Best Of The Biscuit – Thomas Dolby
Right after I bought and wrote about a radio-only LP live show compilation called Live Tracks, I just happened to stumble upon another one at an entirely different record store. While the previous radio show I bought seemingly a derivative of the King Biscuit Flower Hour, this one is the real deal, a “best of” episode that originally the aired the week of August 7th, 1983. Split into two parts, the majority of the episode is dedicated to a Thomas Dolby concert, while the later bit showcases a few songs from a Missing Persons show. Since there’s so much content here, I’m splitting this into two posts, with the Thomas Dolby up first.

This is not a complete show unfortunately. If Discogs is any indication, King Biscuit broadcasted a more complete (if not entirely complete) version of this very same concert on May 3rd of the same year, just a few months before this “best of” version. That’s some quick repackaging! They might have even repackaged it once more for another program in the following year, or that could just be another Dolby show, hard to say.

Nearly everything Dolby performs here is from his 1983 debut album, or from assorted singles (that would eventually make their way into various permutations of said debut album – it’s been re-issued a lot). The sole exception is “New Toy,” which is a song that Dolby wrote for Lene Lovich for her debut EP. Lene Lovich actually joins Dolby on stage for this one. I have no idea how rare live performances with both of them are for this one, maybe they toured together and played it all the time, or this was a one-off special appearance. Regardless, it’s cool.

Just like the last radio show I shared, this too has commercials. Unfortunately, this time around they aren’t horribly inappropriate beer commercials that feature racist stereotypes and encourage underage drinking. Instead, they’re just commercials for the US Army (boo!). I remember these commercials though, so while I won’t say that it was cool to hear them again (again, boo military-industrial complex!) it did trigger a nostalgia dopamine response. Haven’t heard that “be all that you can be” jingle in ages. It’s also hilarious to me that the army sponsored a radio show with the aggressively anti-imperialist “One Of Our Submarines Is Missing.”

Also, how many die-hard synthpop fans from the early 80s were down with the thought of joining the armed forces? I feel that the military’s advertising budget could’ve been better spent on radio shows featuring AC/DC or Ted Nugent.

Enjoy the show (this one is “properly” numbered by the way) and, for those of you who celebrate Christmas, merry Christmas. I’ll be back next week with the second half of this radio show, hopefully.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 19th, 2019 at 8:23 am and is filed under Thomas Dolby. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.