#bogshed

[illicitizen]

worthless essentials?

[hontokana]

Bogshed - Adventure Of Dog (1986, UK)

[stillunusual]

Time's Up (issue #2) YEAR: 1986 CREATED BY: Peter Hall, Anne Hall, Andy Boot, Mike Bryson, Barry Crouch, Kevin Leyland, James Neiss and Clive Tanner LOCATION: Chelmsford SIZE: A4 WHAT'S INSIDE.... There's nothing wrong with naming your fanzine after one of the Buzzcocks' finest moments and there's not a lot wrong with the contents of the second issue of Time's Up. I particularly like the interview with Bid, singer with the highly underrated Monochrome Set, who brightened up the post-punk world with wonderful singles like "He's Frank" and "Eine Symphonie Des Grauens". They split up in 1985 but have since got back together again more than once.... Other bands featured include A Primary Industry (John Peel apparently referred to them as "Chelmsford's finest"), The Mighty Lemon Drops, Vee VV, The Chills and Bogshed (one of the mid-1980s indie bands that Peel described as "shambling", ie deliberately amateurish). There's also a short article about Sonic Youth, who spent much of 1986 touring Europe and America to promote the "EVOL" album as well as releasing their awesome cover version of Madonna's "Into The Groove" (under the pseudonym Ciccone Youth).... Time's Up also pays tribute to Steve Barker's magnificent On The Wire radio show, which began on BBC Radio Blackburn (now Radio Lancashire) in September 1984 and always featured an eclectic mix of "UK indie releases, US hip hop, reggae, hardcore and other US bands, jazz, blues, gospel....indeed anything that Steve thinks deserves to be played on the radio. All this plus local bands' demo tapes, interviews with bands, phone-in competitions - and Steve's relaxed down-to-earth comments". On The Wire was the first UK radio show to regularly play electro, hip hop, house and techno music, mixed up with alternative, experimental and avant-garde music of all genres. The reggae content generally included a heavy dose of releases from Adrian Sherwood's On-U-Sound label (the show's theme tune was provided by Sherwood's band Dub Syndicate). I've been a listener since the mid-1980s, when On The Wire could only be heard in the north west of England (although Steve's reputation soon spread further afield because so many of his listeners recorded the show and shared the tapes with their discerning mates across the rest of the UK and beyond). I still regularly tune in on MixCloud (the BBC eventually axed On The Wire in 2020 but Steve carried on regardless). Top Of The Pops, BBC television's flagship chart show from 1964 to 2006, is described in slightly less reverential terms. In addition, there are some fanzine and new music reviews, an interview with footballer Pat Nevin (who appeared in a fair number of 1980s fanzines on account of the fact that he had decent taste in music), a brief look back at the 1950s and an appreciation of writer Peter Tinniswood. Vintage comedy genius Tony Hancock and mid-1980s anti-comic (and all-round misfit) Ted Chippington also get honourable mentions.... On top of all that, Barry Crouch's guide to Braintree, Essex and his quick capsule review of the mid-1980s music scene are definitely worth a read. Click on the title above to see scans of all the zine's pages.... my box of 1980s fanzines flickr

[apdistractions]

Bogshed - artwork by Mike Bryson

[sonofshermy]

[fruitierthanthou]

BOGSHED John Peel 14th April 1987

[altruisticpervert]

bogshed - morning sir! (1986) the gnarly ron johnson side of c86 was pretty cool too edit: bogshed weren't on ron johnson i am so ashamed

[spilladabalia]

Bogshed - I Said No To Lemon Mash

[musickickztoo]

RIP  Mike Bryson  † November 10, 2022

[apdistractions]

Bogshed - Bog-Set (artwork by Mike Bryson)

[mr-ig]

On Bogshed

Yes, the name. Yes. Unavoidable, so let's get it over with. No band has ever conquered the world, or even small parts of it, with a name like 'Bogshed'. Aware of that obstacle themselves, there's an entertaining anecdote, re-told in the notes accompanying a splendid 'Bog-set' reissue of their back catalogue on CD, in which the foursome head to the pub to thrash out a better moniker. After many hours and many pints, they manage nothing better than 'Tarty Lad'. They couldn't help themselves, that's the thing.

