Category: Blog

Some reunion news comes with a number attached, and the number does the talking. This one is 38.

On Tuesday, June 30, 2026, Thomas Dolby announced that he is putting The Lost Toy People back together and headlining this summer’s Totally Tubular Festival, the traveling 80s package tour that opens July 17 in Phoenix. It is the first time that band has played together since 1988, when they opened for Depeche Mode at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Nineteen eighty eight. Reagan was still president.

And yes, they are playing “She Blinded Me With Science.”

What Dolby announced

This is not a hologram tour and it is not one guy with a laptop and a hired band. Original guitarist Larry Treadwell is in. So is singer and percussionist Laura Creamer. Filling out the lineup are bassist Divinity Roxx, who spent years as Beyonce’s musical director, drummer Mat Hector, and trombonist Ethan Santos.

The set leans on the record that band made with him, “Aliens Ate My Buick,” which means “Airhead,” “The Ability to Swing,” “The Key to Her Ferrari,” and the deep cut the faithful actually want, “Pulp Culture.” Then, because he is not a cruel man, the hits.

Dolby’s own framing of the whole 80s revival is worth reading, because he is not sentimental about it. “The current ’80s music revival is more than just a walk down memory lane for those of us that were actually there,” he told Ultimate Classic Rock, pointing out that people born long after the decade ended are the ones digging up the ideas now.

He is right, and it is the least nostalgic thing anybody on a nostalgia tour has said all year.

Who else is on the bill

The Totally Tubular lineup is a fair chunk of a 1983 radio hour, with the lineups varying city to city: A Flock of Seagulls, Men Without Hats, Bow Wow Wow, Animotion, The Escape Club, Tommy Tutone, and The Producers. That is “I Ran,” “The Safety Dance,” “I Want Candy,” “Obsession,” “Wild Wild West,” and the most famous phone number in American history, all on one stage, in one night, in July.

We are not going to pretend to be above this. We are extremely not above this.

What Thomas Dolby meant to the 80s

Here is what people who were not there get wrong about Thomas Dolby. They file him under “one hit novelty guy in goggles,” and the goggles are right there in the video, so you can see how it happened.

But he was the opposite of a novelty. He was one of the first pop musicians who was genuinely a technologist, a guy who understood the machines instead of just renting them, and MTV in its hungry early years handed him a nationwide audience for exactly that. “She Blinded Me With Science” was funny and strange and it had a British scientist hollering on it, and for a stretch there you could not get away from that video, and suddenly every kid in America knew a synth record could be a comedy bit and a banger at the same time.

That was the trick of that whole moment, and it is why the Totally Tubular bill works. These were weird records. “The Safety Dance” is a weird record. “I Ran” is a weird record. And they were not filed away in some alternative corner. They came out of the same radio, at the same school dances and roller rinks, as the biggest mainstream pop in the country, and nobody thought twice about it. That was the last time in American pop when the strangest thing in the room was also the most popular thing in the room.

Dolby went on to be a real one in the tech world, too, but that is a different article. Come July 17, he is a man in goggles behind a wall of keyboards, and the Rose Bowl was 38 years ago, and the band is back.

Go see it

You will not get many more of these. That is not a scare tactic, it is arithmetic, and this week we have been reminded of it hard.

The tour opens July 17 in Phoenix. If it comes anywhere near you, go stand in a room full of people who are all mouthing the same nonsense chorus they were mouthing in the eighth grade. That is not nostalgia. That is just a good night out with better songs.

Bobby and Jason

FAQ

Is Thomas Dolby touring in 2026?
Yes. Thomas Dolby is headlining the 2026 Totally Tubular Festival, a traveling 80s package tour that opens July 17 in Phoenix, Arizona, and he is performing with a reunited version of his 1980s band The Lost Toy People.

Who are The Lost Toy People?
They were Thomas Dolby’s late 1980s backing band, best known for the album “Aliens Ate My Buick.” The 2026 reunion lineup includes original guitarist Larry Treadwell and singer-percussionist Laura Creamer, along with bassist Divinity Roxx, drummer Mat Hector, and trombonist Ethan Santos. The band last performed together in 1988, opening for Depeche Mode at the Rose Bowl.

