English Garden (album)
English Garden, released in North America as Bruce Woolley and the Camera Club, is a studio album by Bruce Woolley and his new wave band the Camera Club. The band consisted of Woolley on vocals, Matthew Seligman on bass, Rod Johnson on drums, Dave Birch on guitar, and Thomas Dolby on keyboards.
Before forming the group, Woolley was creating pop songs intended for publishing companies, but he was not happy with what the artists were doing with his songs and decided to write material for himself.
Recorded at Eden Studios in London, English Garden was released in most territories by Epic Records, while in North America the album was distributed by CBS Records. Singles from English Garden included the title track, "Video Killed the Radio Star", "Clean, Clean" and "Dancing with the Sporting Boys". Most reviews of English Garden were very positive, one reviewer even calling it ahead of other releases in its genre. "Video Killed the Radio Star" and "Clean, Clean" would later be recorded and popularized by The Buggles, which Woolley was a founding member of.
Background
Bruce Woolley started writing and recording pop songs at home with Revox equipment during his school years: "I was playing guitar but floundering about without direction." This made him start making songs specifically for music publishing companies, and he was eventually hired by someone to do so. He had spent eighteen months writing compositions for other artists, but did not appreciate what they were doing with his songs. He decided to quit this position and write songs for himself, meeting producer Mike Hurst and his manager Chris Bough, who was also well known for being manager for singer-songwriter Cat Stevens. Thus, Woolley financed to form his band which he called the Camera Club, which, in addition to him being the vocalist, had Matthew Seligman on bass, Rod Johnson on drums, Dave Birch on guitar, and Thomas Dolby on keyboards. Recorded in Eden Studios in London, English Garden was engineered by Richard Goldblatt with assistance from Nick T. Froom.Meanwhile, Woolley had also formed a group with Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes called the Buggles in 1977, recording demos of tracks such as "Clean, Clean" and "Video Killed the Radio Star". Woolley had left the group to form the Camera Club by the time the Buggles were signed to Island Records in 1979, and the band recorded both songs for English Garden. Many writers called Woolley's recording of "Video" much better than the Buggles' version. This included one critic who called both acts overall as of being very high quality, but felt that Woolley's version was more faithful to the source material than that of the Buggles, noting the filtered vocals and cute, female vocals of the latter rendition as giving it a novelty feel. However, he also wrote of liking both versions of "Clean, Clean" on the same level.