forever's better

I remember thinking I was great doing that little acousticy guitar thing at the beginning, I was trying to do my version of Sugar's "If I can't change your mind then no one will". I think this our shortest song. Just one guitar and one vocal. We recorded it for a Japanese compiation cd on behaviour saviour.

the sun is exploding into your heart

I set to work on recording some new songs on my own. I did an almost carbon copy of She walks away, the title of which at the moment escapes me, but I do remember recycling some of the lyrics years later for the kosmonaut song Superman ("Walked to the ocean the ocean was blue thought that I saw you but it wasn't you" don't ask me why I would want want to recycle those lyrics but I did!). I also did a demo version of Sarah Said complete with birds singing outside the back window of 26 Lambton Street, (I hung my PZM microphone out the window for half an hour until I got some nice sounds) I'd been listening to the TVP's "I know where Syd Barrett lives" quite a lot at the time. The third song was called Recollections and was my favourite because the chorus reminded me of the Jam's Dreamtime, listening to it now it's only vaguely reminiscent of that song.

nothing else mattered

The letter from Albert was sent to my Mam and Dads' house , the day I got it was the day that I was going to Darlington hospital to have an x-ray done on my back to see what damage I had done to it at work, striding along to the x-ray department without a care in the world. I couldn't believe I had someone wanting to actually release one of my songs on a record, suddenly my back pain didn't really matter, nothing else mattered. I'd got what I had always wanted since I first started buying records back in 1978 , I had wanted to be in a band so much and have records released , I tried to get all sorts of people to buy instruments and start and band but no one was that fussed, now finally my dream was nearer to coming true, but Geoff was too busy with the Lavender Faction, shit! I was going to have to try and do it one my own, oh no!

the clarts was the start

It has been quite a few years now since Bulldozer Crash were formed and I know that there are not very many people who have heard of them. but they were my first band and I wanted to document the songs and stories behind them and I thought that a blog might be the best/easiest way to do it. I am hoping that other members and people involved might want to add there comments and feelings and corrections about the songs and the band aswell, I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

This is my version anyway....originally the band were Stephen Maughan (thats me!) and Geoff Suggett and we were called Bulldozer Clarts but no-one apart from me liked the name. We recorded one song a Jesus and Marychain/Pale Saints rip-off called "She walks away" on my old Fostex X-15 4 track tape recorder in Geoff's spare bedroom. If my memory serves me well Geoff's wife was in hospital having her appendix removed. Incredibly lo-fi but it hopefully displays a certain charm? Download the MP3 and make up your own mind.... shewalks4TRACK.mp3

Geoff at the time was also in the Lavender Faction and big things were happening with them so I decided to carry on the band on my own, ten years later we formed another band called Kosmonaut and re-recorded a new version of it which was released on the German Firestation Towers record label .
The clarts version of the song was originally released on a compilation tape that I released called Positively Teenage (thanks to Malcolm Reay of the Gravy Train for the title), the tape also came with a fanzine with a page written by all the bands , as it was a last minute decision to put "She walks away" on the cassette I decided not to do a Bulldozer Clarts page, instead I just wrote on the back page "Bulldozer Clarts are currently busy touring the UK with the Pale Saints" or words to that effect, I have often wondered if it was that sentence that urged Albert Yu (a big Pale Saints fan) to write and ask if he could release the song on a label that he was about to start(?).