The Flat Earth

I love 80’s British pop, especially if it has a fair amount of keyboards and synthesizers. You can break it down and call some of it New Wave, New Romantic, Dance, Alternative or Goth, what ever you call it, by and large I love it.

In my pre-teen and teen years there were three bands that topped my list, and even though today I would be torn to shreds inside if I had to pick favorites, there was no question back in the day*. To this day I frequently listen to their records and love them as much as I did then. They are as follows, in no particular order.

Thompson Twins
Thomas Dolby
Erasure

Years ago TT broke down, first splitting with Joe Leeway, then morphing into a two-piece called Babble. They drifted away into mostly retro play lists. About every six months I will do a search on them, and the members names just to be sure I am not missing anything. I was lucky to see them twice, and I would be thrilled to see them again.







Erasure continues to make wonderful music, and they still consistently sell out multiple nights in a row in all the major cities. I’ve been very lucky to see them seven times and I don’t need to search for them on the web as I get the fan club emails keeping me in the know at all times.


Thomas Dolby has done a few musical things in the last fifteen years, but mostly he has been working in the in the technology world (quite successfully) with cell phone ring tone and software etc… He always said he loved to tour but because he had so much equipment and the unstable nature of computers on the go in the 80’s that it was very cost prohibitive. I was NOT lucky enough to see him in the 80’s and I check his website about once every three to four months just to see what is going on. A few months ago I was happily surprised that he was again going to tour.

I keep a very short list of bands I never got to see, Husker Du for one, I missed them in St. Louis and no joke, two days later they split. Nirvana because I was either broke when they came through or because one night I already had tickets for another show the same night. XTC and the Smiths, they never played a city I lived in while I lived there. It doesn’t seem likely that Husker Du will reunite, or XTC or the Smiths and why I can't see Nirvana is pretty obvious. **

But tomorrow night I will get to check one off of my list. I will be seeing Thomas Dolby, and I am so excited and giddy with anticipation. Then to make the week even better I will be seeing Erasure on Thursday. What a great week, you really can’t go wrong with that kind of line up.

* Men at Work do not count as they were Australian (for the most part).

**I don’t put people like Johnny Cash or Roy Orbison because they were never really touring when I could have gone because I was too young etc…