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Thomas Dolby (born Thomas Morgan Robertson; 14 October 1958) is an English musician and producer. Best known for his 1982 hit "She Blinded Me with Science", and 1984 single "Hyperactive!" he has also worked extensively in production and as a session musician.
Dolby is associated with "New Pop" or "New Wave" of the early 1980s, a form of pop music incorporating electronic instruments, but Dolby's work covers a wide range of musical styles and moods distinct from the high-energy pop sound of his few, better-known commercial successes.
Personal life
Robertson was born in London, England, contrary to information in early 1980s press releases that reported his birthplace as Cairo, Egypt. His father, Martin Robertson, was an internationally distinguished professor of classical Greek art and archaeology at the University of London and Oxford University, and in his youth Thomas lived or worked in France, Italy and Greece. He attended Abingdon School in 1975-76, completing his A Levels whilst there. Thomas Dolby spoke of his early musical experiences in a 2012 interview:
"I sang in a choir when I was 10 or 11, and learned to sightread single lines, but other than that I don't have a formal education. I picked up the guitar initially, playing folk tunes – Dylan – then I graduated to piano when I got interested in jazz, listening to people like Oscar Peterson, Dave Brubeck, Bill Evans, Thelonious Monk, and so on. The first electronic instruments started to become accessible in the mid-70s and I got my hands on a kit built synthesizer and never looked back."
He married actress Kathleen Beller in 1988; the couple have three children together.
Dolby is member No. 00001 of the current incarnation of the Flat Earth Society, a pseudoscientific group.
Stage name
The Thomas Dolby stage name originated from a nickname that Thomas picked up around the age of 13. Thomas was always messing around with keyboards and tapes and the like, so his friends nicknamed him Dolby, which came from the name Dolby Laboratories. Later, when Thomas was 18 or 19 years old, British singer Tom Robinson was popular, so the then-Thomas Robertson chose to adopt the stage name "Thomas Dolby" to avoid confusion. Early publicity implied that "Dolby" was a middle name, and that the artist's full name was Thomas Morgan Dolby Robertson; this is not true, but he does sometimes informally go by the initials TMDR.
After the release of "She Blinded Me With Science", Dolby Laboratories expressed concern regarding the musician's stage name. Dolby's record label refused to make him change his name, and Dolby Labs didn't raise the issue again until later. After a lengthy legal battle, the court decided that Dolby Labs had no right to restrict the musician from using the name. It was agreed that the musician wouldn't release any electronic equipment using the name. (Coincidentally, inventor/founder Dr. Ray Dolby has a son named Thomas).
Solo music career
The Golden Age of Wireless
Originally released in the UK and US including the songs "Europa and the Pirate Twins", "Airwaves", and "Radio Silence", the first releases of Dolby's first solo album, The Golden Age of Wireless (Harvest, 1982) did not include the album's signature hit, "She Blinded Me With Science". After the five-song EP "Blinded By Science" introduced the catchy single, "The Golden Age Of Wireless", was subsequently re-released with the single that, combined with its accompanying video, became Dolby's most commercially successful single, reaching No. 5 on The Billboard Hot 100.[7] The album was released a total of five times, each with changes in song order and included songs, or even including a different version of "Radio Silence" or extended remix of "She Blinded Me With Science".
Dolby's debut album, Wireless peaked at No. 13 on the Billboard Album Chart.[8] It juxtaposed themes of radio technology, aircraft, and naval submarines with those of relationships and nostalgia.[9] While much of the album's instrumentation is synthesizers and samplers, the album credits a long list of guest musicians as well, with instruments ranging from harmonica and violin to guitar and percussion.
"She Blinded Me with Science" included sound samples from Dr. Magnus Pyke. The song reached No. 5 on the U.S. Hot 100. A short sample was included in the "Treehouse of Horror XIV" episode of The Simpsons, where Professor Frink was winning an award at a science convention. It was also sampled at a lower speed by the group Mobb Deep in the 2006 song "Got it Twisted".[10] "She Blinded Me With Science" was also used as the theme song for the pilot episode of broadcast television sitcom The Big Bang Theory though it wasn't used for later episodes (it was, however, later used in that show as Howard's cell phone ringtone in the season 2 episode "The Vegas Renormalization" and season 3 episode "The Creepy Candy Coating Corollary".)
