THE SET-UP

When I received the email from the Thomas Dolby mailing list in January touting the Totally Tubular Festival I gave it the usual cautiously cursory look and was pleasantly surprised to see that, betcha by golly wow, the lineup was all bands that I actually liked; most of which I had never seen live before. This is actually rare for an 80s fest. Typically, there are two acts I enjoy and three that I’d sooner miss.

In fact, I’d seen Dolby twice and might have demurred except that this time it was in close proximity to my pals The RAHB + Elisa near the Research Triangle area and I could attend with them seeing their very first Thomas Dolby concert, even though it would be my third. Is there such a thing as too much Thomas Dolby? I say thee, nay! I put out the word to my friends offline in case anyone else got the bug to attend. The show in Raleigh would be the only show in the southeast seaboard area in the entire tour.

Then the stakes got higher when I told Todd Lewis of the band Fluid Japan about this. He lives in nearby Virginia, roughly the same distance as me from Raleigh. Though we’d had offline threads of communication, we’d not have the opportunity to meet. All parties were in for the show and I bought tickets in January and got on with living. It would be a weekend of merriment and fun with the festival being the center of activity. Of course, dining would be happening, and you know me; record shopping would also enter into it as there’s no better way to bond with a fellow music geek like Mr. Lewis than by communion with the silver and black wafers.

As the schedule shook out, Todd would arrive the day of the show, leaving me to visit with my pals in Mebane the night before. I’d leave work a few hours early on Friday and overnight in nearby Hillsborough. Then the next day we’d all recon at Sitti Mediterranean Restaurant in downtown Raleigh for a meal before the show. The Red Hat Amphitheater is walking distance from the restaurant. All safe and simple.

THE BIG DAY

I arrived in Mebane, picked up my friends and proceeded to Hillsborough to eat a meal at a restaurant I’d dined many times before at with them. The Saratoga Grill is a mostly seafood restaurant that this vegetarian would normally balk at eating the cursory vegetarian entree at, except for the restaurant’s secret weapon; the finest scones on the planet! So on Friday night my friend Elisa thoughtfully requested a dozen scones to go! After dinner we retired to my nearby hotel before bedding down the for big day to come on Saturday.

I woke up the next day and found a restaurant to get a breakfast at on the way to nearby Durham, where Chaz’s Bull City Records would give me something to do in the interim before our 1:30 lunch in Raleigh since that city was only an hour away from where I was staying. Details will follow later. On Saturday afternoon, we all rendezvoused at Sitti for a good meal to charge our batteries before the long concert. There would be food there, of course, but not this good!

It was decided that instead of three cars event parking, Todd and I would go to the hotel we were staying at and check in before the show. The others followed and we all parked there and got a driver to the event for a fraction of the parking cost. We got back downtown at fiveish for the check in to the venue for the 5:45 show. When we entered, we found our seats to be even better placement than the ticket map had indicated. We were dead center at the back of the first center section; directly in front of the soundboard. Always a good place to be. The only sadness? It was AS HOT AS BLAZES! We all had protective accoutrements and I had remembered to bring sunscreen.

While Elisa and The RAHB found the seats, Todd and I wanted to check out the merch. I like doing it ASAP to avoid disappointment. I walked into this place thinking that I either needed a Men Without Hats or Bow Wow Wow t-shirt. We approached the merch stand to see everything from T-shirts, to Thomas Dolby’s new fiction novel, “Prevailing Wind,”[signed]. There were some CDs and records from Modern English with their new one, “1234” as well as various Tom Bailey CDs. I scanned for Bow Wow or Men Without Hats tees, and there was none of the former, but two of the latter!

The thing was, I had already decided that I would skip a Dolby t-shirt since I got one in 2012! That was until I got to the merch tables! His yellow and white design on black [I wish I had a photo to share] was exceptionally beautiful, and it had the tour dates on the back; a weakness of mine! I was ready to pull in that direction as well as a MWH shirt [damn the costs!] until I noticed that they only listed S, 3XL for the Dolby shirt. So then I asked for the black MWH tee in XL and all they were all out, so I made a snap decision and went with the tie-dyed MWH design above! The back says “We can dance if we want to.” I’m not a tie-dye guy at all, but at least this was a monochrome job! Or so I told myself. After putting it in the approved clear plastic tote, Todd and I made our way to our seats and we all talked among ourselves while we waited the minutes for the show to begin.

Next: …We’d Go A Million Miles…