An Entirely Serviceable and Entertaining Debut Album

May 15, 2022 3:18 PM

Buried in These Hands for Years: Thomas Dolby’s ‘The Golden Age of Wireless’ Turns 40

Europa and the Pirate Twins
Flying North
Weightless
Leipzig
Windpower
Commercial Breakup
Urges
Airwaves
Radio Silence
Cloudburst at Shingle Street
One of Our Submarines
She Blinded Me With Science

[The track listing is kind of arbitrary as there was a plethora of release versions of the album]

Waiting for a Girl Like You [Wait, what?]

posted by chavenet (54 comments total)

40??? Good lord, am I really that old?

Then again, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo is 44 years old, so…yeah…I am.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:00 PM on May 15, 2022 [13 favorites]

SCIENCE!
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 4:05 PM on May 15, 2022 [11 favorites]

Every Dolby fan has their own definitive version of the album. For me it was the 1982 UK cassette release, opening with Flying North, without Blinded Me With Science, and crucially with the original version of Radio Silence--not for the guitars, but because it's the version that doesn't have the sudden, inexplicable and incredibly jarring high-pitched female vocal for two lines of the song. Every time I hear it I am reminded with force that I am listening to the wrong one.

Footnote: Magnus 'Science!' Pyke was a noted scientist and broadcaster in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s (in 1975 New Scientist ran a poll asking who the most famous and charismatic scientist was: Pyke came third after Newton and Einstein). He was also the cousin of Geoffrey Pyke, the inventor of Pykrete, the mix of wood-pulp and ice that was almost used to build a gigantic frozen aircraft carrier during WWII.
posted by Hogshead at 4:07 PM on May 15, 2022 [15 favorites]

I didn't get into him until Aliens Ate My Buick (a fun album). But then I time traveled back to TGAOW, and .... wow. I enjoyed listening to those songs, and then I imagined how much fun it must have been to *make* that album, to hear those sounds for the first time as they were being assembled. Sounds that instantly take you to a world you'd never seen and in doing so reinvent the way you see your own world. A remarkable piece of work.
posted by armoir from antproof case at 4:15 PM on May 15, 2022 [4 favorites]

Good heavens, Golden Age of Wireless, you're beautiful!

I was always kind of surprised that "Europa and the Pirate Twins" didn't become a big follow-up hit in the US.

Eastern Bloc (a sequel to "Europa", found on 1992's Astronauts and Heretics) was pretty catchy, too..
posted by Nerd of the North at 4:15 PM on May 15, 2022 [9 favorites]

If you don't know this album, I recommend listening to Windpower and Radio Silence as two songs worth listening to that didn't get radio airplay (at least in the U.S.).
posted by wittgenstein at 4:18 PM on May 15, 2022 [8 favorites]

If you don't know this album, I recommend listening to Windpower and Radio Silence as two songs worth listening to that didn't get radio airplay (at least in the U.S.).

I second those choices.

"Switch off the mind and let the heart decide / who you are meant to be."
posted by Nerd of the North at 4:21 PM on May 15, 2022 [10 favorites]

Oddly, it's Europa and Radio Silence that are the two others that I recognize aside from Blinded. Probably MTV play more than radio (which sucked in my neck of the woods anyways).
posted by zengargoyle at 4:59 PM on May 15, 2022 [2 favorites]

I love Thomas Dolby. His latest work has been more hit-and-miss for me, but still with a few gems. His first three albums, though, I love. I think Airwaves is my favorite off of this album, on any given day. Thanks for the post!
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 5:06 PM on May 15, 2022 [4 favorites]

I'd never heard the Europa sequel. I can't say I love it. It just doesn't have the weird, aching urgency of the original, a song I've always adored. I remember seeing Dolby perform it live on MV3 when I was a kid. He had a big bank of synths and while he was singing he was constantly twiddling knobs and sliding sliders to make all the whooshes and bleeps. If I saw it now maybe it'd be obvious he was lip-syncing to a pre-recorded track or something, but as a kid it seemed like absolute sci-fi music magic.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 5:12 PM on May 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

I have Strong Opinions about this album, but I'm glad it's already been said here that She Blinded Me With Science wasn't actually a part of the original release.

