Roland presents Thomas Dolby with a lifetime achievement award. Dolby discusses his relationiship with Roland instruments and performs "She Blinded Me with Science" at the 2018 NAMM show.
What an iconic figure. Besides Roland, it's a testament to an odball musician that he's been able to last for decades in a fickle music market. He's given me some enduring musical memories. Rock on, mad scientist boy. With SCIENCE! ;D
Great talk/performance! I only recently discovered that Tom developed probably one of the widest-used synths on Earth, a softsynth on Nokia mobile phones and he wrote loads of ringtones, including THAT Nokia ringtone. A true synth legend.
"Thomas Dolby plays iconic Roland instruments that Roland refuses to remake even though the market cries out for them and Korg smashes their backdoors in yet again"
massive hero of mine and a pioneer of hiphop and doesnt get the respect he deserves from the hiphop community for bringing better production and structure to bring hiphop too the masses. god bless you thomas thanks for all the insperation youve given me
Thomas, you're a true inspiration in so many avenues - music, innovative thinking, open-mindedness, embracing change, and curiosity. I've had the pleasure of meeting you a couple of times in Toronto, and I get a great thrill of dragging people into your orbit - who inevitably say something to the effect of 'Wow, I never knew he was this...or this..." Such is the nature of our consumable pop culture that is wired to pigeon-hole people by one sound-byte (or synth riff) - anything more than that and it's 'memory stack overload.' So it really doesn't know how to process a multi-faceted human like yourself ;-) Thanks for your music, your example, and your joie de vivre - oh, and thanks for writing the song that sits at #1 on my favourites playlist, 'The Flat Earth.' Keep techno-noodling, I can't wait to see what you come up with next!
I have always been a fan of TD even though my main interest is Jazz. I recently read his autobiography and my respect for him increased further. He has a catalogue of great songs. However I would like to see him concentrate on some new material, surely any record company would want to sign him up.
When is Roland going to make another proper poly analogue synth, like the DSI OB6 or the new Korg Prologue, and yes I,ve played the JDXA and it sucks, just bring back the Juno 60 id buy one.
