Retro Spins: The Buggles - Adventures In Modern Recording

All was not well for The Buggles in 1981. Despite the success of Video Killed The Radio Star, the single from their prior debut album, The Age Of Plastic, the duo split up. This was mainly driven by Geoff Downes forming the band, Asia. On his own, Trevor Horne put in place a second Buggles band, and completed Adventure In Modern Recording.

The album is very much different in sound from that of The Age Of Plastic. It's very experimental for its time, fusing synthpop and jazz together in the small doses. It somewhat works, but is also appreciated that it's doesn't dominate the album. The album delivers on a solid and straight up pop sound for the most part.

Unfortunately, as I crossed the halfway point of the album, I still hadn't heard anything necessarily memorable. The album was listenable for its uniqueness, but not at all for its catchy lyrics or memorable riffs.

Things didn't get much better beyond that point, and I started to get a little bummed out with the album. For all the critical praise it's received, I honestly expected better. Looking back on it after hearing it, I can't help but think that praise was all garnered towards the overall sound, which would have been pretty unique to 1981.

Whatever it was, that wrapped up my listening session, and overall, I'm not too enthralled with Adventures In Modern Recording. That's disappointing.

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Retro Spins: The Buggles - The Age of Plastic

The Buggles
The Age of Plastic
1980

Yes, we all know The Buggles' Video Killed the Radio Star was the first song to debut on MTV on August 1, 1981, but the duo comprised of Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes is so much more than that.

The album The Age of Plastic was so far ahead of its time and personally speaking, I feel like it really paved the way for what the music of the 80's would become. It's ironic in a way because the album's instrumentation ushers in a new era of music while the lyrics involve themes of nostalgia and anxiety about the possible effects of modern technology. While not all of the songs blew me away, I did get a sense that they were all intended to be fun. As such, I enjoyed the album overall. Granted, not all the tracks made it to my personal mixes and shuffles.

The lead track from the album is of course Video Killed the Radio Star which would become the bands one and only real hit. However, what's interesting to note is that the track debuted towards the tail end of the year prior to the album's release and never charted in 1980 or even when the video was shown on MTV in '81. It debuted at number eighty-six on the charts in November of 1979 and only managed to make it to number forty before drifting back down and off. It was off the charts prior to the new year turning over - Which is truly surprising to me. 

I first heard the song on volume forty-six of Springbok which was released in 1979. However, Springbok never used the real artists or their tracks. Instead they hired unknown people for their compilations. It's because of this that a lot of songs I grew up with were in fact never the original artists for me until I moved to the states in the early 80's. It's not The Buggles, but the below cover of the song is by no means bad. In fact I really like the sped up tempo of the cover.

Even with that said though, I'll always take the original artists.

The Buggles called it quits after two albums, but their popularity by no way shape or form faltered from this. Just take a look at the below from 2004 where they made an appearance. The audience loves it and honestly so do I. It's fun!

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