Geoff Downes

The Buggles were an English New Wave duo consisting of Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes . They are best known for their 1979 debut single Video Killed... the Radio Star that was #1 on the singles charts of sixteen countries. Its music video was the first to be shown on MTV in the U.S. at 12:01 on 1 August 1981. Horn and Downes first met in the mid 1970s, at auditions for Tina Charles' backing band, and worked with her producer, Biddu, whose backing tracks had an influence on their early work. 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. Two different stories are claimed for the origin of the band's name.
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Asia is a British rock group formed in 1981. The band was labeled a supergroup as it included former members of several veteran progressive rock... bands, namely bassist/vocalist John Wetton , guitarist Steve Howe , keyboardist Geoff Downes and drummer Carl Palmer . The band has been through multiple line-up changes in its history, but the current line-up is a reunion of that original line-up. A second band, called Asia Featuring John Payne, exists in parallel as a continuation of a pre-2006 Asia line-up. Asia began in early 1981 with the apparent demise of Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, two of the flagship bands of British progressive rock. After the break-up of King Crimson in 1974, various plans for a super group involving bassist John Wetton had been mooted, including the abortive British Bulldog project with Bill Bruford and Rick Wakeman in 1976. Wakeman left this project at the urging of management, according to Bill Bruford.
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Rock Aid Armenia was a humanitarian effort by the British music industry to raise money to help those affected by the Leninakan Earthquake of 1988... that struck Armenia. Initiated by the international charity campaigner Jon Dee, the project comprised a number of singles, compilations and a documentary. The first Rock Aid Armenia project was a remake of 'What's Goin On' which featured Boy George, Aswad, Errol Brown, Richard Derbyshire and various other British artists. The record was produced by Steve Levine and the Executive Producers were Fraser Kennedy and Jon Dee. This was released as a single on Island Records in Germany. The project is most remembered for a re-recording of one of Deep Purple’s famous hit songs, "Smoke on the Water", with different vocalists singing each verse. The single made it to the British Top 40 . The track was recorded by an elite group of contemporary hard rock and heavy metal musicians who gathered at the historic Metropolis Studios in Chiswick, London. Recording began on July 8, 1989 and was completed over 5 different sessions.
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Geffen Records is an American record label, owned by Universal Music Group, and operated as one third of UMG's Interscope-Geffen-A&M label group. Geffen Records was founded in 1980 by music industry businessman David Geffen who, in the early 1970s, had founded Asylum Records. Geffen stepped... down from Asylum in 1975, when he crossed over to film and was named a vice-president of Warner Brothers Pictures. He was fired from Warner circa 1978, but remained locked in a 5-year contract, preventing him from working elsewhere. He returned to work in 1980 and struck a deal with Warner Bros. Records to create Geffen Records. Warner provided 100 percent of the funding for the label's operations and distributed the label's releases in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom - CBS/Epic Records handled distribution in the rest of the world until 1985, when Warner Bros. also took over those territories. However, in the United Kingdom the label switched distribution from Warner Bros. to CBS in 1981. Profits were split 50/50 between Geffen and the respective distributors.
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Frontiers Records is an Italian record label, predominantly producing melodic rock. It was formed in 1996 by Serafino Perugino and is based in Naples, Italy. Perugino started working in the music industry in 1996, as Italian distributor for numerous artists in the field of melodic rock and earned... an excellent reputation in the field, so that he could soon set up an independent label. 1998 saw the birth of Frontiers Records. The label was launched with the goal of producing high quality products in the field of melodic rock offering. The first release of the new label was the double live album Never Say Goodbye by the British hard rock group Ten. In addition to the commitment of Frontiers Records to manage new artists in the genre the label roster is full of very well known bands and artists, such as Winger, Styx, Toto, Yes, Joe Lynn Turner, Journey, Thunder, Survivor, Glenn Hughes, House of Lords and Whitesnake. Frontiers Records in December 2010 completed sales contract with EMI Music for the U.S. and Canada distribution, which became effective from January 2011.
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EMI America Records was started in 1978 by EMI as a second US label next to Capitol Records. It absorbed Liberty Records in 1984. In the late 1980s EMI America was consolidated with Manhattan Records to form EMI Manhattan Records, which later became known simply as EMI in 1990, then part of EMI... Records Group North America in 1992. Currently, this organization of labels is under EMI's Capitol Music Group. On YouTube, a video channel with the EMI America name has been launched, though it contains videos from various labels in the US-signed EMI family. There is also a MySpace page. Past artists have included: Blessid Union of Souls, David Bowie, Lenny Burns, Kim Carnes, Sheena Easton, Joe "Bean" Esposito, Go West, Huey Lewis and the News, Barbara Mandrell, Naked Eyes, Queensrÿche, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Cliff Richard, Roxette, Talk Talk, George Thorogood and the Destroyers, John Waite, Kim Wilde, and others. Later artists include Asia and Joss Stone.
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