Most of Dolby's catalog is very morose and introspective, something which is easily overshadowed by his more pop hits.

I have such a huge respect for him. He created not only The Ringtone but also The Technology That Played The Ringtone, and I continue to enjoy his output. I always hope he's going to do something new sometime soon.
posted by hippybear at 5:20 PM on May 15, 2022 [4 favorites]

Eastern Bloc (a sequel to "Europa", found on 1992's Astronauts and Heretics) was pretty catchy, too..

Guitar solo by Edward Van Halen, as credited in the liner notes for some reason. Pretty sure that’s the only Van Halen I have ever owned.
posted by fedward at 5:41 PM on May 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

as credited in the liner notes for some reason

I bet the reason is, he played guitar for the track.
posted by hippybear at 5:53 PM on May 15, 2022 [9 favorites]

I’m sure you’re just topping my joke, but why “Edward” and not Eddie, how he was popularly known?
posted by fedward at 6:05 PM on May 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

According to discogs' page for Eddie Van Halen, he used a lot (like a whole lot) of different names for various projects. Not sure why which was selected for what project, but he was not shy contributing his talents or with inventing new pseudonyms for various things.

Also, a middle name like Lodewijk and he didn't use that or a variation on it even once? Hrm!
posted by hippybear at 6:15 PM on May 15, 2022 [3 favorites]

I wound up going down a Wikipedia rabbit hole (again..) and can recommend the short page on One of Our Submarines as interesting background for the song.
posted by Nerd of the North at 6:46 PM on May 15, 2022 [4 favorites]

There's an EP for One Of Our Submarines that is an epic voyage in and of itself. Utterly haunting and even though it's the same song over and over, it's really not.
posted by hippybear at 6:52 PM on May 15, 2022 [6 favorites]

His day and age has come and passed, but he should have been an incarnation of the Doctor.
posted by mollweide at 7:04 PM on May 15, 2022 [10 favorites]

One of my first cassettes I owned was the Blinded By Science EP which contained She Blinded Me With Science, One of Our Submarines, Windpower, Airwaves and Flying North.

I wore this cassette out.

I eventually got The Golden Age of Wireless, and while I loved Europa and the Pirate Twins, most of the other songs bounced right off my 11 year old ears. I dont know why, but Cloudburst on Shingle Street upset me for some reason.

It would be years later before I revisited the album and realized I was full of crap its all good.

While Mr. Dolbys output is uneven, his high points are stratospheric. The Flat Earth has Screen Kiss, Aliens Ate My Buick has Budapest by Blimp, and for some reason, I really have a soft spot for I Love You Goodbye from Astronauts & Heretics.

Oh, and there are no fucking lifeboats
posted by snortasprocket at 7:18 PM on May 15, 2022 [9 favorites]

Well, he's living on a houseboat that is entirely self-sustaining with its own recording studio and supplying its own power, so I think he'll be around for a good long while, even while the seas rise, as long as he can find food.
posted by hippybear at 7:21 PM on May 15, 2022 [5 favorites]

Every Dolby fan has their own definitive version of the album.

“She Blinded Me With Science” was on MTV a lot, but I didn’t have any interest in buying the album until well after “The Flat Earth” had been in heavy rotation for me for a while. So that late release is the one I have. Turns out I’ve never heard “Leipzig.”
posted by fedward at 7:32 PM on May 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

Oh to paint her eyes so red and her lips so blue
Carve her legend on the bow - Caroline four-five-two

I originally thought “Radio Silence” was about an artist or a serial killer. I learned more and thought it was even cooler.
posted by mephron at 7:56 PM on May 15, 2022 [3 favorites]

I learned more and thought it was even cooler.

