The pop universe is littered with so-called one-hit wonders that, in fact, have a strong catalog of songs in their canon. Thomas Dolby’s predicament is worsened by his one hit, “She Blinded Me With Science,” brilliant as it is, given the song’s perception as more of a novelty record.
Of course proper artists — everyone from David Bowie and Pink Floyd to Eddie Van Halen and George Clinton — have always known better, as Dolby was able to get great musicians to appear on his albums, while he, in turn, did work for them in the studio and on stage. It was Dolby that inadvertently gave us Thompson Twins when he got that band’s chief songwriter, Tom Bailey, up to speed on the emerging technology of synthesizers back in the early 1980s.
Dolby has recently returned to touring and last appeared in Cincinnati at the Totally Tubular concert, which featured the aforementioned Bailey, along with Men Without Hats and Wang Chung. His full set in Cincinnati this past Wednesday expanded on that playlist. On stage, it’s just Dolby, his keyboards, laptop, Trigger Finger drum pad and mini iPad. The latter he undocks from his keyboard station and roams the stage, seemingly mixing and remixing on the fly.
Like on the Totally Tubular tour, he started with a cover of New Order’s “Blue Monday,” which didn’t rely on the original’s signature drum pattern but was beautifully realized by Dolby’s deft keyboard and iPad manipulations. Later in the set, he did another cover, this time honoring friend and hero Bowie with a touching rendition, appropriately, of “Heroes.” He prefaced the song with a story about the two playing Live Aid back in 1985, and the helicopter ride from Battersea to Wembley Stadium that made the Thin White Duke, not a fan of air travel, particularly nervous.
Oddly, Dolby lamented that his songs rarely get covered. This led to a story about how pal Jason Mraz told him that he’d love to cover a Dolby song, before belting out a few verses of “My Brain is Like a Sieve” from Aliens Ate My Buick. Dolby wound up capturing it on his iPhone and folded it into a live version of the tune, complete with video of Mraz crooning, which then drifted into the very fine “Budapest by Blimp.”
Therein lies the paradox. The small but enthusiastic crowd didn’t just show up just to hear “Blinded by Science,” yet Dolby opted to play two covers while leaving several of his (real) hits behind — including “Radio Silence,” “Dissidents,” “Close But No Cigar,” “Eastern Bloc, ”the list goes on, as they say.
During this current tour, Dolby mixes up the set list a bit from show to show, swapping songs in and out. More interestingly, he literally mixes things up from show to show, as the versions he did of the same songs at Totally Tubular sounded different from the ones performed at Bogart’s.
Fortunately, my wife heard her favorite Dolby song, “I Love You Goodbye,” which he teased on Totally Tubular with a few bars of the intro, but did not play (boo!), and I heard my fave, “One of Our Submarines.” The latter offers the opportunity to suggest the reader to do a deep dive on Dolby.