Who is playing the Totally Tubular Festival 2026?
Thomas Dolby and The Lost Toy People headline, with A Flock of Seagulls, Men Without Hats, Bow Wow Wow, Animotion, The Escape Club, Tommy Tutone, and The Producers also on the bill. Lineups vary by city.

Will Thomas Dolby play “She Blinded Me With Science”?
Yes. The set is built around material from “Aliens Ate My Buick,” including “Airhead,” “The Ability to Swing,” “The Key to Her Ferrari,” and “Pulp Culture,” plus his signature hits, with “She Blinded Me With Science” performed live with the full band.

Sources

• Pollstar: Thomas Dolby and The Lost Toy People headline Totally Tubular Festival (June 30, 2026)
• Parade via Yahoo Entertainment: Thomas Dolby reunites The Lost Toy People for 2026 tour with special guests (June 30, 2026)
• Ultimate Classic Rock: Thomas Dolby headlines Totally Tubular 2026 touring festival (April 20, 2026)

Photos: Thomas Dolby live by Stansell, public domain. Thomas Dolby performing by Rudi Riet, CC BY-SA 2.0. Both via Wikimedia Commons.

We hate writing these ones.

Bonnie Tyler died on the night of Tuesday, July 8, 2026, in a hospital in Portugal. She was 75. Her family and her team announced it the next morning, and the wording tells you how fast it turned: “Bonnie’s family and team are heartbroken to announce that Bonnie unexpectedly passed away last night in hospital in Portugal as a result of the illness that she was being treated for.” The Associated Press and Newsweek both carried it within hours.

She had been fighting since May. And that voice, that gorgeous wrecked voice, was the one thing about her nobody ever mistook for anybody else.

How we got here: the last two months

This was not a long goodbye. It was two months, and for a while it looked like she was winning.

Tyler was admitted to a hospital in Faro, Portugal in early May for emergency intestinal surgery, and doctors placed her in a medically induced coma to help her through it. On June 15 her family said she was out of the coma but not out of danger: “Bonnie is no longer in a coma but remains very unwell and in intensive care in hospital in Portugal.” In the same breath they cancelled or postponed every remaining show of her summer, right through the end of August.

Doctors were still hopeful. Her family was still hopeful. That is what makes the word “unexpectedly” in Wednesday’s statement land the way it does. Three weeks after she woke up, she was gone.

What Bonnie Tyler meant to the 80s

Start with the voice, because the voice is the whole story.

She was born Gaynor Hopkins in Wales in 1951, a coal miner’s daughter. In the mid 1970s she had surgery to remove nodules from her throat, and it came back wrong, or came back right, depending on how you look at it. The pretty voice was gone. What replaced it was that torn, smoke-and-gravel rasp, and it turned out the world had been waiting for exactly that. Her first big hit, “It’s a Heartache,” went to No. 3 in the States on the strength of a sound no producer would have designed on purpose.

Then came 1983, and Jim Steinman, and the song.

“Total Eclipse of the Heart” is not a pop song. It is a five and a half minute weather event. Steinman wrote it and produced it, brought in Roy Bittan and Max Weinberg from the E Street Band, and built the thing like a cathedral: the piano, the choirboy, the timpani, the whole sky opening up on “turn around, bright eyes.” It sat at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for four straight weeks, topped the charts in Britain, earned her a Grammy nomination, and sold north of six million copies. The album it came from, “Faster Than the Speed of Night,” went to No. 3 in the US.

Tyler always told the Steinman story with a laugh. “Jim liked to put down a basic rhythm track, do nine takes of the song, choose the best one and then put the kitchen sink on there,” she said. You can hear every dish in that sink, and that is the point.

The next year she did it again from a different angle. “Holding Out for a Hero” landed on the “Footloose” soundtrack in 1984, at roughly 200 miles an hour, and became the sound of every montage, every last-second rescue, every kid running down a hallway in a movie for the next forty years.

