Dolby promoted himself as a kind of mad scientist, an egghead that had successfully harnessed the power of synthesizers and samplers, using them to make catchy pop and electro-funk. Before he launched his solo career, Dolby had already worked as a studio musician, technician, and songwriter. After starting out as a teenaged live sound man, mixing The Fall, The Members and others using a PA he built himself, he formed the arty post-punk band Camera Club (also known as Bruce Woolley & the Camera Club) with Bruce Woolley, Geoff Downes, Trevor Horn and Matthew Seligman. Within a year, he had left the group and joined Lene Lovich’s backing band and gave her his song "New Toy", which became a British hit in 1981. That same year, he released his first solo single, "Urges", on the English independent label Armageddon. By the autumn, he had signed with Parlophone and released "Europa and the Pirate Twins", which nearly cracked the UK Top 40.
Dolby started playing synthesizer on sessions for other artists in 1982. That year, he played keyboards on Def Leppard’s Pyromania and Joan Armatrading’s Walk Under Ladders. His most distinctive session credit is that keyboard line after the chorus on Foreigner’s "Waiting for a Girl Like You". In that eventful summer, Dolby also collaborating with New York rappers Whodini to create "Magic’s Wand" – a pivotal early hip hop track (the first rap single to shift 1 million copies), and it also single-handedly started the new jack swing movement.
Even with all of these achievements, 1982 was most noteworthy for the release of Dolby’s first solo album, The Golden Age of Wireless, in the summer of 1982, the landmark album reaching number 13. "Windpower", the first single from the record, became his first Top 40 UK hit in the late summer. Other cuts from the album include "The Airwaves", and "One of Our Submarines", a meditation on the futility of empire.
In January of 1983, Dolby released an EP, Blinded by Science, which includes what would become his most well-known track, "She Blinded Me with Science" featuring a cameo vocal appearance by the notorious British eccentric Magnus Pike, who also appeared in the song’s video. "She Blinded Me with Science" was a minor hit in England, but the EP and the single became a major American hit in 1983, thanks to MTV’s heavy airplay of the video. Eventually, the song reached number five on the US charts and it was included on a resequenced and reissued version of The Golden Age of Wireless, which peaked at number 13 in America.
The Flat Earth, Dolby's second album, appeared in early 1984, and harkens back to a time when songs mattered more than the video, even as MTV was discovering its strength. Opening with "Dissidents", conjuring up images of blacklisted authors and ugly snow, gray from oppression, with Matthew Seligman’s bass at the fore, lavish, growling, popping through octaves, funk-a-fied and twinkling with harmonics throughout the album. The title track is an R&B daydream of piano and Motown stabs of rhythm guitar. "Screen Kiss" has a similarly ethereal quality, and the lyrics are lush with imagery. The cover of Dan Hicks’ 1967 "I Scare Myself" is a balmy jazz club cocktail – faithfully nostalgic, right down to a bittersweet trombone solo from Peter Thomas. "Hyperactive" is one part bizarre to two parts infectious; guest vocalist Adele Bertei fuels the fire to what was already destined to be a memorable diversion beyond the reach of Top 40. The single became Thomas’ biggest UK hit, peaking at number 17.
During 1985, Dolby collaborated with artists including Stevie Wonder, Dusty Springfield and Herbie Hancock; and notched up some more high-concept production credits. George Clinton's Some of My Best Jokes Are Friends, Prefab Sprout’s Steve McQueen, and Joni Mitchell’s Dog Eat Dog were all midwifed by Dolby, who also was musical director for David Bowie at Live Aid. Also in 1985, he began composing film scores, starting with Fever Pitch. In 1986, he composed the scores for Gothic and Howard the Duck, for which he credited himself as Dolby's Cube. (That credit led to a lawsuit from the Dolby Labs, who eventually prohibited the musician from using the name "Dolby" in conjunction with any other name than "Thomas.")
Aliens Ate My Buick, Dolby's long-delayed third album, appeared in 1988 to a mixed reaction, although "Airhead" became a minor British hit. That same year, Dolby married actress Kathleen Beller. For the rest of the late 80s and early 90s, Dolby continued to score films, producing and building his own computer equipment.
1992’s Astronauts and Heretics, features guest stars such as Eddie Van Halen, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir and Ofra Haza. The album opens with "I Love You Goodbye", one of Thomas’ most evocative songs, and ends with "Beauty of a Dream" which is also a contender for that honour. Highlights found inbetween include "Cruel" (a duet with Fairground Attraction’s Eddie Reader), "I Live in a Suitcase" and "Close But No Cigar".
The following year, Dolby founded the computer software company Headspace in Silicon Valley, releasing The Virtual String Quartet as its first program, and also pioneered technology for music on mobile phones. For the rest of the 90s, Headspace occupied most of Dolby's time and energy. In 1994, he released The Gate to the Mind’s Eye, a soundtrack to the animated short film Mind’s Eye. Also that year, Capitol released the greatest-hits collection, Retrospectacle.
Thirteen years after Astronauts and Heretics, Dolby returned to live performance in 2006 with his solo Sole Inhabitant tour, which covered North America and the UK, with Thomas recreating the highlights of his earlier work from scratch, with a camera mounted like a miner’s lamp on his head, and a big screen showing the view from the artist, turning what would be a fairly dull one-man-and-a-rack-of-synths into a fascinating audio visual experience and an unintended masterclass for music technology students.
