Eight- X (22)

Hello, Eight-X burps up some more nostalgia again from the days when the world had to do without the internet, cheap communications and computers were toys for nerdy boys. A time when governments and company's functioned without the demand to know everything about you, in fact it was easier to enter/visit a jail then, as it is to enter a 'democratic' country these days. Seen in that light this eighties nostalgia is escapism too.
Buggles started off the MTV age , little did they know how bad it would get, Clear Channel that owns 1600 radiostations in the US has put out an 'edict' that no artists over 45 are to be played at their radiostations..wrinklefree radio..Well Buggles started off the career of Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes, ironically the main man responsible for Video Killed The Radiostar, Bruce Woolley disengaged shortly before and after one album fell into oblivion... The Passions began at the Cure's Fiction label and thats not surprising when listening to Michael And Miranda, later a major picked them up, but didn't really know what to do with them, a pity their music was still developing ( as did the line up) After 3 albums it was all over, to my surprise there's just one cd collection released, where's the remaster ? ...Finally Thomas Dolby, who btw worked with Buggles and later as backing for Woolley before setting out himself. His first album was great even, if it has been rereleased in 5 versions at the time, well i scored the first one back then..I'm not sure what happened after his great second album, The Flat Earth, he seems to have lost focus, too much too young perhaps.

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Buggles - The Age Of Plastic (79 ^ 465mb)

Buggles formed in 1977 consisting of Trevor Horn (bass guitar, guitar, percussion, and vocals), Geoff Downes (percussion and keyboards) and Bruce Woolley. Horn and Downes first met in the mid 1970s while members of the backing band of British singer Tina Charles . After this stint they briefly went their separate ways, Horn playing bass guitar in the house band at Hammersmith Odeon for a while, where he met Bruce Woolley. During this period Horn yearned to become a record producer, but was frustrated by not being able to find ideal songs or artists to work with. As a result he reunited with Geoff Downes, and the trio of Horn, Downes, and Woolley began writing their own songs to record themselves as a studio band.

The Buggles' sound was characterised by a deliberately synthetic quality in keeping with the technological subject matter of their songs. The origin of the band's name the booklet for the CD remaster of "The Age of Plastic" says that it arose out of a private joke between Horn and Downes and was actually a pun on "Beatles". ( but then take out a g and you get bugles..horns). Their first song was "Video Killed the Radio Star," and in the summer of 1979 a demo recording was submitted to Island Records, who signed them immediately. Although the song was chiefly a Bruce Woolley composition, he left shortly before its release to form a new band, the Ian band, which included Thomas Dolby and Hans Zimmer. The Camera Club also released a version of the song. Three months after the demo was sent to Island, "Video Killed the Radio Star" was spending one week at the top and shooting Buggles to fame. At the time of the single's original release Buggles did not actually have an album's worth of material to record, and so they wrote most of the other tracks for their debut album The Age of Plastic (1980) while travelling around Europe promoting "Video Killed the Radio Star".

Being largely a studio creation, Buggles never toured as such. The novelty value of the song led to the Buggles' being perceived as being a one-hit wonder (three subsequent singles also charted, although they were largely ignored by radio and did not perform well), but its success was sufficient to launch both members of the band onto successful careers. The video for the song, directed by Russell Mulcahy, was the first video aired on MTV two years later, at midnight on the 1st of August 1981. By this time, the Camera Club had released their version of the song.

Later in 1980, Horn and Downes began work on a second album, working in a studio next door to progressive rock band Yes, who had recently lost vocalist Jon Anderson and keyboardist Rick Wakeman. Buggles offered a song to Yes, "We Can Fly from Here", but at the suggestion of Brian Lane, manager of both bands, Yes' bassist Chris Squire invited them to actually replace Anderson and Wakeman as fully fledged members of Yes. This they did, in one of rock music's more surprising shifts of personnel. The fruit of their labours was the album Drama (1980). On the whole, the team-up of Yes and Buggles was well received by fans both on record, and on stage. Yes officially disbanded, although temporarily, in early 1981, shortly after the Drama tour came to an end.

Whilst Downes went on forming Asia, Horn continued to work on the second Buggles album, Adventures in Modern Recording, with several new players, the most prominent being Simon Darlow. The album did not chart, nor did four singles released from it. Shortly afterwards Trevor Horn brought the Buggles to an end. Finally embarking on his new career as a record producer, achieving enormous success, with bands like ABC, Dollar, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Art of Noise, and even a re-formed Yes, with Jon Anderson back on vocals. In 1985, Horn won the Best Producer BRIT Award.