This is largely the case with much of Dolby's early catalog. He was quite the literary songwriter for quite a while there. (Still is in a lot of ways.)
posted by hippybear at 8:11 PM on May 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

I recall reading that Prof Pyke was none too thrilled with being involved in the video for "She Blinded Me With Science". I just found this excerpt from Dolby's memoirs that expands upon that.

I always liked most of Thomas Dolby's stuff.
posted by Artful Codger at 8:12 PM on May 15, 2022 [2 favorites]

Leipzig is calling you Henry
Leipzig is calling you Jane
Leipzig is calling you Leonard...
posted by Rash at 8:14 PM on May 15, 2022 [3 favorites]

I'm younger than most of this thread, and I first came upon The Golden Age of Wireless when it was somewhat unfashionable in the 2010's, while I was doing a deep dive into what music forum nerds like to call "sophistipop" (basically, lushly produced sentimental 80's art pop... why are genre labels so frequently embarrassing?). I really fell in love with this record! I'm a huge fan of Dolby's work in general. The Flat Earth is my favorite album of his. It's a record I can put on whenever I'm feeling anxious, and it'll really help to calm me down. It's my go-to music before a job interview.

A few other folks have already mentioned some of my favorite lesser-known Dolby tracks, but here's one that's really unsung: Valley of the Mind's Eye, from his soundtrack to one of those goofy 90's "Mind's Eye" early CGI short film compilations. The soundtrack has a couple random pop songs on it, and this is my favorite of them. It's not his best work, and it's pretty corny, but I think it's lovely.

But my most fervent recommendation of all is to check out the albums he mixed for another fantastic "sophistipop" act, Prefab Sprout. The fan favorite is Steve McQueen, but I also love From Langely Park to Memphis. Especially if you're into The Flat Earth, you'll love these. I find their music enjoyable for the same reasons Dolby's is, but I think they're a bit more consistently great across their career (with some very notable exceptions).
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 8:16 PM on May 15, 2022 [9 favorites]

I have maybe too many opinions on this album and thus have little to contribute. I can say, however:

• Wind Power was the best career advice I ever received;
• I returned the favour when TMDR was having noise problems in his UK studio, and I remotely identified it as vibration from the little wind turbine he had on top of the lifeboat

posted by scruss at 8:31 PM on May 15, 2022 [14 favorites]

Prefab Sprout. The fan favorite is Steve McQueen

When I first encountered them (September of 1986) it was called “Two Wheels Good” for some reason, and I adore it.
posted by mephron at 8:55 PM on May 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

I first heard the beautiful, almost plaintive Flying North on a mixtape in college in the '80s. Thank you, chavenet, for reminding me of it and of its creator
posted by virago at 9:13 PM on May 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

once in a while I think about that old "iTunes Radio" function that would take a given song and just attempt to play other "similar" songs (that you might or might not have actually purchased from the iTunes store) indefinitely, and how for some reason, it 100% inevitably wound up on "She Blinded Me with Science" for me

never did figure out what, if anything, that said about me
posted by DoctorFedora at 10:07 PM on May 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

One of my first cassettes I owned was the Blinded By Science EP which contained She Blinded Me With Science, One of Our Submarines, Windpower, Airwaves and Flying North.

This sounds like my version, and it's a tribute to the power of the album format (or in this case mini-album) that a curated sequence of songs can be so much greater than its parts.

I had an Aiwa walkman and a Sony boombox that both automatically kept playing the opposite side of a cassette continuously, and loved the flow and vibe of this version so much that I must have listened to it a hundred times in the early 80's.

Later, in the 90's, after my cassettes died from heat exhaustion, I picked up a used CD copy of The Golden Age of Wireless, and was entirely disappointed. The songs were in a different order, there were extraneous ones, and some of the the ones I had grown to love were entirely different versions.

The Golden Age of Wireless just didn't work for me.

