Super Deep Dive: Thomas Dolby’s The Golden Age of Wireless
I spend a lot of time researching various titles in my music collection, so I thought it might be fun to share some of that from time to time or just document it for myself. This is the first of what will probably be a few posts like this. I’ll use a unique tag so all future and past Super Deep Dive posts will be easy to find.
When you hear Thomas Dolby’s name, if you’ve even heard it before, you probably think of one thing and one thing only... “Science!” Most know Dolby as the one-hit wonder behind “She Blinded Me with Science”. But he’s had a decent music career before and after that song, along with a long career in the tech field creating software. He basically invented the modern ringtone for all cell phones. And was the musical director for TED.
I could go on and on, but this is already going to be long enough. Let’s explore his debut album, The Golden Age of Wireless...
This album has got to be the most confusing to collect, aside from *maybe* Duran Duran’s Rio, if you want all of the songs recorded during this era.
The first release (which happened in the UK on vinyl) had the following nine tracks:
Flying North
Commercial Breakup
Weightless
Europa and the Pirate Twins
Windpower
The Wreck of the Fairchild
Airwaves
Radio Silence
Cloudburst at Shingle Street
The first thing you’ll notice is that “She Blinded Me with Science” is missing. It hadn’t been recorded yet. We’ll get there.
Sales were decent so the album got a US release. For the US release, the song “The Wreck of the Fairchild” was dropped completely, the songs “Urges” and “Leipzig” (two earlier non-album singles) were added to the album, the full-length “Airwaves” was cut and the shorter 7″ single version was used instead, and the song “Radio Silence” was re-recorded with guitars instead of synths. The running order was also completely reworked. The US vinyl track list looked like this:
Europa and the Pirate Twins
Flying North
Weightless
Leipzig
Windpower
Commercial Breakup
Urges
Airwaves (7″ Single Version)
Radio Silence (Guitar Version)
Cloudburst at Shingle Street
The bold tracks are the added/changed tracks from the previous release.
Seven months after the initial album release, “She Blinded Me with Science” was released as a non-album single and it hit big.
So the album was reworked and re-released again in the US. This time “Urges” and “Leipzig” were dropped, “Windpower” was replaced with its shorter 7″ single version, and “She Blinded Me with Science” and its b-side “One of Our Submarines” were added. The third release had the following track list:
She Blinded Me with Science (12″ Extended Version)
Radio Silence (Guitar Version)
Airwaves (7″ Single Version)
Flying North
Weightless
Europa and the Pirate Twins
Windpower (7″ Single Version)
Commercial Breakup
One of Our Submarines
Cloudburst at Shingle Street
The bold tracks are the added/changed tracks from the previous release.
The UK then reworked and re-released the album in a slightly different variation. They used the shorter 7″ single version of “She Blinded Me with Science” rather than the 12″ extended version the US used. They reverted “Radio Silence” back to its original synth version. And they used the full length versions of “Airwaves” and “Windpower”. So the forth release had the following track list:
She Blinded Me with Science (7″ Single Version)
Radio Silence
Airwaves
Flying North
Weightless
Europa and the Pirate Twins
Windpower
Commercial Breakup
One of Our Submarines
Cloudburst at Shingle Street
The bold tracks are the added/changed tracks from the previous release.
And that forth release seems to be where they were happy with it, as that forth track/version list is what was used when the album was finally issued on cassette and CD.
So to recap, if you want all of the songs/versions that were ever on The Golden Age of Wireless album, you’d need the following:
Flying North
Commercial Breakup
Weightless
Europa and the Pirate Twins
Windpower
Windpower (7″ Single Version)
The Wreck of the Fairchild
Airwaves
Airwaves (7″ Single Version)
Radio Silence
Radio Silence (Guitar Version) [originally the b-side of “Radio Silence” single]
Cloudburst at Shingle Street
Urges [originally a non-album single]
Leipzig [originally a non-album b-side of “Urges”]
She Blinded Me with Science (7″ Single Version)
She Blinded Me with Science (Extended Version) [originally from the “Blinded by Science” 12″ Mini-LP]
One of Our Submarines [originally a non-album b-side of “She Blinded Me with Science”]
...and that still wouldn’t complete this era for you, that’s *just* the songs that were featured on the main album in one re-release or another. If you’re a completionist (like me), you also need the following album-era tracks:
Europa and the Pirate Twins (Extended Version) [from the 12″ single]
Therapy/Growth [non-album b-side of “Europa and the Pirate Twins”]
The Wreck of the Fairchild (7″ Version) [b-side of “Airwaves”]
Windpower (High Power Extended Play) [remix from the 12″ single]
Flying North (High Altitude Extended Play) [remix from the “Windpower” 12″ single]
One of Our Submarines (Extended Version) [from the “Blinded by Science” Mini-LP]
And when you’ve finally tracked **all** of these 23 tracks down (from what started as a 9 track album!!), your music collection will look like this:
It took a long time, and eight individual releases, but I have finally completed my The Golden Age of Wireless era collection. There are some great synthpop and new wave songs here. Some fascinating work by Dolby who was, at the time, a pioneer in digital music and synth work. His legacy may only be remembered as a novelty song one-hit wonder by many, but this super deep dive has shown me he had a lot more than that to offer. Since reading his autobiography, The Speed of Sound, a year-and-a-half ago I’ve become a huge fan (and it’s taken me that long to track some of these rare tracks down).
Have you heard any of Dolby’s other songs? Do you like his work? Do you know of any other album with more re-releases and changes made to the track list than this one?!
