Tech Talk

It isn’t hard to picture Thomas Dolby as a young lad growing up in his native England, hovering intently over a kiddie chemistry set and patiently mixing stuff in hopes that something might combust. The 29-year-old keyboardist was just a face in the crowd when a pack of new wave synth-brats invaded our shores a few years back, but his 1983 debut EP and subsequent album, The Golden Age Of Wireless, quickly distinguished Dolby from his fellow somber Brits as—gasp!— an Englishman with a sense of humor, a notion that was reinforced by the mad scientist image he cultivated for the cover of Wireless and the video for his loopy dance hit “She Blinded Me With Science.”