(Of course, this may all be strictly Pavlovian, because I also still miss that mechanical clunk between tracks 3 and 4 when the player switched sides.)
posted by fairmettle at 11:53 PM on May 15, 2022 [7 favorites]

A radio station in Austin picked up Europa and I went straight out and bought Golden Age on vinyl. Was immediately overwhelmed by the whole thing. Science hit MTV a bit later, and I was at first put out a tad by the flippancy of the song, but one day, One of Our Submarines came on while I was driving somewhere and I had to pull the car over. Still my favorite 80’s synth pop piece, Ultravox’s Mr X pulling up a distant second.

I’ve relished every moment of his career since, and saw the tour for The Flat Earth, which in the long run, seems like his strongest overall. Matthew Seligman blew my mind on that album and it broke my heart when he passed a few years ago. What a wonderful guy who spent many years as a human rights lawyer. Dolby and Co. including Seligman got to back up Bowie at Live Aid, which is a fun YouTube digression.

Aliens Ate My Buick was produced by Bill Bottrell, which… just go buy everything he produced. His career was short because he was so picky about who he’d work with, but the man was unequalled in his time. Aliens is a sonic confection, headphone material of the highest order. Some of the titles again suffered lyrically from Dolby’s flippancy, but it’s a sonic romp with the heavyweight masterpiece Budapest By Blimp at its center.

Gerry Garcia tuns in a passable solo on Beauty of a Dream, the final track of Astronauts, which was a personal theme song around the time of my 2nd divorce and 3rd marriage. Lovely little bite of philosophy there that gave me much needed hope at a time when […]

Andy Partridge of XTC played Harmonica on Europa, and for a minute, Dolby considered joining XTC when Barry Andrews left, before they ultimately chose Dave Gregory. I will go to my grave with that giant “What if!” Forever burning a hole into an alternate timeline in my Mind.

And yes, there are no fucking lifeboats.

What a brilliant career he had.
posted by Devils Rancher at 12:48 AM on May 16, 2022 [5 favorites]

Everyone goes on about 'She Blinded Me With Science' because it was on MTV but Dolby's best song ever was 'Europa And The Pirate Twins'.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 1:18 AM on May 16, 2022 [4 favorites]

Oh, I had never heard that a Dolbyfied XTC was a possibility. That would have been something. I don't know that I'd want to give up the XTC we have, but I'd like to spend some time in the timeline where Thomas Dolby did join Andy and Colin.
posted by mollweide at 3:38 AM on May 16, 2022 [4 favorites]

I recall reading that Prof Pyke was none too thrilled with being involved in the video for "She Blinded Me With Science". I just found this excerpt from Dolby's memoirs that expands upon that.

From the excerpt:

Limelight hooked me up with an excellent editor called John Mister,

If this editor was working on music videos on the eighties and did not do any for work with this band, then this is indeed the darkest timeline.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:44 AM on May 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

Dolby has had a hell of a career, and not just in music. And I do so adore Golden Age of Wireless. I adore 'Europa', but I have a soft spot for 'One of Our Submarines'.
posted by rmd1023 at 5:35 AM on May 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

I was listening to this (and The Flat Earth) a few weeks ago. Stunning record. For some reason I have two 12" singles of Science - one with Submarines on the b-side, the other with a cover of The Jungle Line on it. I think that's significant, because, although he didn't do such a successful job at producing her, I'd suggest that Joni Mitchell is a huge influence on him. Screen Kiss, on The Flat Earth, in particular strikes me as Joni-tinged. One thing that strikes me about Dolby's songs is that they're often very emotional, or at least I find them so, about loss and bewilderment, in a way that they don't appear to be on the surface.

A great lost, or mislaid, or slightly obscured, Dolby song is Leipzig, one of his songs about slightly bereft men in suits. That's a version from the tour he did when he resurrected his one-man band in 2006.
posted by Grangousier at 5:46 AM on May 16, 2022 [4 favorites]

I found an original vinyl pressing of TGOAW, with the original tracklist, as a used record store in West Philadelphia. I’d already been a fan of TMDR, and caught him on the Sole Inhabitant tour so I snatched it up. The original sequencing of the album is amazing and it’s an absolute shame that “Wreck of the Fairchild” got slashed in the attempt to jazz it up with more pop cuts—not that the pop cuts aren’t brilliant, mind, but the original sequence is the best for a reason.

