Here they are covering a song that is itself 80% of a cover of that one song.
Opening band: OMD! Alison Moyet (Yazoo) covering Grace Jones! Apparently Claudia Brucken (Propaganda) was there too (no video evidence of this discovered yet). Youtube user Automorph has the goods.
A review: The Buggles, Supperclub, London
There was always something ghostly and out of time about "Video Killed the Radio Star", and there are multiple added layers of irony to a band whose greatest hit was a song about the poignancy of hearing a now-forgotten star from three decades earlier making his own comeback 30 years down the line.
This one-off show is sold as the Buggles' first-ever concert, even though they played a couple of songs as part of Trevor Horn's Prince's Trust tribute concert at Wembley in 2004. The Buggles disintegrated before they could do such traditional rock'n'roll things as touring. Horn and Geoff Downes briefly joined Yes, and Downes stayed on in Yes offshoot Asia, while Horn became the production genius of the age. Think that's hyperbole? Compare the versions of ABC's "Tears Are Not Enough" with and without his fairy-dust touch; cower before the 10-megaton thunder of Frankie's "Two Tribes".
(Art of Noise doesn't deserve a mention?)
Also relevant:
And just because it's awesome, here's Duran Duran covering Warm Leatherette and Showroom Dummies from a few years ago:
Still seeking a copy of The Value of Entertainment laserdisc or rip thereof...
It wasn't a reunion gig, it was their first (and so far only) live gig ever.
I nearly went, but £100 plus return flights and a hotel bill struck me as too pricey for a 40-minute set (they were advertising that they'd just run through the playlist of "The Age of Plastic"). Then they announced OMD on support, too damn late for the flights. Then they added all the other cool stuff 24 hours before the show ...
Sometimes, just once every year or three, something comes along that makes me really pissed-off that I don't live in London any more.
If I had known about this,I would have been tempted to fly out for it. And, almost certainly reached the same conclusion you did and stayed home. But still, tempted!
If they play again, I am pulling out the stops to go.
Wow, how's this for "meta" --that Limosuines video, which I obviously just watched on the internet, made me _love_ that song!!
More zombie apocalype-themed cutesie-wootsie bubblegum pop songs, please.
I saw The Limousines live last month (the day after The Buggles played their show, coincidentally) and they were fantastic. I really love the album, too.
I'd heard the song on the radio many's the time, and liked it for it's somewhat tongue-in-cheek 80's-ness, but hoo-boy, that video was spectacular.
What is this "radio" you speak of? Is that like wifi?
No, no, no... _ra-di-o_... It's what I use to listen to "Little Orphan Annie" and get my updates on the War in the Pacific.
I'll actually voice support for the 1980 Yes album Drama, which was the awkward fusion of the Buggles with the less-showy members of Yes (minus cherubic singer Jon Anderson and synth wizard Rick Wakeman). Drama is the prequel to what became Asia, with its main failing being that Trevor Horn cannot hit the eunuch-like high notes like Anderson can/could. With hindsight, Drama was a last-ditch effort by Yes to stay relevant amongst the changing world of punk/New Wave/technical butt-rock that made up the late 70s, but with all that was happening around them musically, it could have been a lot worse. Much worse.
I wonder if there are still any working Fairlights...
But, but... how did I not know about this? I only live a few miles up the road. I so would have been there :-(
Given how often ZTT release re-mixes of re-mixes of re-mixes, I expect to hear that versions of VKTRS on the next Buggles album remix.
Simon doesn't appear to be ageing. Is this a pact with the devil, or is there some sort of hideous painting somewhere...
Claudia Brücken would have been because she and Paul Humphreys are an item, both musically and romatically. Musically, they call themselves OneTwo, and have opened for Erasure and the Human League ... Romantically, I have no idea what they call themselves, but I can vouch for the fact that they are both really nice people who didn't mind being bored to death by a drunken Englishman during the interval at the Human League concert in Copenhagen back in '08 ...