The economics of touring the USA are \u2013 as for any musician based in the UK — daunting for Dolby. \u201cI would love to tour in the late summer or the fall,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019d have to figure out how to do it economically; I haven\u2019t got a full-time band. Because of the range of music on this album, I don\u2019t think it would be appropriate to do it solo with a rig of rack gear the way I did on my Sole Inhabitant<\/em> tour. It needs real musicians. But the cost of rehearsing and then taking out four or five musicians is very high. And after a brief renaissance the last few years, the live touring business is definitely going through some hard times at the moment; it\u2019s going through quite a recession.\u201d<\/p>\n One option might be what Dolby describes as \u201cponying up with a similar act, doing a double bill and sharing some of the costs.\u201d He laughs that \u201cevery week I get an offer to go off and do some eighties revival tour with ABC<\/strong> and A Flock of Seagulls<\/strong>. With all due respect, I wouldn\u2019t touch something like that with a ten foot pole. It would be an admission of \u2018All my glory days are behind me; if you want to get a few drinks in you and take a walk down Memory Lane, come to our show.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAll of my favorite artists transcend the era that they\u2019re from,\u201d Dolby observes. \u201cYou don\u2019t really think of Kraftwerk<\/strong> or Van Morrison<\/strong> as really having a decade associated with them. I\u2019d much rather be in that category, and I\u2019m very proud of my new stuff. I\u2019m not a twenty-three year old pinup these days, but I think artistically Oceanea<\/em> is as good as anything I\u2019ve ever done.\u201d<\/p>\n While Dolby has been very busy with a lot of different things for the last decade — ringtone development in Silicon Valley, serving as Musical Director for the groundbreaking TED Conference \u2013 he hasn\u2019t kept a high profile in the pop music world. His new online game The Floating City<\/em> is (among its other virtues) part of a strategy to increase his profile. \u201cIt\u2019s a creative enterprise in and of itself,\u201d he says, \u201cand I\u2019ve really enjoyed building it. During those years when I was not making music, the internet came to be. And [online] groups came about on a daily basis, interpreting my lyrics, analyzing my chord sequences, and making tribute cover versions. Kind of like [I was] a dead guy who\u2019d gone away,\u201d he chuckles.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve done four solo albums spread over thirty years, which is pretty sparse,\u201d Dolby admits. \u201cI was talking to Peter Gabriel<\/strong> the other day, and I told him, \u2018I\u2019m slow even by your standards!\u2019 But there is a continuity that runs through the whole body of work. And the game that I\u2019m building takes all of that \u2013 the characters, the place names, the mythology \u2013 and creates an alternative reality world around them. There\u2019s a bit of a mystery, and there\u2019s a back story that you have to discover collaboratively through exploration and problem-solving.\u201d There\u2019s a significant prize for the winning team. Dolby says, \u201cI\u2019ll do a private concert for them, at which I\u2019ll perform the new album A Map of the Floating City <\/em>in full.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo it\u2019s an artistic endeavor that I take very seriously,\u201d Dolby asserts. \u201cOn the flip side, it\u2019s also designed as a marketing campaign. Among hardcore fans, they keep current and tend to snap up whatever I\u2019ve done. But there\u2019s a much larger group \u2013 maybe ten times that size \u2013 who have heard of me. Maybe they have an old record of mine in their collection, or have seen videos of mine on MTV. And the goal, really, is to convert the second group into the first group. I\u2019m hoping that a lot of people who are not already committed fans will be attracted to the game, and that during the course of the game, they\u2019ll fall in love with the music.\u201d<\/p>\n That marketing model is akin to game-as-gateway-drug. \u201c\u2019Drug\u2019 is an accurate word in some ways,\u201d Dolby concedes. \u201cThough some in the music industry fail to understand, I think we are<\/em> drug dealers. Because until people fall in love with their music, there is no market there. There are very few people who buy stuff sight unseen. Instead, the earworm gets in their brain with a piece of music, and they\u2019ve got to have it. That\u2019s what a hit is, really. And that hasn\u2019t really changed, regardless of changes in technology.\u201d<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/musoscribe.com\/images\/thomas_dolby_2010.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/musoscribe.com\/images\/thomas_dolby_amerikana.jpg\")
\u201cIt was all very amusing,\u201d Dolby continues. \u201cBut one of the things that developed was a form of fan fiction. People would take on the names of characters from the songs. And they would write a sort of fantasy collaborative fiction, extending some of the mythology that was in the songs. I thought that was really interesting; there are a lot of cross references in the songs, and people tied together loose ends.\u201d<\/p>\n
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