01 - Living In The Plastic Age (5:13)
02 - Video Killed The Radio Star (4:13)
03 - Kid Dynamo (3:29)
04 - I Love You (Miss Robot) (4:58)
05 - Clean, Clean (3:53)
06 - Elstree (4:29)
07 - Astroboy (And The Proles On Parade) (4:41)
08 - Johnny On The Monorail (5:28)
09 - Island (3:33)
10 - Technopop (3:50)
11 - Johnny On The Monorail (A Very Different Version) (3:49)

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The Passions - Michael and Miranda (80 ^ 273mb)

Based in Shepherds Bush, West London, The Passions' music was grounded mainly in Barbara Gogan's voice, and Clive Timperley's delicate echoplex guitar work. Before forming in 1978, most of the members had spent time in other groups. Timperley was an ex-101ers, whilst drummer Richard Williams and singer/guitarist Barbara Gogan were in the punk rock outfit, The Derelicts. The Passions' first single, issued in March 1979, was "Needles and Pills", which helped them gain a recording contract with Fiction Records, home of The Cure.

A year passed between the release of the "Needles and Pills" single, and Michael and Miranda, the band's first album. Singles "Hunted", and "Swimmer" followed, and then their major charting song, "I'm in Love with a German Film Star". Before "The Swimmer" Bidwell and Barker left the band, the former to join The Wall. David Agar took over on bass guitar. The band's second album, 30,000 Feet Over China, was released in August 1981. It included previously released A-sides and several brand new recordings. Clive Timperley left the band in Verona in December 1981, during the Italian leg of their prophetically named "Tour Till We Crack" tour, as a result of "serious political differences".

The follow-up single release "Africa Mine" was recorded with a new line-up. Kevin Armstrong (a contributor to a Thomas Dolby album), who had previously been with Local Heroes joined, and the group added a keyboard player, Jeff Smith, perhaps best known for his past work with Lene Lovich. Armstrong and Smith took part in the recording of the band's third and final album, Sanctuary. It appeared in the autumn of 1982, Stephen Wright joined replacing Armstrong. The band toured Europe and the U.S., but dissolved for good in the summer of 1983, after playing their last ever live show at London's Marquee Club on 12 August that year.



01 - Pedal Fury (2:07)
02 - Oh No It's You (4:25)
03 - Snow (2:29)
04 - Love Song (2:34)
05 - Man On The Tube (3:51)
06 - Miranda (1:05)
07 - Obsession (3:35)
08 - Suspicion (2:34)
09 - Palava (2:04)
10 - Absentee (3:16)
11 - Brick Wall (2:37)
12 - Why Me (3:09)
 Bonus
13 - Hunted 3:31
14 - Needles And Pills 3:48
15 - Body And Soul 3:07

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Thomas Dolby - The Golden Age Of Wireless ( 82 ^ 447mb)

Thomas Dolby (born Thomas Morgan Robertson, on 14 October 1958) is an English musician, producer, and inventor. Thomas was born in London, England. His father, Martin Robertson, was an internationally-distinguished professor of classical Greek art and archaeology at the University of London and Oxford University, and in his youth Thomas lived or worked in Greece and France. Thomas married actress Kathleen Beller in 1988; the couple have three children together.
Dolby's interest in music arose through his interest in computers, electronics and synthesizers. He originally attended college to study meteorology, but he was soon side-tracked by electronics, specifically musical equipment. He began building his own synthesizers when he was 18 years old. Around the same time, he began to learn how to play guitar and piano, as well as how to program computers. The "Dolby" nickname comes from the name Dolby Laboratories, and was given to him by school friends due to his seemingly inseparable relationship with his cassette machine. Dolby Laboratories tried to stop him from using the name Dolby entirely. Eventually, the case was settled out of court and it was agreed that he would refrain from using the word Dolby in any context other than with the name Thomas.