UK indie label Invisible Hands Music released a CD and DVD box set recorded on the Sole Inhabitant tour. These fresh and modern reinterpretations of Thomas’ work to date precedes a new studio album due in 2008, which is as-yet untitled, but does include a song about Britney’s ex Kevin Federline (“K-Fed”) who used an uncleared sample from "She Blinded Me with Science" and did not respond to legal approaches until a ‘cease-and-desist’ was posted in the comments field of his MySpace page. That song is called "My Karma Hit Your Dogma", and bodes well for a mighty return to form, combining Thomas’ humour and intelligence with a unique musical vision.
2011 saw Dolby get busy by returning with a new studio album A Map of the Floating City on 29 October. The album is broken down into three genres of Urbanoia's tales of city experiences; Amerikana as Dolby's take on his years living in America and it's roots music; and Oceanea: songs of life by the sea in his home country of England. The music was debuted first as download EPs to Dolby's online community and then previewed by a transmedia interactive game also called the FloatingCity.com.
Thomas Dolby is taking the music back on tour as a solo artist and with varying line-ups of bands, doing two tours of the UK in 2011, and has his first trip to Australia in February 2012 followed by dates in Japan. In March Dolby kicks off the Time-Capsule.tv tour at the SxSW Festival in Austin playing dates in USA and Canada through April. He will have a trailer parked at venues on his tour where you can produce a 30 second video offering words of wisdom to whoever will be walking the earth in the future. Dolby wants to give people a chance to “explain to an alien visitor what went wrong with our civilization. Our species may not be around on this planet much longer, so you might as well leave a welcome message for the next guys.”
Silk Pyjamas
Thomas Dolby Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
She was wearing silk pyjamas
Usual outfit, big pith helmet
Dr. Martens and silk pyjamas
Said it was driving her round the bend
Just sitting and waiting for the phone to ring
She should have been back around half past ten
Has anybody seen my friend?
Silk pyjamas
Can't have gone far
Where's the high street?
Where's the river?
How's the bugger going to manage?
Doesn't speak a word of Spanish
Said it was driving her half insane
To live in a city with no underground train
She took her umbrella and her biscuit tin
And she wantdered off into the smog
For a slurpy and a tofu dog, singing...
Hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo
Hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo
Hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo
Hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo
Silk pyjamas, silk pyjamas
She was wearing silk pyjamas
In the daytime
In the night
She was wearing silk pyjamas
Silk pyjamas, silk pyjamas
She was wearing silk pyjamas
Usual outfit, big pith helmet
Silk pyjamas, no elastic
Big pith helmet that she came by
Somewhere on the Bakerloo line
Have you seen her silk pyjamas?
She was wearing silk pyjamas
The song "Silk Pyjamas" by Thomas Dolby is a quirky story of a woman who is dressed in silk pyjamas, a big pith helmet, and Dr. Martens, wandering aimlessly through the city. The song opens with the repetition of the line "Silk pyjamas, silk pyjamas, she was wearing silk pyjamas" which sets the tone for the unusual character and situation that Dolby describes. The woman is waiting for her phone to ring, frustrated that she hasn't heard from her friend, and worried about navigating the city, which she admits she can't manage because she doesn't speak Spanish. She is described as lovely, wearing green and red silk pyjamas, which she wears both in the daytime and at night.
The lyrics of the chorus, which repeat the phrase "silk pyjamas, silk pyjamas," create a hypnotic effect that plays with the listener's perception. One interpretation is that they suggest a sense of comfort, luxury, and leisure, which the character is enjoying despite her frustration and confusion. The lines "big pith helmet that she came by, somewhere on the Bakerloo line" add to the overall absurdity of the lyrics, and create a sense of whimsy and imagination in the image of this woman who wears silk pyjamas and a pith helmet while wandering through the city.
In summary, "Silk Pyjamas" is a tongue-in-cheek song about an eccentric woman who marches to the beat of her own drum, wandering through the city in silk pyjamas and a pith helmet, and singing as she goes.
Line by Line Meaning
Silk pyjamas, silk pyjamas
This is the title of the song and is repeated as a refrain throughout
She was wearing silk pyjamas
Describing the singer, who wears silk pyjamas day and night
Usual outfit, big pith helmet
Although she wears silk pyjamas, she pairs them with a large helmet—this is a paradox
Dr. Martens and silk pyjamas
She pairs her pyjamas with chunky boots
Said it was driving her round the bend
Wearing silk pyjamas all the time is making her go crazy
Just sitting and waiting for the phone to ring
She is bored and waiting for something to happen
She should have been back around half past ten
This is the time she was expected back, but she is late
Has anybody seen my friend?
The artist is asking if anyone has seen this mysterious friend
She's so lovely in her green and red
This friend wears green and red and is described as lovely
Can't have gone far
The artist thinks the friend is still nearby
Where's the high street?
The singer is looking for a bustling city center
Where's the river?
The artist is looking for a body of water
How's the bugger going to manage?
The singer is wondering how the friend will cope with a difficult situation
Doesn't speak a word of Spanish
The friend doesn't know the local language
Said it was driving her half insane
Living somewhere with no metro is making the friend crazy
To live in a city with no underground train
The friend is living in a city without a metro system
She took her umbrella and her biscuit tin
The friend took some everyday items and left her home
And she wandered off into the smog
The friend left her house and went out into the polluted city
For a slurpy and a tofu dog, singing...
The friend is going to get some food and is singing as she goes
Hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo
This is part of the song's refrain
Silk pyjamas, no elastic
These pyjamas might have no stretchy waistband
Big pith helmet that she came by
This helmet was acquired somehow
Somewhere on the Bakerloo line
The helmet was found on this London Underground train line
Have you seen her silk pyjamas?
The artist is asking if anyone has seen the elusive friend's signature garment
She was wearing silk pyjamas
This line ends the song as it began, emphasizing the importance of silk pyjamas to the friend's character
Lyrics © O/B/O APRA AMCOS
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