And they were widely reviled for it, more's the pity. I do wonder, in passing, if they'd have been quite so thoroughly sneered at if they'd hailed from somewhere less unfashionable (then, if not now) than Hebden Bridge, but they were frequently held up as a scapegoat for all that was wrong with mid-eighties indie: a miserable lack of ambition dressed up as bold independence, a dearth of skill masquerading as an artistic choice. They weren't helped in that by John Peel, who despite being an ardent admirer of the band, hung the word "shambling" around their necks. History insists on telling us that they'd have been long forgotten were it not for an appearance on the NME's C86 cassette.

None of that seems terribly fair, really. Along with Peel, and regardless of the C86 legend, and in spite of there now only being one member still alive, some of us have continued to remember Bogshed with huge fondness as the years have passed. They were an oddity then, they're an oddity now.

What they weren't, however, was wilfully obscure: the mis-labelling of their sound seems particularly frustrating given that, actually, it was remarkably easy to grasp if you bothered to try. Repetitive to the point of making the Fall sound like a free-jazz experiment, the beauty of the perfect Bogshed song is in establishing a simple and entirely logical riff, often led by Mike Bryson's chunky bass and then filled in with Mark McQuaid's spindly guitar before Tris King's drums pin it all to the floor, and then not changing it very much at all for three minutes. If you don't like the first ten seconds, there's nothing for you here. If, on the other hand, those seconds get your foot a-tapping, you're in for a right old treat, my friend.

Pretty much every Bogshed song is a joyous interlocking of those functional drum-bass-guitar parts, a firm-but-fun rhythm section which merrily barrels along underneath Phil Hartley's vocals. Those vocals are bold, sometimes squawky; they're distinguished from the post-punk crowd by a vague air of vaudeville, a whiff of end-of-the-pier entertainment. Even at his shoutiest, you knew that Hartley could be a crooner if he felt so inclined. The lyrics were odd, full of curious characters and surreal references, nostalgic and a bit parochial and occasionally somewhat bawdy, always loaded with Hartley's personality. Even when you didn't know what on earth he was banging on about, there was much to enjoy.

Viewed from the right angle, ignoring the warts and the boils, their essential jauntiness, their geniality, was inescapable. There are very few songs in their catalogue which won't leave you feeling just a little merrier than when they began. Bogshed wrote pop songs for singing in the shower, played them as if people would shake a leg on the dancefloor. Not their fault - name aside - if nobody did either.

Of the box set contents, the disk of Peel sessions is of particular academic interest. As so often, the Maida Vale recordings appear to capture the band as they actually wanted to sound; the rest of their output captures how they could afford to sound. There must be hundreds of bands of whom that's true. The first session, from 1985, finds a band clearly indebted to the muscular sound of the Membranes, on whose label they released a clattering first EP, also included; each subsequent session refines it just a little, fencing off their own patch amid a scene crowded with potential rivals. The different elements become clearer, the intentions less febrile.

Elsewhere, the first album, "Step On It", continues to be a personal favourite, even if its production only seems to have got thinner over the years. Even the cheapest studio can't suck the life out of these wonderful songs entirely, though: the scurrying absurdity of "Fastest Legs", the preposterous glam strut of "Mechanical Nun", the seesaw saaandwiiich-baar lurch of "Adventure Of Dog". A particular soft spot has always been occupied by "Tommy Steele Record", with its gentle trundling bassline and nostalgic tales of chip papers and childhood bed times; no other band of that era would've come up with something so unapologetically warm, so lacking in devilment. It's just a charming song, and it appears to aspire no higher (or lower).

"Brutal", its 1987 follow-up, broadens the palette considerably, but too late to win the wider attention it deserved. There are moments of genuine darkness; there's a punkish anger at play too; Hartley has diversified his range of accents; the differences of opinion that'd make it their last record are pretty easy to spot. And yet there's still a lightness too: "Loaf" releases Hartley's inner crooner to curiously touching effect, "No To Lemon Mash" is knowingly and gleefully ridiculous even by their standards. When they stick with the tried and tested formula, they've rarely been better: "Excellent Girl" is a riotous hoedown of a song, while album opener "Raise The Girl", thrust forward by a relentless chin-jutting riff which just gets more and more insistent for four minutes, would surely have been an indie disco staple if it'd belonged to a cooler band. They never were that band, though. When push came to shove, I'm not sure that they really wanted to be. Not enough, anyway. All four of them came up with that name, none of the four came up with something more sensible to replace it. They were Bogshed, they lived in a cottage on a hillside, they made a jovial racket that you'd never mistake for anyone else. If you succumbed to their charms, you took them warts and boils and all. 

[sonofshermy]

[fruitierthanthou]

BOGSHED John Peel 25th February 1986 

[urbanism-determinism]