Here is where our corner of the story comes in. Both of those records were already a few years old by the time we got to that dance floor, and neither one had gone anywhere. That is what a monster does. It does not cycle out. “Total Eclipse” was on the radio in 1983, it was still on the radio in 1986, and it is on the radio this week, and if you were anywhere near a school gym, a roller rink, or a car with a working tape deck in that decade, it is welded into you. The whole Dance Party USA era ran on records built like that: songs too big to be embarrassed by, that everybody in the room knew all the words to, that you could not be too cool for even if you tried.

She never stopped, either. Eighteen albums. Three Grammy nominations. Eurovision for the UK in 2013 with “Believe in Me.” An MBE from the Queen for services to music. Her last record, “The Best Is Yet to Come,” came out in 2021, when she was 70 years old, and she meant the title.

The tributes are pouring in

Rod Stewart, one of the very few singers on earth who understood her instrument from the inside, wrote: “We shared similar styles of vocalizing. She was a good pal, a true soul stirrer.”

Catherine Zeta-Jones, a relative by marriage, posted that her “heart is broken,” and remembered that Tyler sang at her wedding. Cliff Richard called her a “wonderful friend gone too soon.” Prime Minister Keir Starmer called her “one of Britain’s greatest recording artists.” Her brother Paul Hopkins wrote five words on Facebook: “I will love you forever.”

Turn around, bright eyes

Here is the thing about a voice like that. It was never young. It came out of the surgery already sounding like it had been up all night, already sounding like it had lost something, which is why a 20 year old and a 60 year old could both put on “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and feel like it was written that afternoon about them.

So tonight, do the only thing there is to do. Put it on. Not the edit, the long one. Turn it up past the point where it is reasonable. Wait for the drums to come in, and when she gets to “turn around,” go ahead and sing it in whatever ruined voice you have got.

She would have loved that it was loud.

Bobby and Jason

FAQ

How did Bonnie Tyler die?
Bonnie Tyler died on July 8, 2026, at age 75, in a hospital in Portugal, from complications of the illness she had been treated for since May. She had undergone emergency intestinal surgery in Faro in early May and was placed in a medically induced coma. Her family called her death unexpected.

How old was Bonnie Tyler when she died?
She was 75. She was born Gaynor Hopkins in Wales on June 8, 1951, and had celebrated her 75th birthday a month before she died.

What was Bonnie Tyler’s biggest hit?
“Total Eclipse of the Heart,” released in 1983, written and produced by Jim Steinman. It spent four weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, topped the UK chart, and sold more than six million copies. Her other signature 80s song is “Holding Out for a Hero” from the 1984 “Footloose” soundtrack.

Why did Bonnie Tyler’s voice sound like that?
In the mid 1970s she had surgery to remove nodules from her vocal cords. The operation permanently changed her voice, replacing a conventional singing tone with the gravelly rasp that became her trademark and made her one of the most instantly recognizable singers of the 80s.

Sources

• Associated Press via ABC7: Bonnie Tyler, who topped charts with epic “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” dies at 75 (July 9, 2026)
• ABC News: Bonnie Tyler, singer of “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” dies at 75 (July 9, 2026)
• Newsweek: Bonnie Tyler death, Catherine Zeta-Jones mourns singer among growing tributes (July 9, 2026)
• Yahoo Entertainment: Bonnie Tyler, singer of blockbuster No. 1 hit “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” dies aged 75 (July 9, 2026)
• Indianapolis Star via Yahoo: “Total Eclipse of the Heart” singer Bonnie Tyler dead at 75, family and team mourn unexpected death (July 9, 2026)
• Good Morning America: Bonnie Tyler out of coma but “remains very unwell,” her family says (June 15, 2026)
• The Washington Times: Bonnie Tyler out of coma but still in ICU, summer tour canceled (June 16, 2026)

Photos: Bonnie Tyler live in 2016 by Stefan Brending (2eight), CC BY-SA 3.0 DE. Bonnie Tyler at Eurovision 2013 by Albin Olsson, CC BY-SA 3.0. Bonnie Tyler 1977 promotional photo, Chrysalis Records, public domain. All via Wikimedia Commons.

