THOMAS DOLBY The Golden Age Of Wireless LP Vinyl & Cover VG+ 1983 ST 12271

I consider "The Golden Age of Wireless" to be a unique masterpiece. I own hundreds of albums stretching from the mid-Sixties to the present day, and this is one of my top twenty, it not top ten. Still, I can't properly describe it. It's like somebody on an island isolated from the New Wave found a synthesizer and created his own electronic version of rock, jazz, and pop music. It's warm and soulful in a mechanical and stoically British way. This album resonates with me on a personal level. Despite having an ocean and a generation between us, I feel a kinship with Thomas Dolby (or at least with the fictional protagonist of his songs).It's also one of those albums that sounds like a unified work of art rather than just a series of very good songs. That's why the world needed this release, which restores its rarely-heard original song sequence. That's also why it's strange to read in the liner notes that the album was recorded at several different studios with different band and personnel lineups over the course of a couple years.I tried to recreate the definitive version of "The Golden Age of Wireless" using the old C.D. edition, the additional tracks on "Retrospectacle," a vinyl rip from Kazaa, GoldWave, and Nero. I've been listening to that for years, but hearing the real thing in remastered form was still a thrilling experience.The other reviewers have covered the album pretty well, so I'll mainly talk about the 2009 remastered and expanded edition. The front and back cover of the L.P. are on the front and back cover of this release. A textless copy of the reissue cover with Dolby on stage is on the back of the liner notes. This isn't one of those fancy inserts that shows all the single covers, but it does have publicity photos I've never seen before. More importantly, the liner notes are written by Dolby himself, and they include background information and musings on each song and the album as a whole."The Wreck of the Fairchild" (and its segue into the introduction of "Airwaves") is the biggest revelation of the remastered album. It's a heterogeneous semi-instrumental that deepens the contradictory and mysterious feel of the album. I've heard it many times as the downloaded vinyl rip mentioned above, but the sound here is obviously worlds better, and a subtle song like this benefits greatly from improved sound. Before I ever found a copy, I'd read about the lost song and how it was inspired by the crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571. The liner notes here provide additional details.After the original nine-track version of the album are five songs that were included in one or more reissues. "One of Our Submarines" provides the perfect transition between these two blocks of songs, since it's the add-on that sounds most at-home on the album. I still think of "She Blinded Me with Science" as my favorite Thomas Dolby song, despite its shallow silliness. Hearing the 12" version was what originally got me interested in the artist. "Retrospectacle" was the first compact disc I ever bought for myself, and that was on the strength of "Science" and a featurette on Thomas Dolby I caught on T.V. at a motel. So it's hard to step back and look at this song objectively next to his other work."Urges" and "Leipzig" have a pure and clean electronic sound that reminds me of O.M.D. Thomas Dolby has never done anything before or since that sounds quite like it. They fit into "Wireless" reasonably well. In my early days of listening to "Retrospectacle" I thought they were essentially the same song twice, but now I've come to differentiate and appreciate them. I like Leipzig better. These two tracks are where I can best appreciate the new(ish) remastering over the twenty year old remastering of "Retrospectacle."Dolby mentioned long ago that "The Wreck of the Fairchild" started life as a vocal song entitled "Sale of the Century," and now you can finally listen to that version. There's an extra little bit between the sung bridge and where the prayer would go, but otherwise the backing track is just a bare-bones version of "Fairchild." The anti-corporate lyrics are in much the same vein as "Commercial Breakup," and Dolby delivers them in a punkish style. It's an interesting alternative, but it's easy to see why he discarded the words. The demo of "Airwaves" has an intriguing "Doctor Who"-esque intro, but mostly sounds like a primitive and sparse version of the album cut, and the dispassionate vocal performance doesn't appeal to me. "Therapy/Growth" is listed as a demo, but it's the same version released as a B-side to "Europa and the Pirate Twins" in 1981. It does sound like a demo, though, as does "Urban Tribal." Both are British slice-of-life songs not far removed from the content of "Wireless." Dolby's singing in these shaky early songs often reminds me of David Bowie's shaky early songs. "Pedestrian Walkway," a run-through of a song he wrote for the Fallout Club, is a fun insane little snippet at the end of the C.D.If one song really sticks out sound-wise, it's the guitar version of "Radio Silence." It's very good, and I enjoy it much more than the synth version. But that one is such a perfect fit for the album that I can't disagree with including it over this one. Sources have disagreed over which version came first, but the liner notes here make it clear that the guitar version was recorded first and the synth version was released on the first version of the album. Both were released on a single a couple months before the album, with the synth version on side A and guitar on B. So if I weren't a vinyl-shunning Nineties kid I could've been listening to it all along.The bonus tracks on both "Wireless" and "The Flat Earth" avoid the extended mixes (even the one of "She Blinded Me with Science" that was on some pressings of the album) so they don't overlap with 12 x 12. The liner notes mention other remastered bonus tracks available for download at Thomas Dolby's website. I wonder if these orphaned tracks mean that the expanded editions were planned as two-disc sets but pared down to single discs (though technically the concert D.V.D. makes "Wireless" a two-disc set). Despite being released on vinyl in at least three different versions, "The Jungle Line" is absent from all these C.D.s and downloads (but there is a live performance on the D.V.D.).I haven't even talked about the D.V.D. yet. It contains "Live Wireless," which was released on home video in late 1983. One would expect the music videos for the "Wireless" singles to be there too, but there one would be wrong. I'm not much for concert videos, but "Live Wireless" is reasonably enjoyable. The concert is intercut with Dolby acting in strange black and white segments that don't really add anything and are mainly just distracting. At one point we're shown a woman's bare breasts for absolutely no reason.Dolby and his band play all the songs you'd expect, plus a couple rarities and songs he wrote for other musicians. The performances mostly sound very close to the studio versions, the major exceptions being "Flying North," "Airwaves," and "Puppet Theater." That last one is an odd entry in the set, since a studio recording wouldn't surface until the "Flat Earth" singles. And those seem a world away from the music here.I really can't recommend this release enough. If you're a Thomas Dolby fan, this is as essential as it gets. If you're not, "The Golden Age of Wireless" is still essential, and the 2009 edition is the only way to hear it in proper sequence and good sound.