Also, because it’s so rare for British celebrities to be pro-trans rights, I just want to point out that Dolby has a trans son, and he’s been vocal in his support. His son’s transition also inspired the song “Simone” from his last album. Dang did that song hit me harder after my own transition too.
posted by SansPoint at 5:51 AM on May 16, 2022 [7 favorites]

Did some googling around in response to this thread and discovered to my delight that Dolby's wife, actress Kathleen Beller, is the girl on the cover of Aliens Ate My Buick. Sweet.
posted by Naberius at 6:07 AM on May 16, 2022 [3 favorites]

I think I got this on cassette, and then on CD. I love every song on the version of the album I have (I've never heard Leipzig.) For some reason, Submarines and Shingle Street are my favorites.
posted by Spike Glee at 6:49 AM on May 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

Everyone goes on about 'She Blinded Me With Science' because it was on MTV but Dolby's best song ever was ...

Flying North
posted by philip-random at 7:36 AM on May 16, 2022 [3 favorites]

I'll bust out my old school vinyl copy when I'm done work.

We will be the pirate twins again....
posted by lumpenprole at 11:17 AM on May 16, 2022 [1 favorite]

Dolby's wife, actress Kathleen Beller, is the girl on the cover of Aliens Ate My Buick.

She also played the actress Genco Abbandando was sweet on in The Godfather Part II.
posted by kirkaracha at 1:41 PM on May 16, 2022 [1 favorite]

I remember seeing Dolby perform it live on MV3 when I was a kid. He had a big bank of synths and while he was singing he was constantly twiddling knobs and sliding sliders to make all the whooshes and bleeps.

Yes! This was my introduction to Thomas Dolby, and Europa has always been my favorite song of his. MV3 was a huge part of my musical life for the two years it existed.
posted by oneirodynia at 7:31 PM on May 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

scruss said "Wind Power was the best career advice I ever received;"

I played a tiny local electronic music festival near Baltimore the autumn before the pandemic that he was invited to play in and, even more inexplicably, actually did, despite our criminally small audience, and the lone moment of fanboy fawning I allowed myself at the end of the event was to tell him that the bass line of "Windpower" and the quality of the timbre used, with those delicious scanning wavetables wheezing out of a PPG 340/380, was one of the cornerstones of me wanting to make music because of how much feeling could be expressed by a single, well-rendered series of not many notes.

Still some of my best career advice, both lyrical and timbral. There is no enemy.
posted by sonascope at 5:21 AM on May 17, 2022 [6 favorites]

I will always associate Dolby with a loss, I remember moving across the country and my best friend and I had just discovered TGAW and we were absolutely bonkers over it.. from the piles of his older brother's vinyl to U2's Joshua Tree on a shale beach by the river and this cassette tape of tunes that sounded like nothing else. I still remember the grief of moving, having a rough year missing friends, and the excitement to travel back that summer and produce Aliens Ate My Buick. My friend, a year older, had completely moved on, he just wanted to practice his Van Morrison songbook on the guitar. Dolby remains a memory, it's good to have that memory nudged but like a lot of music I have a time and place for it and there it resides.
posted by elkevelvet at 7:44 AM on May 17, 2022 [3 favorites]

Thanks to this post I have now bought the 2009 remastered version of TGAW and am deeply happy, listening to it. Thanks MeFi!
posted by papercake at 8:25 AM on May 17, 2022 [2 favorites]

snortasprocket: One of my first cassettes I owned was the Blinded By Science EP which contained She Blinded Me With Science, One of Our Submarines, Windpower, Airwaves and Flying North.

