This Day in Music History: The Buggles/Adventures in Modern Recording (11/11)

Adventures in Modern Recording is the second and final studio album by British synthpop duo The Buggles, released on this day in 1981. Made one year after their stint as members of Yes, the album contains nine tracks, including a stripped-down version of Yes's "Into the Lens", here entitled, "I Am a Camera". The album as released was mostly a Trevor Horn solo effort, Geoffrey Downes having joined Asia before recording began. Bruce Woolley assisted in completing the tracks.

Although the album suffered commercial failure in the United Kingdom, it did get chart performance in the United States, reaching #161 on the Billboard 200. Like The Age of Plastic it was positively received by critics. 

In 1989, Sincer Records Re-Released the album on CD. It only held the songs from the original LP. In 1997 it was reissued with three bonus tracks, this time on a Japanese label. A new reissue was released by Salvo Records/ZTT in 2010, which included 10 bonus tracks. Those 10 bonus tracks are of particular interest to fans of the group Yes. Both "We Can Fly from Here" and "Riding a Tide" were rerecorded (30 years later!) by Yes, with Horn as producer and Downes on keyboards, for their 2011 studio album Fly from Here.

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Friday and the Random 10 (Snowblind Edition)

Welcome to a new and improved, simplified and stripped down Random 10! 

Here's a picture.

JY is a bad mofo.

This Day in Music History:Yes/Drama (08/22)

Released on this day in 1980, Drama is the tenth studio album by British progressive rock band Yes. It is also the first Yes album without vocalist Jon Anderson (gasp!).

YES Family Tree

This is from the YesYears box set and shows the many incarnations of Yes, and how they connect to other bands such as King Crimson, Asia, The Moody Blues, ELP and Genesis (up to 1991).

Friday and the Random 10 (Pokemon Go Edition)

So yeah, I think it is about time I mentioned the craze that is currently sweeping the nation: Pokemon Go. And, no I don't play it because, in the words of my friend Scott, "I'm a grown ass man". However, I knew it was going to be huge. How? Well I play another little app called Ingress, which is also developed by Niantic, just like Pokemon GO. 

As a matter of fact, all the Pokemon locations (whatever they're called) are actually the locations of portals in Ingress. Like copied straight over. Ingress portals are near objects of art, parks, and historical areas (that's why you can catch Picazulu at places like the Holocaust Museum...it wasn't meant to be disrespectful, it's that it was considered an important location in the other game).

So right now I am working on combining this countdown with a list of the Top 10 Pokemon(s?...Pokemen?...Pokemai?) as told to me by my daughters Wendy and Lorelei. It will probably suck, but here goes: 

Friday and the Random 10 (Housing Anxiety Edition)

One of the reasons I took a camping trip last week was to sort out things in my head about my apartment situation. Those close to me know that a new "management" company has come in and have been basically trying to force this white boy to move out. They have hit me with fake inspections with no documentation and imaginary pictures to "corporate". They finally offered me a six month probationary lease (after being in this complex for over 6+ years). I've decided to screw them over and move out instead...and that leads to all kinds of anxiety for me. 

I have a partner in crime who will be my new roommate though, so I won't be doing it alone. However, and I can't state this enough, I FREAKING HATE MOVING.

Irony of ironies: As I typed up this blog post, I got yet another notice on my door about "failing to complete annual recertification" (that's a new one, I did do this way back in February). My lease is now terminated effective May 31st, 2016. Luckily that is the date I was going to tell them I will be out by so no worries there. But, see what I have been dealing with here???

Here's hoping music takes my mind off of it for awhile...

Friday and the Random 10 (100 Years of Roy Edition)

Okay, yeah I missed another Friday last week (and the one before that too), but I have a really good excuse this time. Most of you may know that I work as an engineer on the Walt Disney World Railroad. One of our steam trains, the Roy O. Disney (Walt's brother), reached its 100th birthday! We had a centennial celebration with special pics in the morning (see below), a BBQ cookout, and then a formal get together later that night at the Contemporary Resort. It was a full day and an event I am proud to say I was a part of. That's me standing on the top of the tender in the middle.

But we are here for music, so let's get back to that:

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Friday and the Random 10 (Life is Just a Fantasy Edition)

Oh man. Not a lot of time for talk. Too tired. Working the holidays at Disney sucks. Enjoy some music:

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Friday and the Random 10 (Original Content Edition)

You know, on my blog here I started doing a lot of what I called "fillers" (This Day in Music/Disney History) just to fill in the gaps between posts. People seem to like them so that's okay, but they seem to be overtaking my blog a bit. I mean it seems that's all I post. I know work doesn't leave me much time to write "original" posts, but I do notice the trend and hope to add more varied content in the future.

That being said, one of the mainstays around here is obviously the Random Ten. Without further delay, let's get right into that!

