In 1977, when many teens in London were trolling pawnshops for a cheap Fender Stratocaster, Thomas Dolby was dumpster diving behind the Electronic Music Studios lab, looking for discarded synthesizer soundboards. After four Grammy nominations for his album Aliens Ate My Buick, he left the world of music composition and performance in 1993 to found the digital tech company Headspace (later renamed Beatnik), which integrated music into digital games and invented the RMF (Rich Music Format) file that launched the now ubiquitous ringtone apps. Packed with meticulous detail from notebooks and journals, his engrossing memoir, The Speed of Sound, covers 40 years of music history as the industry transformed from powerful corporate record companies to a DIY, digital, direct-to-listener streaming cloud--from MCA and EMI to Pandora and Spotify.
A music and science nerd, he changed his name from Robertson to Dolby, after his boarding school nickname. His early synthesizer play in tiny clubs and pubs imitated bands like Siouxsie and the Banshees and Throbbing Gristle, but he soon moved into more mathematical arrangements and dystopian, sci-fi lyrics. Success came slowly at first, but then in a rush. He hooked up with Michael Jackson, Marvin Gaye, David Bowie, George Clinton and others. The second half of The Speed of Sound shifts into something of an entrepreneurial business primer, but music remains Dolby's first love. Rich in the details of every gig, band mate, song, tech toy, business contract, bed-sit and Los Angeles home, Dolby's memoir is a talented iconoclast's story of life in the fast lane of modern music and technology. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.