When Geoff Downes was invited, along with fellow Buggles co-founder Trevor Horn, to join Yes just before 1980′s Drama, the keyboardist was taking over a seat once warmed by the legendarily talented, and memorably caped Rick Wakeman.

John Payne, who has continued with Asia after the band’s initial lineup reformed, issued a new single recently. He says that might be the way Asia Featuring John Payne goes forward, in an age of declining album sales.

I’m not sure what I was expecting from this new collaboration between Geoff Downes (Asia, Yes, the Buggles) and Chris Braide (The Producers). Whatever you call it, though, Pictures of You is compulsively listenable.

Whether it was intended or not, Asia did much to thwart internet piracy by naming its new album XXX.

When you saw that Nektar was working with Billy Sherwood — a guy whose Rolodex needs its own boarding pass — you might have guessed that an all-star album was on the way courtesy of Cleopatra Records. You would have been right.

Getting the music right, after all of these years, is in many ways the easy part. What changes, inevitably, for bands of Asia’s vintage are the vocals.

Despite the many permutations that Asia ultimately took, Geoff Downes says has always felt the original quartet would reunite one day. There simply was too much chemistry between them, Downes says in a new talk with Geeks of Doom.

With names like these, with pedigrees like these, you might be expecting this Supertramp tribute project to become a somewhat academic affair. Instead, these guys sound like they’re having a blast

Geoff Downes, who’ll finish the year touring with both Asia and Yes, joins us for a special edition of One Track Mind to talk about key moments with both bands

Keyboardist Geoff Downes has never been busier, working by turns with each of the three bands he’s been associated with off and on since the turn of the 1980s — Yes, the Buggles and Asia.