This one hurts, so we are just going to say it straight.

Huey Lewis went on Michael Rosenbaum’s “Inside of You” podcast this week (July 7, 2026) and said the words nobody who grew up in the 80s ever wanted to hear: “At a certain point, you gotta face the music. I can’t hear music.” His hometown paper, the San Francisco Chronicle, picked it up, and then everyone else did, because when the man who sang “The Heart of Rock & Roll” says music is no longer part of his life, that lands right in your chest.

Meniere’s disease took his hearing. It did not take his catalog, his place in our heads, or what he meant to every kid within reach of a radio between 1983 and 1988. So here is what he said, what led up to it, and why Huey Lewis and the News mattered so much to our corner of the decade. Consider this our thank-you card.

What Huey said this week

Talking to Rosenbaum just after his 76th birthday, Huey laid it out with the same no-nonsense delivery he always had. “Music is not part of my life anymore, which is a hard pill to swallow,” he said. He has a cochlear implant now, and it helps him follow conversation, but it distorts voices and music alike. “I can’t feel the warmth, you know?”

He said he is mildly dizzy all the time. He said he no longer plays the big band and New Orleans jazz records he loves around the house, because they do not sound like themselves anymore. He admitted he is a little envious of his bandmates, who still get to go out and play. And then, because he is Huey Lewis, he steered it back to gratitude: the fishing trips, the friendships, the whole unbelievable ride. His words: he has to look at the positive.

How we got here: the timeline

This did not happen overnight. Huey actually lost most of the hearing in his right ear decades ago, around the end of the 80s. He shrugged it off in public for years, and in a 2024 radio interview he summed up Meniere’s the way only he could: “You get vertigo and you lose your hearing, but what you gonna do?” That quote is the whole man in one sentence.

The left ear was the one carrying him. Then one night in Dallas in early 2018, right before showtime, it crashed. He described the lower frequencies distorting so violently that he could not find pitch, and you cannot sing if you cannot find pitch. In April 2018 he canceled all 40 remaining tour dates, telling fans he could no longer hear music well enough to sing. He has not played a full show since. He told Today back then that he spent months trying everything: doctors, diets, acupuncture, all of it.

The story did not stop there, though. The band released the album Weather in 2020, built from songs he recorded before Dallas. His jukebox musical The Heart of Rock and Roll made it all the way to Broadway in 2024. And in a 2025 interview with People he talked about the cochlear implant, hearing speech better, and refusing to slam the door shut: “I’m not going to give up.”

What Huey Lewis meant to the 80s

Everything. OK, here is the longer version.

Huey Lewis and the News were the American bar band that made it all the way to the top without ever pretending to be anything else. No costumes, no fog machines, no mystique. A Bay Area working band in sport coats, with a harmonica, a horn section, and songs your whole family agreed on. In a decade full of characters, Huey’s whole thing was being the regular guy, and it turned out the regular guy could go toe to toe with anybody.

Sports came out in September 1983 and simply refused to leave. It climbed all the way to No. 1 in 1984 and threw off four straight top-10 singles: “Heart and Soul,” “I Want a New Drug,” “The Heart of Rock & Roll,” and “If This Is It.” Seven times platinum, in the era of Thriller. Every one of those songs still starts a party.

Then came 1985. “The Power of Love” became his first No. 1 and got an Oscar nomination, welded forever to Back to the Future. Huey even has a cameo in the movie as the audition judge who rejects Marty McFly’s band for being “just too darn loud,” while the band is playing a Huey Lewis song. Still one of the great inside jokes of the decade. That same year he sang his line on “We Are the World,” standing shoulder to shoulder with every giant in American music.

Fore! landed in August 1986 and went to No. 1 too, with “Stuck with You,” “Hip to Be Square,” and “Jacob’s Ladder” all hitting the top of the charts. And that summer of 1986 is exactly where our story plugs in, because those records were everywhere while we were dancing on Dance Party USA. That run of songs was the air we breathed in that studio. You did not put on Huey Lewis to be cool. You put on Huey Lewis because it made the whole room happy, which we would argue is the harder trick.

