In the final years of the 70's, as the punk/new-wave juggernaut was sweeping across the planet, a friend of mind happened upon an interesting piece of vinyl at a used record shop in Nashville, TN. Intriqued by its minimal, yet elegant cover art and colorful song titles like "Three Piece Suite" and "Parafinnalea", he forked over the buck or two and brought it home. It was a the enigmatically-titled album "Gardern Shed" by a band called England.
The music was clearly in the classic symphonic-prog vein. Comparisons to Yes and Genesis were inevitable, yet I was more able to draw comparions to PFM and Gentle Giant in their tonal palette and structural approach. Their lyrics tended to be quite narrative.... stories of souls imprisoned inside clocks, pastoral landscapes, puppet shows, and a musical take on "The Picture of Dorian Grey" were a welcome break from "topographic oceans" and "bridge computers". They had a unique and refreshing approach to the prog form for that era, when most of the pantheon of seventies prog-bands' best days were behind them. I was hooked.
My friend was generous enough to provide cassette copies of Garden Shed for his die-hard progressive rock friends, including me. For the next several years, I played my dub 'til the oxide was flaking off of the tape. Then I sought out my friend and got a new dub, which I safely stored away. I also kept a vigilant eye out for my own copy of this holy grail of prog albums... to no avail.
Fast forward to the early 90's and the emergence of the internet. As soon as I went online, I discovered a community of people, like myself, who still had an affinity for progressive rock (What a revelation, I wasn't alone!). I posted inquiries about Garden Shed and soon learned that a Japanese CD reissue of Garden Shed (unauthorized, I later learned) was recently seen on the shelves of a shop in Indiana. A few phone calls and I finally had my own copy.
Now to the present... around October of 2000, on a whim, I tried searching for the names of the various members of England on Google. After some judicious search queries and a few educated guesses I stumbled acorss the email address for Robert Webb, the keyboardist of England. I sent him a tentative "fan" email with a few questions I have always wondered about re. Garden Shed and England. To my surprise, he responded with a wealth of information. We began a dialog, which has resulted in this web site. Robert has provided me with a band bio and pictures, and he and I are in the process of reconstructing the fabled "lyric book" to Garden Shed. All of these things are included in this site. He has also attempted to put me in touch with the other members (to date, I've only heard back from Martin Henderson, bass) with the goal of doing and interview with them for Progression Magazine. I'm also working with him to hopefully make available mp3's of some of their unreleased material.
To England, and to all of those progressive fans out there who still keep the faith, I dedicate this site.
Allen
Welty-Green,
7-19-01
Atlanta, Georgia
PS...
if you're curoius about me, here are some links to check out: