I've been exceedingly moody for the last few days - more so than being a tempermental artist warrants. I generally despise middle-aged suits who think their high school years were the best and it's been all downhill - yet there's a part of me that clings to 17.

In my late teens and early 20's I'd occasionally have vivid dreams about record hunting. On overcast days I'd be scouring grungy record bins in a place that is an amalgam of Orpheus, Vinyl Ink, Y&T, the Melody Shop, etc. This mythical shop was often in the space on Connecticut and R that is now a Starbucks, but was Schwartz Pharmacy when I was a kid. In some miscellaneous section, mis-filed, I'd find a cache of singles by Thomas Dolby [or alternately, Tears for Fears] - songs I'd never heard of before, with even more exotic sounding B-sides, c. 1981. I'd beg borrow or steal from whoever I happened to be with. I'd walk out onto Connecticut avenue with $100 of aging 45s - into a sunny mid-morning a lot like this morning.

I'd wander around for a few blocks, maybe run into my best friend from high school. We'd head over to some groovy outdoor show that he'd heard about, up at the Spanish steps in the neighborhood to see some band we'd never heard before. Every friend of mine with a camera has shot 8" * 10" glossies of at least one goth band there.

The band would be set up at the top of the steps and the crowd would always be hippy/artsy kids, not unlike the crowd at Fort Reno. The band would turn out to be Thomas Dolby using a cover. Unambitious for a wish-fulfillment dream, but there you have it.

So about a month ago Adrian Parsons clued me in that Dolby was coming to the Birchmere. At first I was really excited, but as the days went by I got increasingly anxious. What if it was just a bunch of sequenced samples? I hemmed and hawed about getting tickets, and Sherene really had to talk me into it - more than once.

So Colby asked me for the dirt, and I wrote:

some of it was pretty corny but overall it was great. he's got a lot of charisma - really at ease in his own skin. the crowd was really good too - sold out I think. Sherene and I were among the youngest. the people next to us had driven down from NYC. Very sequencer-driven, but better than Kim Hiorthoy/Autechre. No drum kits on fire, but told lots of jokes and interacted with the crowd a lot. For a bunch of the songs [Flat Earth, Hyperactive, Airhead] he built the loops up live, then once the loops were filled out he'd sing the songs. There's a video on his blog doing flat earth at a tech conference earlier in the year, with v/o describing what's going on. Those were the best/most interesting. Also he opened with Liepzig - one of the oldest tracks, but translated well to new tech.

Colby had mentioned on his blog [which will return someday, blame me for not hooking him up] that he is pretty much through with laptronica because it is devoid of performance.

Sherene leaned over during the show and whispered that he sounded a little like Tom Waits. It occurred to me that he would be great on Broadway - maybe singing 'Mac the Knife' or 'Frank's Wild Years.' He doesn't take himself too seriously, an attribute I really appreciate/aspire to as I mentioned in my post about Jeff Spaulding. Sherene was furiously taking notes during the show, but I don't know what she was writing about or if I'll get to see them. Anyway, more to Colby...

What's weird is he operates between two poles - p-funky on one end and english pub ballads on the other and they don't mix well. He did One of Our Submarines and Flying North - the grooves would have been great at a dance club, but the vocals were performed more like a ballad - would have been better with just a piano. But he pulled off Blinded by Science perfectly - the best version of it I'd ever heard - not radically different, but super-tight.

Clearly the tour is going well. When he started the blog a few weeks ago he clearly had no plans for an album or any new material - but the tour seems to be going really well and he is pumped. He said last night that he'd be back at the Birchmere before the end of the year with new material.

And, returning to normality after a month of anxiety...

Got Paul Simon on iTunes this morning. Similar to another day on earth, but I think better. PS invests more in his lyrics - there's something at stake in them - not so much the case with Eno [if at all].

Sherene found a snake skin in the park on the corner this morning. She said it was still warm when she picked it up. She left it on my desk.