on DVD.
Richard….
A few comments, literally, were lost when I re-imported all the users back into the blog during maintenance recently. My apologies to you and the other two, I had no way to recreate them. Feel free to put it back!
Thanks Lunesse, I now understand
My original comments were around the fact that the gig was being sold as an 18s and over concert, my eldest will be 18 on the day so no issue there, but the 14yr old would not be admitted, just curious as to why the promoter was taking this stance.
Cheers
Richard
Cameo appearances… please.. Lene Lovitch!!! And, yes, nothing like going on stage un-rehearsed. Feel the rush already…
recieved my tickets for the union chapel gig, roll on 28th feb 2010…
Sounds like a brilliant idea in a great venue!!
Missed The Sole Inhabitant so well chuffed you have come up with this idea
Music wise, can we expect an Electronic gig here Thomas? or is this an acoustic set? Or both?
Detailed schematics of your Wave computer and unusual naval electronic equipment should be fascinating
Cheers
Mat
Okay here’s my wish being both a huge fan of Mr Dolby and Prefab Sprout and knowing that some sprouts will be there at the gig, My wish would be to see Mr McAloon perform the vocals of ‘The Flat Earth’ it being my favourite Thomas Dolby Track – a marriage made in heaven!
whatever happens im really looking forward to the gig flying over from ireland, back to my city of birth.
role on Feb 28th
or should that be roll, oops