Thomas Dolby, Kevin Federline, Ken Russell, and musician unions

Wherein of course I find out today he played in town two weeks ago


From NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday is a 15 minute interview with Thomas Dolby that's worth a listen. He's always struck me as an interesting--and potentially nice--guy. Maybe you can listen to it. I just tried and got nothing. There are four songs I could listen to, just not the entire show.

Your Karma Hit My Dogma is a more interesting story than a song. Some guy by the name of Kevin Federline sampled Blinded by Science on his Myspace page. Lawyers were involved and the song was taken down. Dolby said he was more offended by the fact that the song sucked than over the loss of royalties. Your Karma Hit My Dogma is Dolby's musical reply.

See also Freakonomics in action for "media spreading rumors."

In case the NPR show won't run, there's his blog post about scoring a Ken Russell film:

At about 2 minutes to 12, I had just made a couple of minor changes to a cue and was ready to run it one last time. “Er sorry Mr Dolby,” said the first violin, “it’s almost twelve and we have to go to lunch.” “Well they’ve almost nailed it, can’t we just add on the equivalent mintues at the end of your lunch break?” I asked, perplexed. “Sorry, Mr Dolby, that’s the rules.”

I was speechless.

They were just beginning to put down their instruments when the heavy studio doors burst wide open, and Ken Russell came storming in the room, flush with Burgundy, the veins sticking out on his neck. He strode to the middle of the floor, glaring around at the musicians. “You… fucking… BASTARDS!!” he screamed: “You have this wonderful gift—from GOD!” (hand outstretched to the heavens) “—to play your instruments, and all your can think about is your FUCKING TEABREAK!”

The reverberations died down, leaving a deathly hush in the studio. After a few seconds the silence was broken by the tap of the conductor’s baton on his music stand. “Cue 11a once again please, gentlemen.”