The beast, built around an Apple G5 running Logic, is still wily. Dolby continues to play various parts, some of which apparently aren’t getting to the outside world, though he hears them in his in-ear monitors. He handles the difficulties with the coolness one would expect from a legend of electronic songwriting, and he proclaims to the audience, “I said that if I ever have any tech problems on this tour, you’d all get a free T-shirt!” This broke the ice, and it was a perfect way to end a long hiatus from touring. As he hurled T-shirts into the audience, he added, “On my first solo tours in the 1970s, I had a ton of gear, and it was always breaking down on me. Now, it’s 2006, and I have a ton of new gear, and it’s always breaking down on me. Whatever happened to Moore’s law?”
The crowd disarmed, he then launched into an amazing set of his classic songs, building each one a loop at a time. If you know Dolby mainly for his 1980s smash “She Blinded Me With Science,” you’re missing out on a body of work that ranges from atmospheric to hook-filled, introspective to irreverent, and is always full of masterful melodies and just plain soul. He’s one of the most underrated songwriters in the world, with talent comparable to Peter Gabriel or even David Bowie. Judging from the smiles that filled the room as each familiar groove began, the audience certainly agreed.
Through the Airwaves
Many fans may be wondering where Dolby has been for the past decade or so. While not releasing albums or touring, he was hard at work with his technology company Beatnik, whose claim to fame is that that they developed the ringtone technology used in many cell phones. Now that the business has matured, he’s freer to focus on creative pursuits.
“They’re in over half the world’s cell phones, over 600 million chips,” he beams. “It’s all about engineering and sales, really. And with an established business, you’ve got to maximize profits and minimize costs, and so they’re way better off without me. I show up once a month or so for a board meeting.” Even so, he still enjoys seeing the continued growth of the company. “They went from just being the ringtone engine to now providing an internal mixer. If you’re listening to an MP3 on your phone, and it rings and has to switch over from MP3 to ringtone to voice, then Beatnik is actually the mixer for the different file types and sound sources. They’re getting more into hard-coding the engine into standard cell phone chip sets, so that’s why the numbers are going through the roof.”
The Sole Inhabitant Tour
With Beatnik in good shape, the road beckoned. “I’ve wanted to get back into music for several years, but there wasn’t a good time,” says Thomas. “I just got freed up at the end of last year, so that was the reason. I also felt I needed to get my chops back. Before I got in front of an audience, I wanted to get out a little bit and hear what other people were playing, and just get re-focused.”
As for the set list, Dolby explains, “I knew I wanted to pick my favorites from the catalog to play live.” It would ultimately include many of the tracks found on his best-of collection titled Retrospectacle. In addition to video hits such as “Science,” “Hyperactive,” and “Airhead,” the performance included fresh renditions of “Europa and the Pirate Twins,” “One of Our Submarines,” “Windpower,” and “The Flat Earth.”
“On average, these songs took over two weeks each to program,” he says. “First, I had to envision the concept for each song. Was I going to try and replicate what was on the album, was I going to do something sort of unplugged sounding, how was I going to approach it? Then I would program everything in, mostly using soft synths. And in the beginning, I was unfamiliar with them. I mean, I really didn’t know anything about soft synths until about last Christmas.”
Rather than simply sing and play one keyboard part to a pre-recorded track, Dolby lets the audience in on the process by building up each song track by track. Using the loop cycle record mode in Logic, he often will start by playing in the drum parts with the M-Audio Trigger Finger. He’ll then move seamlessly from keyboard to keyboard, changing sounds and looping part after part. Part of the seeming effortlessness comes from his ability to quicky change tracks on Logic using a touch-screen LCD monitor mounted on top of the CME master keyboard. “I got the touchscreen for $125 on eBay, and though it’s not accurate enough to drag-and-drop anything precisely, I use it to switch tracks when I’m recording in loop cycle mode,” he says. “I need to select the track that I’m going to record to, and I don’t want to have to turn around to the Mac. It also gives me visual feedback about things like whether a loop is on or off and if a track is record-armed. I can sometimes see whether a track is running or not, and I can see what track is loading in the background as I talk to the audience between tunes. It’s an at-a-glance snapshot of what’s going on behind me.”
The Future
Dolby maintains an ongoing blog of his tour at www.thomasdolby.com. “I can read reviews of my gig by the time I get back to the hotel, which is kind of cool,” he says. “Then I can blog a bit about it and give people behind-the-scenes info that they wouldn’t otherwise have known. It’s more direct contact with the audience, which I think is great.” This level of interaction wasn’t so easy in the ’80s, when the major label system heavily influenced what information about an artist would reach the public. “I have this sort of split personality,” muses Thomas. “I like to do extroverted, fun, funky, silly, fluffy stuff, and then I also write very personal songs. I have the option now of saying, ‘Well if I do something fluffy, I’ll just get it in a TV show or commercial or something.’ But it doesn’t have to go on my next album, which can contain the stuff I really connect with emotionally. In the ’80s, I only got to make a record if I agreed to put something fluffy on it that [the label] would view as a single. They weren’t really willing to develop the more serious side to my music. That was the toll I was paying.”
Even with the differences in the music-biz landscape today, there are still echoes of his humble beginnings. “Its very similar to the one-man shows that I did in the ’70s, which is how I started out under my own name. I had played keys in other people’s bands, but also performed solo in little clubs in Europe. And its similar to that even in respect of how it’s frustrating, because it would take time between numbers to load songs, and there would be mistakes, and then I’d be trying to figure out how to fix them in my head.”
While thousands of fans are enjoying the results of Dolby’s desire to play his back catalog live, it’s only a matter of time before he’ll be looking forward again. New material is on the horizon, and Dolby plans to bring it on the road. “I would have liked to have done new songs on this tour. And I still may. I’m actually waiting for my 17" MacBook Pro to arrive. In theory, I’ll have a comparably powerful system not only for backup purposes, but to create stuff wherever I may be that I can later move to the G5. So at that point I’m going to start working up some new stuff. I’ve got a few songs up my sleeve that I’d love to get up to shape for playing live.” New Thomas Dolby songs? Whenever and however they appear, we want every last one. And the ringtones.