We made a whole video about this band

We already made our feelings a matter of public record. We sat down and did an entire episode on what this band meant to us and to those 80s summers, and it is one of our favorite things we have ever put on YouTube:

Watch: “For the Love of Huey Lewis and the News” on our YouTube channel

Go watch it. It was true when we filmed it and it is even more true today.

Play it loud enough for both of you

Huey says he has to face the music. Fair enough. But somebody should tell him the music is doing just fine out here. “If This Is It” still works in three notes. “Stuck with You” still sounds like a summer with nothing to do and nowhere to be. The heart of rock and roll is, in fact, still beating, and he is the reason a few million of us can check.

So here is our prescription, and we are only half kidding: put on Sports today, front to back, loud. He cannot hear it anymore. Play it loud enough for both of you.

Bobby and Jason

FAQ

What happened to Huey Lewis’s hearing?
Huey Lewis has Meniere’s disease, an inner-ear condition that causes vertigo and progressive hearing loss. He lost most of the hearing in his right ear around the end of the 80s, and his left ear failed suddenly before a show in Dallas in early 2018. He now describes his hearing as essentially gone, and a cochlear implant helps him with speech but distorts music.

Can Huey Lewis still hear music?
No. In a July 2026 appearance on the “Inside of You” podcast, Lewis said he can no longer hear music at all, and that music is not part of his life anymore. His cochlear implant lets him follow conversation but makes music sound distorted.

When did Huey Lewis stop performing?
In April 2018, Lewis canceled all 40 of his remaining tour dates after his hearing crashed before a Dallas show, saying he could no longer hear well enough to sing. He has not performed a full concert since.

What were Huey Lewis and the News’ biggest 80s hits?
The album Sports (1983) hit No. 1 and produced “Heart and Soul,” “I Want a New Drug,” “The Heart of Rock & Roll,” and “If This Is It.” “The Power of Love” from Back to the Future was a No. 1 hit in 1985, and Fore! (1986) delivered “Stuck with You,” “Hip to Be Square,” and “Jacob’s Ladder.”

Sources

• San Francisco Chronicle: Huey Lewis on his hearing loss and music (July 2026)
• Parade via Yahoo Entertainment: Huey Lewis opens up about losing his love for music (July 9, 2026)
• Billboard: Huey Lewis shares update on hearing loss (2025)
• MusicRadar: Huey Lewis opens up about hearing loss (May 2024)
• Billboard: Huey Lewis cancels 2018 tour due to hearing loss (April 2018)
• Today: Huey Lewis on his anguish over hearing loss (2018)

Photos: Tankboy from Chicago (CC BY-SA 2.0), Xnux (CC BY-SA 3.0), and PaulHamaker (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons.

April 12, 1986. A half-hour dance show taped in Philadelphia quietly premiered on the USA Network.

Nobody involved thought they were making history. We can say that with some authority, because we were there, and we can promise you that the main things on anyone’s mind were hair, clothes, and not looking at the camera at the wrong moment.

But Dance Party USA turned 40 this year, and forty years is the kind of number that makes you sit down for a second.

The short version, for the newcomers: the show ran from that April afternoon in 1986 all the way to June of 1992. It started as a half hour and got bumped to a full hour in 1987, because apparently America could not get enough of teenagers dancing in a Philadelphia TV studio, and honestly? America was right.

Bobby got there first, coming up through the Philly dance-show world in 1985, and ended up hosting the party from ’89 to ’91. Jason was the co-conspirator-in-chief in the studio from ’86 through ’88, back when the show was brand new and none of us knew what it would become. Between us we saw the whole arc, the regulars, the guest artists, the songs, the sunburns from Penns Landing remotes nobody warned us about.

