Shrub Me Crazy

Stirring from rock’s tomb of oblivion, Midlands garage punk-Dada. Help!

Ian Harrison

The Very Things The Bushes Scream While My Daddy Prunes REFLEX, 1984 ‘SHEND’ IS an Old English word meaning to put to shame, ruin and confusion. Redditch youngster Chris Harz first heard it on word-based TV panel show Call My Bluff, and adopted it as his artistic alter-ego. “I added the definite article ‘The’,” he explains, “as I was the only one.” This striving for uniqueness would extend to The Cravats, the Beefheart/Pere Ubu-charged punks formed the day after bassist-voice Shend and his guitarist-vocalist neighbour Rob Dallaway saw The Stranglers play Brum punk nexus Barbarella’s on June 1, 1977. Recording two albums, seven singles and four John Peel sessions, Dallaway characterises their time as, “five years of bloody-mindedness, noise and weirdness… and spectacular career mismanagement. We didn’t stop doing stuff, we just needed a…

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MOJO (Digital) - 1 Issue, December 2021

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