Dolby's Cube
Beginning in 1983, Dolby collaborated with a number of artists in an occasional studio-bound project called Dolby's Cube. The project had no set line-up, and was essentially a forum for Dolby to release material that was more dance-oriented. Dolby's Cube released a single in 1983 ("Get Out Of My Mix"), another in 1985 ("May The Cube Be With You"), and did soundtrack work for the film "Howard The Duck" in 1986. Collaborators in Dolby's Cube at various junctures included Lene Lovich, George Clinton of Parliament-Funkadelic, Francois Kevorkian, and Lea Thompson.
The Flat Earth
In 1984, Dolby released his second LP, The Flat Earth (Capitol), which peaked at No. 14 on the UK Albums Chart and at No. 35 on the Billboard Album Chart in the US. Utilizing a wide range of influences ranging from nostalgic Jazz, funk-tinged Motown R&B, and World Music, along with a strong electronic element and featuring a slew of guest musicians, including longtime Dolby collaborator Matthew Seligman on bass, Kevin Armstrong on guitar, and Cliff Brigden on percussion, and guest vocals from Robyn Hitchcock, Bruce Woolley and others, The Flat Earth further established Dolby's wide range of talents as musician, songwriter, and producer. The album also included a cover of the Dan Hicks song "I Scare Myself".
"Hyperactive!", originally written for Michael Jackson, was the first and most successful single from the album, peaking at No. 17 on the UK Singles Chart, making it Dolby's highest-charting single in his home country.
Aliens Ate My Buick
In contrast to the overall introverted nature of The Flat Earth, Dolby's described his next release, Aliens Ate My Buick (1988) in the following quote: "I think it's very bold. Some people who've known my stuff from the beginning find it a bit hard to stomach. They think it's a bit brash. It's certainly unsubtle in a lot of ways. It goes for the jugular. There was always a side to the stuff that I did that was very extroverted and wacky. The flip side of the coin was the more atmospheric, moody stuff. There was always room for both of them. But this album, with the exception of maybe one song ["Budapest by Blimp"], is all on the extrovert side."
Aliens Ate My Buick was strongly funk and dance influenced. The first single was "Airhead", a satirical song about a stereotypical young-and-rich Californian woman, which peaked at No. 53. The second single, "Hot Sauce", a cover of a George Clinton song, peaked at No. 60. There was one more single, "My Brain Is Like A Sieve", which peaked at No. 80 on the Billboard Album Chart. The album was co-produced by Bill Bottrell, and featured Terry Jackson on bass guitar.
Astronauts And Heretics
For Astronauts & Heretics (Virgin U.K.), Dolby expanded even further stylistically, starting the songwriting process at the piano, then again collaborating with a variety of guest musicians. Both Bob Weir and Jerry Garcia played guitar on "The Beauty Of A Dream". Eddie Van Halen plays on "Eastern Bloc" and "Close But No Cigar". Other collaborators included Jimmy Z on sax, Budgie on drums and Leland Sklar on bass guitar. Terry Jackson also contributed bass guitar on four songs before his untimely 1991 death in a plane accident with seven other members of Reba McEntire's support band for her "For My Broken Heart" tour. The Funk/Guaracha rhythm guitar on "That's Why People Fall In Love" was delivered by Acid Latin creator Thomas Guzman-Sanchez of Rhythm Tribe (VRL MUZIC)
The highest-charting song off this album was "Close But No Cigar", which reached No. 22 on the UK charts.
Two other songs on the album, "I Love You Goodbye", and "Silk Pyjamas" employed Zydeco-influences, courtesy of Crowley, Louisiana and guest musicians Michael Doucet of BeauSoleil on violin, Wayne Toups on accordion, and even banjo. Even though some recording for the album was done in remote locations, the bulk of Astronauts And Heretics was recorded at NRG Recording Studios with input from trusted Dolby co-producer Bill Bottrell, and mixed down at Smoke Tree Studios in Chatsworth, California.[15]
The Sole Inhabitant
Following his involvement in Beatnik Inc, Dolby returned to his musical career in 2006. He performed his first solo public show in 15 years at the Red Devil Lounge in San Francisco, California on January 21, 2006, surprising the crowd who were there to see local band Notorious. He then launched an American tour, the Sole Inhabitant Tour, on April 12, comprising a string of small dates in California, a mall opening in Boulder, Colorado, and gigs across America before receptive crowds.
The United States leg of the "Sole Inhabitant Tour 2006" was captured on a "live" CD and DVD. The CD represents a recording of two gigs played by Dolby at Martyrs in Chicago, while the DVD was filmed at the Berklee Performance Center at Berklee College of Music. The DVD also includes a 30-minute interview, and a lecture by Dolby at the Berklee College Of Music. Both the CD and DVD were released in November 2006, and are distributed through CD Baby and iTunes. Dolby autographed and numbered the first 1,000 copies of the CD and DVD.