Wow. Thank you for sharing that story. I'd never heard the EP before and it's great -- I especially love the longer version of "Flying North." I had the US cassette release of TGAOW and played it endlessly. I've listened to it off and on over the years but it's always good to have a reason to listen again.

Thank you, chavenet.
posted by swerve at 11:19 AM on May 17, 2022 [1 favorite]

I have a early version of the album that has a song called Urges I actually like it better than some of the songs that were on the later album version.
posted by boilermonster at 11:36 PM on May 17, 2022 [2 favorites]

I love the side notes, from the links here:
1. That Dolby made enough money to record TGAOW from his fees in creating the synth part in Foreigner's Waiting for a Girl Like you.
2. Dolby - and his team - were responsible for making a software synth small enough to be downloaded as a browser plugin; late 1990s. This technology was bought up by Nokia who used it to make polyphonic ring tones such this rendition of Francisco Tarrega's Gran Waltz.
- So, if you happen to be talking to somebody about Dolby - there are some pretty high profile "He's the guy who..." stories.

Personally, my favourite Thomas Dolby track is his cover of Dan Hick's "I Scare Myself" - released 1983 - here he is covering it with Hicks back in 2014.
posted by rongorongo at 2:40 AM on May 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

I have a early version of the album that has a song called Urges

I think Urges and Leipzig were both halves of a very early single. Other pre-Wireless songs include Puppet Theatre and New Toy (which he wrote for Lene Lovich when he was part of her band).

And nthing the recommendations for Steve McQueen - on that and The Flat Earth Dolby managed a production style that was simultaneously impeccably eighties-tastic and timeless.
posted by Grangousier at 6:23 AM on May 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

The Making of She Blinded With Science
The Making of Europa and the Pirate Twins

Despite the label, that latter is a performance - from a presentation of the Roland Lifetime Achievement Award to Dolby at the 2018 NAMM.
posted by Grangousier at 6:57 AM on May 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

Grangousier: Dolby was also part of Bruce Woolley & The Camera Club, a short-lived band that released the first version of "Video Killed the Radio Star" (which Woolley co-wrote with the Buggles). You can see and hear TMDR in the backing band on this OGWT performance.
posted by SansPoint at 7:19 AM on May 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

One of my worst moments to follow: back in 1983, I was a sophomore at Northeastern University and somehow--through magic I still do not understand--I parlayed an internship into a part time radio job at WBCN in Boston. The station was in its heyday.

The pay was terrible but the perks, I discovered, were legendary, and the greatest perk of all was getting backstage to hang out with actual rock stars.

I was a massive Dolby fan since high school, and he was going to be my very first celebrity meet. I got all dressed up as any 19 year old would (black t shirt, black boots, black jeans) and sat through his show at the Orpheum Theater in Boston, literally vibrating with excitement knowing I was going to meet Thomas Dolby.

I had practiced how cool I was going to be, how I was going to thank him for his show. You know, cool but not too cool. Like, "We're both totally cool and we know it," sort of vibe. I had a speech ready and was practicing it so hard that I spaced out during "Hyperactive."

Somehow the show was over and we were shepherded backstage into a small room, where the WBCN crew and I sat and chatted with the label reps.

Dolby came in a few minutes later and sat on an unoccupied sofa. Folks came over to him, then he got up and began walking around the room.

I panicked. Was he going to walk over to me? Was he going to sit down again? What if my speech was silly and I made a fool of myself? Should I walk towards him? What if two people walked at the same time? How could I ensure a straight shot at him? What if I got there and someone came back to talk more? What if I needed to introduce someone whose name I forgot?

In the 2 minutes that I stood there, trying to decide how to be cool in front of Thomas Dolby, the meet and greet ended and he left the room.

I learned to be more aggressive because of my teenage idiocy (I was actually VERY cool with Tears for Fears) but I will never forget what a ninny I was in front of him.
posted by yes I said yes I will Yes at 9:28 AM on May 18, 2022 [5 favorites]