What still gets us about that show isn’t the nostalgia, exactly. It’s that it was live-wire real in a way TV barely is anymore. Real teenagers. Real reactions. Somebody’s actual first heartbreak happening just off camera while the floor kept moving. You can’t write that. You could only point a camera at it, five days a week, and let it happen.

Forty years later, people still find the cast online, still send us their memories, still ask the same question: “was it as fun as it looked?”

It was more fun than it looked. And it looked like the most fun on television.

We talk about the show constantly on the Awesome 80s Podcast, the stories that never made air are half the reason the podcast exists. Forty years in, the party’s still going. It just has better parking now.

– Bobby and Jason

FAQ

When did Dance Party USA premiere?
Dance Party USA premiered on the USA Network on April 12, 1986, and ran until June 27, 1992.

Where was Dance Party USA filmed?
The show was taped in Philadelphia, at TV studios including WPHL-TV and WGBS, with famous remote shoots at spots like Penns Landing.

How long was each episode?
It began as a half-hour show in 1986 and expanded to a full hour in 1987.

Were Bobby and Jason really on Dance Party USA?
Yes: Bobby was part of the Philly dance-show scene from 1985 and hosted Dance Party USA from 1989 to 1991; Jason was a regular on the floor from 1986 to 1988.

Forty years. Say it out loud and it still doesn’t sound right.

On June 28, 1986, Wham! walked onto the stage at Wembley Stadium in front of 72,000 people and said goodbye. They called the show “The Final,” which was about as subtle as anything else in 1986, meaning not at all, and we loved it that way. Elton John showed up. Simon Le Bon showed up. George and Andrew went out on top, at the absolute peak, in the sunshine.

And here’s the part that still gets us: while all that was happening across the ocean, we were keeping the party going on our side of it. That same summer, “The Edge of Heaven” was in heavy rotation on the Dance Party USA floor, and yes, there is tape of us performing it, and no, we will never stop bringing it up.

Wham! breaking up made zero sense to us at sixteen. Nobody walks away at the top! But that was always the George Michael move. He knew exactly where he was going, and where he went turned out to be one of the great solo runs in pop history. Looking back at it now, “The Final” wasn’t an ending. It was a handoff.

What we remember about that summer:

The singles just kept coming. “Everything She Wants.” “I’m Your Man.” “The Edge of Heaven.” You couldn’t turn on a radio in Philadelphia, or anywhere else, without George’s voice falling out of it. The greatest hits album (also called The Final, because again, subtlety) landed right before the show, and it was basically the soundtrack of our entire year.

If you were anywhere near a teenager in 1986, Wham! wasn’t a band. Wham! was the weather.

We said our real goodbye back in 2016, and we still mean every word of it. But an anniversary like this one isn’t sad. Forty years later the songs do exactly what they did the first time, three notes in and you’re back, mixtape spinning, whole summer ahead of you.

Play something from The Final today. Loud. That’s an order from two guys who owe that band more than we can ever say.

– Bobby and Jason

The honest bottom line

The honest bottom line, forty years late: George was right. Walking away at the peak made no sense to us at sixteen and makes perfect sense from here; Wham! never got old, never got sad, never played a county fair twenty years past the expiration date. The goodbye preserved them in amber at their brightest. We hated it then. We understand it now. That is what forty years is for.

FAQ

When was Wham!’s final concert?
Wham! played their farewell concert, “The Final,” at Wembley Stadium in London on June 28, 1986, in front of about 72,000 fans.

Who appeared at Wham!’s farewell show?
Along with George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley, the show featured guests including Elton John and Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon.

Why did Wham! break up in 1986?
The duo chose to end at their peak, with George Michael moving into the solo career that produced Faith the following year. They went out on top, on purpose.

If you’re like us you gotta be saying “Are you kidding me?”.

Every few years since 1989 we’ve been teased, toyed with and let down.

There’s some surprise reunion of some 80’s hair band. Or you’ll see a cool cameo of some greying 80’s tv star. You may even get a “poorly thought out remake”(we’re looking at you ‘Vacation’) to remind you that the powers that be today just don’t get it.

Over the past few months there has been an awakening. This time…it looks and feels real. Continue reading