I am recovering from a massive stroke, and while sitting around I decided I wanted more vinyl. I had to have more Thomas Dolby. I can't write paragraphs about his work, my opinion is Thomas Dolby is brilliant and I am happy with that.

As the liner notes (and other reviews here on Amazon) mention, there have been several different versions of this album released over the years. I first discovered it via a cassette purchased back in the early 80s, after having bought the 45 of "She Blinded Me with Science" and finding that I liked the b-side ("Flying North") as much as the a-side. A few years later I replaced the cassette with a CD and was surprised to find that, for reasons I still don't understand, bits and pieces of some of the songs had been edited out on the cassette version. So I figured the CD was the "definitive" version.Now this remastered edition surprises me again - "Blinded" and "One of Our Submarines" weren't even on the original album?!? (Don't worry, they're both included as bonus tracks.) There's a song that I've never even heard of ("Wreck of the Fairchild")?!? There's a concert video from back in the day? I didn't even know Dolby played this stuff live. I had to have this CD/DVD set.The "live" DVD turned out to be a bit of a disappointment, as it appears to just be Dolby's band from the Wireless era at least partially miming the music in front of a staged audience, intercut with odd shots of Thomas in the projection booth smoking cigarettes and taking pictures. Annoyingly, the actual music is constantly interrupted. It was interesting to see, but I doubt I'll watch the DVD portion more than once or twice.On the CD, it's odd to hear the songs in the original order. I had gotten used to hearing certain songs following each other, but the only sequence that remains the same is Weightless into Europa into Windpower - everything else is mixed up. It doesn't make that much difference, except that the segue from Fairchild into Airwaves is pretty cool.Of the bonus tracks, the guitar version of "Radio Silence" came as a bit of a shock. Other reviews here on Amazon seem to indicate that that's the version most Americans had on their copies, but both my cassette and CD had the keyboard version, so I was hearing this for the first time. Personally, I much prefer the keyboard version, but maybe that's just because it's what I'm used to.I was happy to see the early singles Urges and Leipzig on the CD - I almost bought a "best of" disc several years ago just to get those tracks, so it's nice to finally get to hear them, although they're not really anything to write home about. The remaining bonus tracks are likewise nice to hear, but not particularly essential.The sound quality of the remastered CD is as good as one would expect, but to be honest I bought the album strictly for the bonus tracks and live DVD - I was perfectly happy with the sound quality on my previous CD. The remaster might sound a tad clearer and the bass seems to be boosted, but otherwise nothing really jumps out at me, sound-quality-wise.Overall I'm glad I bought this rather pricey set just to get a little more background on what has been one of my favorite albums for almost three decades now. But in the end, I probably could have lived with the CD I already had.