A show at the 800 capacity Scala club in London was booked for July 3, 2006 as a warm-up for Dolby's Hyde Park set opening for Depeche Mode. The show sold out in a matter of days and prompted Dolby to reprioritise the UK, resulting in him moving with his family from California back to England, and a nine-date Sole Inhabitant tour of the UK in October 2007, coinciding with the release of a lavish box set of the Sole Inhabitant CD and DVD by UK independent label Invisible Hands Music.
Thomas toured throughout the months of November and December 2006 with electronic musician BT. This tour included a version of "Airwaves" that BT added his own technique to, which was the opening song on the UK leg of the Sole Inhabitant tour (sans BT).
Thomas Dolby's March 15, 2007 performance at the SxSW festival[16] was released as the live EP "Thomas Dolby & The Jazz Mafia Horns, Live at SxSW" (with musicians from San Francisco's Jazz Mafia collective, through iTunes and on CD Baby.)
The 2007 UK Sole Inhabitant tour included three new songs previously played on the US tour, one called "Your Karma Hit My Dogma" another called "Jealous Thing" and a cover version of The Special AKA's "What I Like Most About You Is Your Girlfriend". "Your Karma Hit My Dogma" was inspired by Kevin Federline's unauthorised use of a sample from Mobb Deep's "Got It Twisted" which in turn had used an authorised sample of "She Blinded Me with Science". The tag-line from that story became the title of the song. The wording was lifted by Thomas from a bumper sticker on a car that he saw whilst living in the San Francisco Bay area. In a move close to performance art, Dolby tried to post a 'cease and desist' legal letter on Kevin Federline's MySpace page when other attempts to contact him proved fruitless.[17][18] The song is on the Live at SxSW EP.
The second new song, "Jealous Thing" was performed at least at The Graduate in Cambridge and London's Islington Academy on the UK tour in Summer 2007 and features a Bossa-Nova type rhythm.
2009 re-Issues
A CD + DVD set entitled The Singular Thomas Dolby has been released by EMI on May 18, 2009. As the name suggests it is a digitally remastered compilation of previously released singles. The DVD contains all the video singles which were available on the original VHS/BETA/LASERDISC release of The Golden Age Of Video, as well as the videos for the songs "Silk Pyjamas", "I Love You Goodbye", and "Close But No Cigar". These three missing videos are for the singles taken from the 1992 album Astronauts & Heretics, which received critical acclaim but garnered unimpressive sales.
The Golden Age Of Wireless and The Flat Earth were reissued and remastered later that year with numerous previously unreleased bonus tracks. The former was a two disc set including a DVD of the complete "Live Wireless" video.
A Map Of The Floating City
In 2010 Dolby began work on a new studio album entitled A Map of the Floating City.[19] The album is divided into three parts, with the first two parts initially made available to members of The Flat Earth Society, Dolby's online community.[20] Each of the three digital EPs takes its name from one of the three sections of the full-length album that later followed. The first EP, Amerikana, was released digitally on June 16, 2010. The second EP is entitled Oceanea, and was released on November 29, 2010. Due to favorable reviews and radio airplay, Oceanea was released commercially on March 28, 2011. The third section of the album, entitled Urbanoia,[21] was not released as a download or physical CD, but the songs were premiered online as part of the Floating City game (see below).
Contributors to the album include Kevin Armstrong, Matthew Seligman (both had played together with him on The Flat Earth and as part of David Bowie's Live Aid appearance), Bruce Woolley, drummer Liam Genockey, guitarist Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits, Regina Spektor, Natalie MacMaster, Eddi Reader, and Imogen Heap.