In his late teens, Dolby was hired as a touring sound engineer for a variety of post-punk bands, including the Fall, the Passions and the Members; on these dates, he would use a PA system he had built himself. In 1979, he formed the arty post-punk band Camera Club with Bruce Woolley, Trevor Horn, Geoff Downes and Matthew Seligman. Within a year, he had left the group and joined Lene Lovich's backing band. Dolby gave Lovich his song "New Toy," which became a British hit in 1981. That same year, he released his first solo single, "Urges," on the English independent label Armageddon. By the fall, he had signed with Parlophone and released "Europa and the Pirate Twins." Dolby started playing synthesizer on sessions for other artists in 1982. He wrote and produced "Magic's Wand" for Whodini; the single became one of the first million-selling rap singles. Even with all of these achievements, 1982 was most noteworthy for the release of Dolby's first solo album, The Golden Age of Wireless, in the summer of 1982; the record reached number 13 in England, while it was virtually forgotten in America. "Windpower," the first single from the record, became his first Top 40 UK hit . Here he is performing at Top Of The Pops..Windpower...no need to remind the Brits as a storm is raging over the isles tonight.

In January of 1983, Dolby released an EP, Blinded by Science, which included a catchy number called "She Blinded Me with Science" that featured a cameo vocal appearance by the notorious British eccentric Magnus Pike, who also appeared in the song's promotional video. Blinded by Science was a minor hit in England, but the EP and the single became major American hit in 1983, thanks to MTV's heavy airplay of the "She Blinded Me with Science" video. Eventually, it was included on a resequenced and reissued version of The Golden Age of Wireless, which peaked at number 13 in America.

The Flat Earth, Dolby's second album, appeared in early 1984 and was supported by the single "Hyperactive." The single became his biggest UK hit. Though The Flat Earth did relativly well in the US , Dolby's momentum was already beginning to slow -- none of the singles released from the album cracked the American Top 40. Nevertheless, Dolby was in demand as a collaborator and he worked with Herbie Hancock, Howard Jones, Stevie Wonder, George Clinton, and Dusty Springfield. During 1985, he produced Clinton's Some of My Best Jokes Are Friends, Prefab Sprout's Steve McQueen (Two Wheels Good in the US), and Joni Mitchell's Dog Eat Dog, as well as supporting David Bowie at Live Aid. Also in 1985, he began composing film scores, starting with Fever Pitch. In 1986, he composed the scores for Gothic and Howard the Duck, to which he credited himself as Dolby's Cube. Aliens Ate My Buick, Dolby's long-delayed third album, appeared in 1988 to poor reviews and weak sales, even though the single "Airhead" became a minor British hit.

For the rest of the late '80s and early '90s, Dolby continued to score films, producing and he began building his own computer equipment. His fourth album, Astronauts & Heretics, was released in 1992 on his new label, Giant the album was a flop. The following year, Dolby founded the computer software company Headspace, which released The Virtual String Quartet as its first program. For the rest of the '90s, Headspace occupied most of Dolby's time and energy. In 1994, he released The Gate to the Mind's Eye, a soundtrack to the videotape Mind's Eye. Also that year, Capitol released the greatest-hits collection, Retrospectacle.

This is the original version of the LP, released in early 1982 in the UK. Later pressings differ from this one in a variety of ways, but most notably: First US issue (but second issue overall; on Harvest): Drops The Wreck Of The Fairchild, but adds Urges and Leipzig which were taken from an early single. Replaces the full-length Airwaves found here with a 7" version, and includes a different version of Radio Silence. A later US version then dropped Urges and Leipzig and instead added She Blinded Me With Science and One Of Our Submarines. Still later pressings switch off between the long and short versions of She Blinded... and Airwaves, and the rock (long) vs. synth (short) versions of Radio Silence. Confused ? Don't be, here's the final 09 remastered issue



01 Flying North (3:49)
02 Commercial Breakup (4:15)
03 Weightless (3:45)
04 Europa And The Pirate Twins (3:17)
05 Windpower (4:17)
06 The Wreck Of The Fairchild (3:20)
07 Airwaves (5:17)
08 Radio Silence (3:45)
09 Cloudburst At Shingle Street (5:35)
Bonus
10 One Of Our Submarines 5:11
11 She Blinded Me With Science 3:42
12 Radio Silence (Guitar Version) 4:52
13 Urges 3:39
14 Leipzig 3:53
15 Urban Tribal 3:45
16 Therapy / Growth (Demo) 4:05
17 Airwaves (Demo) 5:20
18 Sale Of The Century (Demo) 2:52
19 Pedestrian Walkway (Demo) 1:27

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