Tiny Mammoth Concert: Bruce Woolley deserves a revival

It’s Sunday again, which means another off topic music post.

Bruce Woolley should have been a contender. He co-wrote “Video Killed the Radio Star” but it wasn’t his version of the song that became a hit; his friends The Buggles — playing up the retro quirkiness of the song and adding the “owa owas” that Woolley’s version lacked — grabbed that slot for themselves.

Woolley’s keyboardist in his band the Camera Club was a gentleman known as Thomas Dolby, who as we all know went on to far greater fame as a solo act after leaving Woolley behind. Woolley also co-wrote Slave to the Rhythm, but it was Grace Jones who went on to be a sexy James Bond villain.

You get the idea.

Woolley deserved — and deserves — better. His one album — released in 1979, known as Bruce Woolley and the Camera Club in the US and English Garden in the UK — is chock full of amazingly catchy songs. There isn’t a bad song in the bunch.

So why didn’t he get bigger? Record company shenanigans? A sound that didn’t quite fit in any of the conventional categories at the time? Or was it the slight hesitation, the air of diffidence, in his rock star moves as the front man in his band?

I don’t know, but I played the hell out of the album back in the day and still dig it out on the regular. Woolley went on to live a busy life as a songwriter, producer and theremin player, but he really should have been a star.

Here are a couple of live videos of Woolley and his band.

This one features a somewhat truncated version of “Video Killed the Radio Star.”

And here’s his entire album — the American version, at least, which has the best version of “Video.”

So what have you all been listening to lately?

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