In a 2010 press release he was quoted as saying:
"I marvel at the new landscape of the music business — distribution via the Internet and recording technologies I barely dreamed of when I started out," he continues. "But this album does not sound electronic at all. I have zero desire to add to the myriad of machine-based, synth-driven grooves out there. The Net has made a music career approachable for thousands of bands — but I hear too few single-minded voices among them. What I do best is write songs, tell stories." "The new songs are organic and very personal," says Dolby. "This album is a travelogue across three imaginary continents. In Amerikana I'm reflecting with affection on the years I spent living in the USA, and my fascination with its roots music. Urbanoia is a dark place, a little unsettling ... I'm not a city person. And in Oceanea I return to my natural home on the windswept coastline.[19]
A Map Of The Floating City was recorded in the "Nutmeg Of Consolation", Dolby's recording studio built within a 1930s lifeboat and powered entirely by renewable energy, which is located in the garden of Dolby's beach house on England's North Sea coast.[19]
Map Of The Floating City game
In June 2011 Dolby announced the Map Of The Floating City game, a multiplayer online game that shares a title with the full-length album release planned to follow after the game's conclusion. In Dolby's own words, "The Floating City is set against a dystopian vision of the 1940s that might have existed had WWII turned out a lot differently." Survivors explore a fictional Google map, forming tribes and trading relics amidst a bizarre sea-going barter society. As they struggle to unravel the enigma that is The Floating City, players can haggle over merchandise and music downloads — including brand new songs from A Map of the Floating City, Dolby’s first album in 20 years, scheduled to be released following the climax of the game." The game was played from June through August 2011, and included elements of trading, mystery, competition, and cooperation. Players earned free song downloads, and the winning team or "tribe" was awarded a private performance from Dolby.
Design West
英音樂家Thomas Dolby暢談科技樂海浮沉
技術不僅為音樂產業開啟了驚人的無限機會，也相對地製造了一些問題，Thomas Dolby說。Thomas Dolby最有名的單曲就是1980年代的《She Blinded Me with Science》排行金曲，他也在此次Design West 2012專題演說上現場演奏這首曲子。
“你曾經必須花費數百萬美元，隻為了有機會在歌迷麵前表演，”Thomas Dolby回憶道：“當我在17歲開始出道時...必須先送錄製的音樂卡帶給唱片公司的藝人經紀部門(A&R)，然後爭取到廣播電台播放的機會，還有其他更多相關的細節都必須先行到位，”他說。
而今，通過網絡就可以造就一夕成名的明星以及目標觀眾。“音樂產業將會變成與幕後音樂經紀人進行一場當日交易一樣”，並透過社交網絡工具來打造粉絲群。”Thomas Dolby在答覆與會者問時表示。
Thomas Dolby還為他最近的新專輯開發了一個以Web為基礎的神秘遊戲The Floating City──這裏已經成為他11,000位粉絲試圖解開謎團的討論空間。
電子音樂時代從1980年代初一開始就困難重重，Thomas Dolby就在此時展開他在新時代的音樂生涯。“電子樂器相當龐大，很難調音準，也相當昂貴，”他強調自己最早的一台電子合成鍵盤大小就像冰箱一樣。
Thomas Dolby在Design West 2012上展示他的第一台電子合成鍵盤
大約在商用互聯網誕生之際，Thomas Dolby從Paul Allen創辦的Interval Research公司獲得了一年的讚助，致力於探索一些音樂與科技交互關係的概念。1993年，Thomas Dolby的Headspace公司即在此基礎下成立，致力於開發Beatnik音頻引擎──Thomas Dolby形容它是軟件的聲霸卡(soundblaster)。
Thomas Dolby在1994年拜訪了Netscape創始人Jim Clark與Marc Andreessen，試著說服他們在其網頁瀏覽器中加入對於音效的支持。“但這些公司說如果在載入頁麵時還得多花時間載入音樂，那麽等待的時間就太長了，”Thomas Dolby說。
盡管麵對這樣的阻力，Thomas Dolby的Headspace公司後來仍取得了諾基亞公司的支持，為其手機的和弦鈴聲進行編碼。這家手機巨頭當時想與日本手機業者競爭──日本廠商采用了一種可提供和弦鈴聲的音效芯片。忽然之間，這為Headspace公司開啟了一個充滿機會的新市場。
“在2005年以前，大多數的手機製造商均授權Beatnik和弦鈴聲，大約為我們創造了10億美元的業務規模”，這還不包括大型唱片公司，Thomas Dolby說。
Headspace後來又在和弦鈴聲中加入音樂樣本，開發出Rich Media Format的新規格。
“我們也在無意間將大型錄音公司帶入戰局，”Thomas Dolby說。他們並曾與電信業者共同合作，致力於嶄斷所有的山寨版手機鈴聲；然而也就在那幾年內，由於無線網絡傳輸性能不足，無法處理完整的歌曲傳輸，使他們為和弦鈴聲擘劃的遠景也劃下了句點。
就在2008年，Thomas Dolby已從高科技產業退休，並且搬回到英國了，現在他正重新出發，期望再次展開新的音樂旅程。
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