Thomas Dolby - Aliens Ate My Buick

People who think they know Thomas Dolby probably don't know who Thomas Dolby is. "She Blinded Me With Science", his gold single (in Canada), is the start and finish of most summaries of his career. Which is too bad. He's viewed as a techno-wunderkind with a penchant for using technology to create soulless music that's about as niche as you can get.

The reality is more nuanced, and although I cannot claim to be a great source of intimate knowledge on all things Dolby, I have over the years accumulated a good chunk of his studio output, starting with the two different releases of his debut and ending with his 2011 album A Map of the Floating City. I don't have his soundtrack stuff outside of the stellar The Gate to the Mind's Eye that I had on compact disc and VHS.

On the surface, the funk-infused sound that permeates Aliens Ate My Buick is jarring and seems at odds with what a Thomas Dolby album is supposed to be. Of course, that's a load of numpty twaddle if you have listened to The Flat Earth. That was an album I adored, but it did take a little bit to get under my skin. I was expecting more of what made The Golden Age of Wireless so appealing, and what I got was more organic and leaned into dark and moody textures. Sure, "Hyperactive" felt deliciously familiar, but it was the last track on the album and was honestly out of step with the half dozen preceding songs.

Aliens Ate My Buick followed on from The Flat Earth, taking things even farther from the sounds and style that made his music accessible (okay, accessible is a stretch, but bear with me) and appealing (it was). Here was an artist exploring all of the colours on his musical palate, mixing and blending tones that you wouldn't think were to be fitted together. Although I have to be honest, hearing Robin Leach doing his Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous voice over on "The Keys to Her Ferrari" wasn't something I'd have expected on a Thomas Dolby record.

For the album, he assembled a band he called The Lost Toy People, featuring Larry Treadwell on guitar, Mike Kapitan on synthesizer, Terry Jackson on bass, David Owens on drums and Laura Creamer on vocals and percussion. They were good, and the songs sounded great. Not everything worked, and even back in the day, I found this to be more challenging than enjoyable. "Airhead" is a song that feels like a kissing cousin to "Hyperactive", and I like it more now than I did back in '88. The George Clinton composition "Hot Sauce" was a curiosity. I like it, I think. A funk spaghetti western song should, by default, be cool. It's a grower, I'll give it that. However, the album contained a couple of truly jaw-dropping moments. The first is "The Ability to Swing", a song that after all this time puts a goofy grin on my face. The other is the almost otherworldly jazz-infused "Budapest by Blimp", which clocks in at over eight and a half minutes ... and there are no wasted moments. If I were to try and encapsulate Thomas Dolby's ambitious nature as a songwriter, this is my exhibit A.

The omission on the LP is "May the Cube Be With You", and not having it here is kind of sad. It was a "bonus" track on the cassette and CD; it was probably the best of his funk-infused tracks. There was space on the record, but with the odd song lengths, I'm guessing getting it to fit would have meant resequencing the songs, so they just left it off. It's a glaring omission. Oh well, I still have "Airhead."

I've not listened to this for a long time, and while the funk elements present on many of the tracks aren't my cup of tea, they were okay but were never, and still aren't, all that appealing. I always liked this for what it had more than what it didn't, and I was willing to wade through the challenging bits to be rewarded by the highlights.

It's too bad this didn't catch on the way his first two Canadian gold albums did ... this was no doubt artistically fulfilling and showed that Thomas was an artist who wasn't content being pigeonholed. I bought the CD back in '88, so at least he got credit for the sale. I will say I enjoyed this way more than I expected. Ambition is one thing, but making music people connect with is something else, and people just weren't ready for Thomas Dolby to be a funky white boy ... perhaps they were still blinded by his science.

Styx - Paradise Theater

Styx was hands down one of my favourite bands as a kid. They were a strange band, even back then. They were a hard rock band, almost progressive at times, who had a penchant for sucky ballads. I know there's a tendency for people to zero in on "Babe" as the song that killed the band's credibility. The roots go way back to almost the beginning when Styx released "Lady" on their second album. It showed a side to the band that needed to be kept in check, and for the most part the band kept things on a pretty tight leash. The band had been setting a gruelling pace, releasing an album a year (two in 1972) and by the time they released Paradise Theater (if I end up writing theatre later it's because that's how we spell it here) in 1981 they'd dropped ten albums in less than a decade. I snapped this up as soon as I saw it, and it became a fixture on my turntable. Like the band had announced on "Borrowed Time" from 1979's Cornerstone , ...

David Baerwald - Bedtime Stories

The little sticker on the shrinkwrap says, "You may remember David Baerwald from David & David's Boomtown ..." You bet, I remembered David Baerwald. Back in 1986 Boomtown was an album with moments of sheer brilliance. The whole album may not have been as top shelf as the first few tracks, but that didn't matter - it is an excellent album. I waited for a follow-up ... and waited, and then in 1990 it was a solo David, David Baerwald, who dropped Bedtime Stories . I snapped it up. "All For You," the opening cut, is still my favourite song on the album. It was mesmerizing. I'm not sure if the song got any airplay, it may have, but that may have been wishful thinking on my part as it was on a lot of mix tapes at the time and I heard it a lot in the car. The CD had a great booklet with all of the musician credits and lyrics. Oddly, when I found a sealed copy of the record (a great score), it just had a plain paper insert - the picture of David walking wit...

Gary Numan - The Pleasure Principle

"Cars" was really the only song I knew by Gary Numan. I knew the name of the album the song came from. Over the years bits and pieces of trivia are accumulated, but in terms of his music it was still distilled down to one song ... It would be too easy to write Mr. Numan off as a one hit wonder, and I suppose in terms of actual chart hits this was his defining moment as a solo artist. Of course this really means nothing, as Gary Numan would drop an album a year pretty much through to the end of the '80s. He'd then slow down a little but continued to make music. While The Pleasure Principle was Gary Numan's debut solo release in '79, he actually cut his teeth on a couple of albums in a band called Tubeway Army, first with the band's self-titled release in 1978, and then on Replicas that came out in April of '79. By the end of Tubeway Army's run most of the band would follow Gary into his solo career. Paul Gardiner, who had been with Gary from the b...

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