Friday and the Random 10 (NFL Draft Edition)

The only thing I care about when it comes to the NFL draft is where my Bama boys go. The first round had only one Alabama player taken (Amari Cooper, #4 to the Raiders), but he's a stud. Raider nation, you guys will love him. Hopefully tonight more will have their names called. #RollTide

But for now, I am going to see how the Random 10 matches up with the first ten picks in the draft. Before we get started though, how about that Random Ten last week? You can take a quick review by following this link, or trying to figure out the artists from the cool picture below: 

As always the rules and whatnot are up there ↑ at the top next to the Home tab.

Music Monday (Yes/Fly From Here, Side 1)

So even though Yes's last album at this point was in 2001 (Magnification), they still constantly toured every year. I saw them myself once or twice during that time period. However in 2008, a tour planned for summer was cancelled when Anderson suffered acute respiratory failure. As they were preparing to head back to the studio, they decided not to wait on Jon (a dick move on my part) and replaced him with Benoît David, the lead vocalist in a Yes tribute act Close to the Edge.

That's right, they replaced him with someone from a tribute band! Journey says hello...

Music Monday (Adventures in Modern Recording)

The whole point of covering The Age of Plastic by The Buggles in my last post, was to introduce what happened next, and also how it reverberated more than 30 years later.


In 1980, Horn and Downes began work on a second album, working in a studio next door to Yes, who had recently lost vocalist Jon Anderson and keyboardist Rick Wakeman. Both members of The Buggles, and Horn in particular, had been long-standing fans of Yes. The 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 members of Yes. Horn and Downes accepted the offer, and joined Squire, Steve Howe, and Alan White to record the Drama album which I covered here and here.

Music Monday (The Buggles/The Age of Plastic)

Before I get to the next Yes album, I thought it might be a good point to take a tangent view at another album that has a great influence on their follow up to Magnification. In retrospect, I should have covered this album after Tormato as it had a great bearing on the following Drama album as well.

I am of course talking about The Age of Plastic by The Buggles.

Original and alternate covers

Friday and the Random 10 (Football is Back Edition)

You all know I love me some baseball. The pennant races are heating up as the season is winding down, but wait? What is that on my TV? Is that college football I see? Is it time for my beloved Crimson Tide to start its march for (hopefully) another national championship? Yes it is. Booyah!

It also means that fall is coming, and hopefully, soon enough, cooler weather down here. The temps down here are still in the 90's with the first Not So Scary Halloween Party three (!) days away. Yes, I said three days. As in Monday. Happy Labor Day ya'll, now give me some candy.

With all that being said, let's get down to the real reason we are here. Looking back at last week I see that RW and The Beatles got banned. Let's see if I am right about my Tarkus prediction.

As usual the rules and whatnot are up there ↑ at the top. Time for the kickoff!

In Honor of Trevor Horn's Birthday

The man that sang this...

...eventually ended up in Yes* for one album

*Yes it's the same keyboard player too! Geoff Downes is actually back in the band for the new Heaven and Earth CD that I reviewed here.

Friday and the Random 10 (Oops I Skipped a Week Edition)

So last Friday just came and went and it never clicked in my head that I was forgetting something... until Sunday. Oops. As an excuse work has been all over the place and I've been working on a few other projects (the Refrigerator Magnet Challenge for one). I mean it's not like I haven't forgotten before.

So it's May now and I'm not even going to look at the last countdown. This one is all fresh. As usual the rules and whatnot are up there ↑ at the top.

Let's get jiggy with it!

Friday and the Random 10 (Outliers edition)

Well we are back for another week of randomness and after last week's literary crapdom (The Catcher in the Rye...ugh), I'm glad to say that the next book I read was much better. So much better in fact that I read it all in one day. It was called Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and it was a fascinating read (review coming soon). So that has me in a better state of mind for whatever music comes our way today.

Friday and the Random 10 (New Roommate Edition)

You may have noticed recently that I have been re-posting a lot of my older posts dealing with relationships. Well the reason behind that is that my collaborator, co-conspirator, and just plain evil muse Kerra (from The Levels of Awkwardness) is moving back to Florida today. We plan to do some creative and mind bending "blogwork" in the upcoming weeks. Be on the lookout for that.

Friday and the Random 10

Yes it's finally back! Because of certain circumstances I wasn't able to make everyone's Friday last week. Okay, I was at the beach. Deal with it. Looking back at last time, I see that the Chili Peppers are banned for being muy caliente... and showing up twice. As usual, the rules and whatnot are over there → to the right.

Enough jibber jabber! Let's get it started up!

Friday and the Random 10 (Monsters University Edition)

Real quick one today since it's been a busy morning and about to head off to see Monsters U. Rules and whatnot over there → to the right.

1) Apollo 440/Astral America

2) RHCP/Dosed

3) The Buggles/Johnny on the Monorial (A Very Different Version)

4) Yes/Arriving UFO

5) Yes/Time is Time - one week back and they get banned already.

6) Chicago/(I've Been) Searching So Long

7) Mozart/Serenate Parts I and II - I got class yall

8) Korn/Beg For Me

9) Steve Howe/Classical Gas

10) The Mahavishnu Orchestra/A Lotus on Irish Streams

Well, that was kind of all over the place. The STCS for this week is Rick Wakeman/The Bear. Of course it's good ole RW! This must be his CD about forest animals.

Play us out Yes