'The Golden Age Of Wireless' may not be a perfect record but so much of it is outstandingly original that it deserves a five star rating. I loved singles like 'Windpower', 'Radio Silence' and 'Europa And The Pirate Twins' at the time and this album has been on and off my playlist ever since. It is disappointing that the cover is spoilt by a large white square but the actual value of the content inside the box makes up for this in a big way. The original album has nine added tracks including interesting demo's of some of Dolby's earliest recordings ('Urges', 'Airwaves' etc). Not all of the extra songs are great though 'Urban Tribal' and 'Pedestrian Walkway' in particular being a bit weak. What they do do well however is show Dolby's enormous talent off in its development stages, experimenting, just like his 'Mad Professor' image would have you imagine. I would have liked the seven inch mix of 'Radio Silence' as an extra track as the album version is vastly different and would have made a great contrast but really, I am being a bit picky.The 'Live Wireless' DVD is also a delight and Dolby and his band put on a real stage show not just a performance. Behind the band you can see highlights of some of the original video's and I must admit it was a delight to catch a few glimpses of dear old Magnus Pike on 'She Blinded Me With Science' - he and Dolby were a match made in heaven! HA HA There is also a guest appearance by Lene Lovich that adds a crazy element to proceedings on 'New Toy' (a single Dolby wrote for her) and 'Puppet Theatre' interestingly turns out to be the song Dolby wrote for rap group Whodini - 'Magic's Wand' with different lyrics! With the sub plot of Dolby himself changing reels of film of the performances as a projectionist (he studied projectionism at college) for a cinema full of fans, the DVD (like Dolby) proves to be something a little different from the norm for a live recording.Finally, the CD booklet is also a winner featuring comments by Dolby that really give you an insight into what the songs are about and how the man thinks. So then, despite a few minor quibbles, this whole package is a winner and a delight for fans- forget about the white square on the cover and BUY THIS!

The main thing I want to mention is my appreciation for Mr. Dolby's keeping an eye on the remastering of his albums to ensure they did not become victims of the Loudness War. Most CD "remasters" are little more than much louder versions of the albums for the sake of fitting into the iPod generation of having the loudest song in a playlist or shuffle mode. How ridiculous is that?! The result is the much of the dynamics of the original music is squashed out in favor of volume, resulting in a tedious and painful listening experience. Thomas posted a reassuring message on his website that he was overseeing the project to ensure this does not happen to his work. The result? Two stunning remasters of his classic early albums. All dynamics have been retained and there has been no poor (approved) attempts to "improve" the sound. Just fresh and beautifully clean transfers. After the recent disastrous reissues of two of the early Duran Duran albums, rendering them unlistenable due to solid compression and overdone tweaking, it makes the audiophile in me appreciate Thomas Dolby's knowledge and care with these two re-releases.The Golden Age Of Wireless has such a special place for me. When I got MTV in mid-1982, Thomas' videos were on all the time. I remember seeing still classic singles, 'Europa' and 'Radio Silence' numerous times. This was before She Blinded Me With Science was released, so he was still very obscure in the U.S. After some initial hesitation, I purchased the reissue LP of Wireless when 'Science' was added, and fell in love with the album. Over the years, I have purchased it on nearly every available format and version, but this CD encompasses just about everything from the era. Those wanting the 12" mixes can still get them on the 12x12 CD.And I agree that it stinks to have the big white square in the corner of the cover, though Thomas has explained he had little choice in the matter. But in the end, it's the sound quality that really matters, and that is flawless. Though I'm not much of a fan of Dolby's post The Flat Earth music (I'm not much for Funk and Soul music), these first two albums are essential for any fan of classic electronic music.

I won't go into details about the songs, that has already been done here already. I vaguely knew of Thomas Dolby and had heard the usual hits, Windpower, Europa, etc. but I was too young in the early 80's to have heard this first time around. But recently I have been listening to and re-discovering a lot of early 80's music, so I thought i'd take a punt on this cd since I liked his more popular hits, and what a great decision it was. The whole album is great, really well crafted songs it really gets under you skin. I think it is the best example of early 80's synth pop by some way, a very solid and enjoyable album, it feels like I have discovered a hidden gem. Looking forward to getting the Flat Earth now.

I don't listen to the cover of a CD or stare fixedly at it while the music's on - the music is the thing you see?The 'white box' issue is a very small chip off a fantastically well-iced and utterly gorgeous confection. Finally the album I've loved for decades on a CD (in the right order, yay!), with bonus tracks, a digital copy of 'Live Wireless' (my old VHS copy long since demised) and more to download. I'm preaching to the choir if you're already into TMDR, for anyone else I'd suggest listening to some other track than 'Science' and see if he's possibly your cup of tea too. Utterly bargainous to someone like me, and well worth anyone's pennies in my book.

.... and it have almost survived the test of time! Still his quirky lyrics and classic synth tracks is fun to listen to. It's like being hit by..." an iron fist in a glass of vaseline..."