Thomas Dolby - BBC in Concert, The Dominion Theatre, London, Britain, 2-28-1984

I had no plans to post anything by British new wave musician Thomas Dolby. But it turns out he performed a concert for the BBC in 1984. I gave it a listen and it's quite good, so here it is.

I consider Dolby to be a very talented musician and songwriter, best known for his hit songs "She Blinded Me with Science" and "Hyperactive." The problem I have with his music career though is that there isn't that much of it. He's a man of many talents, and writing and recording music is just one of the things he does. For instance, he started two successful Silicon Valley companies, and was the CEO of one of them for many years. He also is a professor of a music program at John Hopkins University. Additionally, he's been a musical director for TED talks, and has been involved in virtual reality technology.

With so many other things going on, he's rarely done any concert tours. In fact, at one point he went 15 years without any public performances. But it seems his music career was a higher priority in the early 1980s, when he had most of his hits, so we have this recording.

This appears to be the compete concert. It was broadcast on the BBC at various times with various edits. Most bootleg versions on the Internet don't include two songs, "The Flat Earth" and "Windpower," but this version has them all.

Note that one of the songs here was never officially released by Dolby in any form: "New Toy." He wrote it for Lene Lovich, who had a minor hit with it in Britain in 1981. So it's great to have his version of his own song.

This concert is an hour and nine minutes long.

01 White City (Thomas Dolby)
02 Dissidents (Thomas Dolby)
03 The Flat Earth (Thomas Dolby)
04 One of Our Submarines (Thomas Dolby)
05 Puppet Theatre (Thomas Dolby)
06 talk (Thomas Dolby)
07 New Toy (Thomas Dolby)
08 Airwaves (Thomas Dolby)
09 I Scare Myself (Thomas Dolby)
10 Hyperactive (Thomas Dolby)
11 Europa and the Pirate Twins (Thomas Dolby)
12 She Blinded Me with Science (Thomas Dolby)
13 Commercial Breakup (Thomas Dolby)
14 Windpower (Thomas Dolby)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15289108/ThomDolb_1984_BBInConcrtDminionTheatreLondnBritain__2-28-1984_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from his 1984 tour, but I don't know the details.