Let me just throw this out there: I am married. I have 3 children, including a 5-month old boy. For the purposes of this blog, this means that my nights out are few and far between. I am a huge fan of live music, but I can’t go out as much as I used to. I need to choose my shows wisely. And then I need to wring every drop out of my concertgoing nights.

My friend Todd had invited me to go see Thomas Dolby with him. Thomas Dolby hasn’t toured in 15 years, and his first two albums were a regular soundtrack to my high school years. Plus I hadn’t seen Todd in months. I had to go. But a favorite local songwriter of mine, John Vecchiarelli, was also playing tonight. I haven’t seen a John Vecc set since before we had our baby. His songs are wonderful; sad and beautiful, they fill up my soul and give me hope. So I was intent on catching that show too. John was the opening act of a triple bill, on at 8pm. Thomas Dolby was slated to take the stage across town at 9pm. Could I make it? I was sure gonna try.

John Vecchiarelli, 20 Apr 2006, Mississippi Studios, Portland, OR setlist : Idiot Kids / Cocoon / Well Read / My Own Design / B-Side / Whoville / Lillian

If you really want to “get” John’s set, you need a listening room and a quiet audience. Mississippi Studios is just such a place. Every show feels like a house concert - very intimate. Audiences are usually pretty attentive and there is minimal talking. Tonight things went well — John was in a jovial mood and made several jokes about Jandek (who was playing a show elsewhere in PDX at the same time). The songs went really well. “Idiot Kids” is a great opener; it really sets the stage for what is to come. John featured two songs (”Well Read” and “B-Side”) from a new album he’s working on, and even included one of my favorites - “My Own Design” from his first cd “Tiny Rooms”. The audience got a little chatty toward the end, but John pulled them back in with his last song of the night — “Lillian”.

John Vecchiarelli - My Own Design

I said my goodbyes and looked at the clock on my cellphone. 9:00pm!! I text messaged Todd:

Me: tell tom to wait.
T: too late!

Aaaagh! I made good time to the Aladdin, but still didn’t arrive there until 9:20. Just in time for “Flying North”.

Thomas Dolby, 20 Apr 2006, Aladdin Theater, Portland, OR setlist: Leipzig / One Of Our Submarines / I Live In A Suitcase / Flying North / Budapest By Blimp / Windpower / Europa And The Pirate Twins / Hyperactive / She Blinded Me With Science // Airhead

I hope the picture you see above conveys the fact that Thomas Dolby looks like The Borg. And all that equipment — the dude doesn’t need roadies, he needs Sys Admins! It had been a long time since I’d seen a synthesizer show, and in my mind they are usually hella boring. But Mr. Dolby took several precautions to stave off the ennui:

1) The video camera mounted on his head let the audience have a look at Thomas’ hands as he moved around from drum pad to keyboard to sequencer. It let you know in the most visceral way that the music (well, most of it) was not canned.

2) Several songs were built from the ground up, to give us all an idea of his songwriting process. He would program a drum loop, lay a bassline over the top of it, some synth lines, a hand clap here and there, and voila — we were all hopping up and down to the tune of “Hyperactive!”

3) Finally, and most importantly, free t-shirts thrown out to the audience whenever his systems would crash and the music would abruptly halt (and I’m thinking “Now this is what I remember about synthesizer-based gigs!”). This happened twice - once near the beginning, and once during the encore.

I will publicly lament here the short set and the lack of songs from TD’s stellar second album “The Flat Earth”. And then I will post an mp3 of a song that used to be rare (from early versions of “The Golden Age Of Wireless”) but is now ubiquitous (appeared on a Greatest Hits comp at the end of the 90’s):

Thomas Dolby - Leipzig

Check out Thomas Dolby’s blog, where he talks about the tour and makes electro-musicians drool with his in-depth gear descriptions.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 22nd, 2006 at 8:15 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.