The Buggles

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The Buggles
The Buggles with Xarli Diego (center) in his Caspe Street show, 1980
The Buggles with Xarli Diego (center) in his Caspe Street show , 1980
General information
Genre (s) Pop , new wave
founding 1979
resolution 1981
Founding members
Trevor Horn
Geoff Downes

The Buggles (originally just Buggles ) were a British pop / new wave duo that existed from 1979 to 1981 and had a worldwide single hit with Video Killed the Radio Star .

prehistory

The keyboardist Geoff Downes , who previously played in several local bands and jingles had composed for television, met in 1976 at the audition for the band of pop singer Tina Charles their former friend and bassist Trevor Horn know as well as their guitarist Bruce Woolley. The musicians hit it off right away, and Downes and Horn began writing songs together. At the same time they played in Tina Charles' band. They can be heard on some of their songs, including Dance Little Lady Dance . After about a year, the three musicians decided to set up their own project.

Shortly afterwards, Downes, Horn and Woolley founded the band Camera Club together with Thomas Dolby and the composer Hans Zimmer . However, this project only existed for a short time; the musicians gradually left the band.

Buggles (1979 to 1981)

After the Camera Club ended, Downes, Horn and Woolley formed the pop group The Bugs. Due to a joke that the Bugs could never be as successful as the Beatles , the new band soon renamed themselves Buggles. Shortly after their founding, the band shrank to a duo consisting of Downes and Horn as singers.

With this line-up, the Buggles released their debut single Video Killed the Radio Star in September 1979 , which was a great international success. The single reached number two in the German , number one in the Austrian , Swiss and British and number 40 in the US hit lists . However, it remained the group's only number one hit. The clip for the song (directed by Russell Mulcahy ) became the first music video to be broadcast on MTV , two years after its release on August 1, 1981 .

In January 1980 the debut album The Age of Plastic was released , followed a year later by Adventures in Modern Recording . Buggles only produced these two albums, the latter only being released after Horn and Downes had already switched to the progressive rock band Yes .

Merger with Yes (1980)

Like Yes, Buggles were under contract with manager Brian Lane, and in 1980 they happened to work in the same studio as Yes musicians Steve Howe , Chris Squire and Alan White . The latter had to cope with the departure of their singer Jon Anderson and keyboardist Rick Wakeman at this time . Trevor Horn tried to sell a song called We Can Fly from Here to the musicians he had admired for years . Squire was interested, and since Howe and White were unavailable at short notice, a session with Squire, Horn, Downes and former Yes drummer Bill Bruford was set up to rehearse We Can Fly from Here . Squire had not organized this interaction without ulterior motives, as a Yes tour was supposed to start in a few weeks, for which musicians were urgently needed. When the time to tour was running out, Downes and Horn were asked if they would like to become Yes members. Both agreed and the five musicians were able to complete the album Drama in record time by combining the Yes material with some of the Buggles' songs. Yes then went on tour with Downes and Horn on August 29, 1980.

After the dissolution

The success of Buggles gave Trevor Horn an exceptionally successful career as a producer, which he continues to this day. In the following years he worked on albums by Frankie Goes to Hollywood , the Pet Shop Boys , the Simple Minds , Marc Almond , Seal , Lisa Stansfield , the Sugababes , Celine Dion , Sinéad O'Connor , Grace Jones , Godley & Creme , among others , Belle and Sebastian and tATu

Geoff Downes, however, was by former Yes guitarist Steve Howe , the former King Crimson - and UK -Bassisten and vocalist John Wetton and former Emerson, Lake & Palmer -Schlagzeuger Carl Palmer in 1981 as the fourth member of the newly founded AOR - Supergroup Asia brought in.

Live performances

On December 25, 1979 Buggles were seen with video Killed the Radio Star as playback in an episode of the English hit parade show Top of the Pops . The drums for this gig were played by Warren Cann, the drummer of the group Ultravox .

On December 3, 1998, Buggles performed live for the first time at a concert by Horn's ZTT Records at the Mean Fiddler club in London . The band, which only played Video Killed the Radio Star , consisted of Downes, Horn and singer Tessa Niles.

2004 saw a reunion of almost all former members of Buggles at the British festival The Prince's Trust , where they also played a live version of their greatest hit.

On June 9, 2017, Hans Zimmer performed together with Trevor Horn at his concert in Frankfurt, where they played the hit video killed the radio star .

Discography

Albums

year title Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements
(Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes)
Remarks
DE DE AT AT CH CH UK UK US US
1980 The Age of Plastic - - - UK27 (6 weeks)
UK
-
1982 Adventures in Modern Recording - - - - US161 (5 weeks)
US

gray hatching : no chart data available for this year

Singles

year Title
album
Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements
(Year, title, album , rankings, weeks, awards, notes)
Remarks
DE DE AT AT CH CH UK UK US US
1979 Video Killed the Radio Star
The Age of Plastic
DE2 (22 weeks)
DE
AT1 (18 weeks)
AT
CH1 (12 weeks)
CH
UK1
gold
gold

(11 weeks)UK
US40 (10 weeks)
US
1980 The Plastic Age
The Age of Plastic
DE29 (9 weeks)
DE
- - UK16 (8 weeks)
UK
-
Clean, clean!
The Age of Plastic
DE60 (1 week)
DE
- - UK38 (5 weeks)
UK
-
Elstree
The Age of Plastic
- - - UK55 (4 weeks)
UK
-

More singles

  • 1979: Extracts from the Age of Plastic
  • 1980: I Am a Camera
  • 1981: On TV
  • 1982: Adventures in Modern Recording
  • 1982: Lenny
  • 1982: Beatnik

useful information

The health song by voice imitator Elmar Brandt uses the melody from Video Killed the Radio Star . Moreover, it is Hans Zimmer seen in the music video.

literature

  • Chris Welch: Close to the Edge. The story of Yes. London / NY / Sydney 1999, ISBN 0-7119-6930-2 .

swell

  1. Video Killed the Radio Star on The Prince's Trust. In: YouTube.com. March 13, 2006, accessed November 7, 2010 .
  2. Hans Zimmer delivers a really big cinema in Frankfurt - review / report . In: regioactive.de . ( regioactive.de [accessed on September 18, 2017]).
  3. a b Chart sources: DE AT CH UK US singles US albums
  4. ^ The Billboard Albums by Joel Whitburn , 6th Edition, Record Research 2006, ISBN 0-89820-166-7 .
  5. Gold / platinum database UK

Web links