An oral history of Eddie Halliwell's 'Bosh! 12 Sizzling Bangers' mix CD

Immortalised within dance music folklore, Eddie Halliwell's hard house and trance extravaganza remains one of the most iconic mixes in Mixmag's history. 'Bosh! 12 Sizzling Bangers', the accompanying cover mix CD to our January 2002 issue, captured the imaginations of ‘avin it appreciators young and old. Tough-edged, bouncy, with a cheeky scratch at its finale, ’Bosh!’ became a staple of many an after party and laid the groundwork for the Wigan-born DJ and Gatecrasher resident's ascension to clubland stardom.

To mark 24 years of 'Bosh! 12 Sizzling Bangers' we spoke to three key people responsible for bringing the legendary mix to life: its creator Eddie Halliwell; former Mixmag music editor Gavin Herlihy, who was behind the decision to commission the mix; and DJ and designer Peter Rogers, one half of drum ‘n’ bass duo Technimatic, who created the mix CD's artwork.

Read their reflections on 'Bosh!' below and watch this space to give the original mix by Eddie Halliwell a listen. Boshhhhhh.

Wear your 'Bosh!' with pride with Mixmag's new limited-edition T-shirt.

Do you remember the process of putting together 'BOSH!'? Where did the idea come from?

Gavin Herlihy, former Mixmag Music Editor: At the time, hard house, trance and cyberkids occupied a huge subcultural space in the UK. Every weekend, tens of thousands of cyberkids flocked to the various hotbeds of the scene. It wasn't fashionable or cool in the eyes of the fashion press or elitist music magazines, but it was nonetheless a moment in UK music history. The stars of the scene prior to Eddie were mostly giants of the pre-2000s “golden” era of trance; Oakie, Paul Van Dyk Tiësto, etc. Trance at its heart has its roots in continental Europe and the UK was very much a secondary front, but by the early 2000s, it was such a part of UK clubbing identity that at times trance and hard house felt almost as British as tea and toast. Eddie Halliwell's rise to prominence coincided with this cyberkid subculture approaching boiling point and generating its own heroes in the process, and 'Bosh!' felt like a way of capturing that spirit in a CD.

Eddie Halliwell, DJ: Going back years, there was a pub called The Howard in Sheffield, and it was where everyone used to get together after Gatecrasher. There was a guy, a writer for Mixmag called Paul French, and he was there and saw me playing, and it started from there. I became a Gatecrasher resident, and Paul ended up joining me on a “road trip” in the magazine, then the idea came about. I always hated putting stuff down on tapes – I always tried to get people to see me live. I ended up sitting down with Ralph Moore [former Mixmag Editor-at-large] in Manchester. At the time, I was really reluctant to do it, it was just really early on. I wasn't sure how it was going to be received.

Where did the name 'Bosh!' come from?

Eddie Halliwell: That was Mixmag. I think a couple of other CDs got released, and it was getting banded about. Marco V did a mix, and something was bosh-related on his CD too. They just came up with it. They called it a hard house scratch mix, but it wasn't hard house really, it was a mixture of different styles.

Gavin Herlihy: The music and Eddie's style of mixing was direct and in your face, so it felt appropriate to name it with something true to form.

What was going through your head when you created the mix, Eddie?

Eddie Halliwell: I was trying to get the best tracks at that time, dealing with someone at Mixmag to get them licensed, then I recorded the final cut at Testarossa Studios in Manchester. Playing live and playing to people at home, it changes things, though. It's difficult to gauge if you've gone too far, or the transition is too quick, whether things should be more dynamic and have more breathing space – you can work that out when you have people in front of you. It's the same with something like an Essential Mix — the visual aspect is so important. I think that's probably why I did that scratch at the end... some people love it, some people don't.

Where did the concept behind the sleeve design come from?

Peter Rogers, former Mixmag designer and later Art Director: I think the thought process was, 'Bosh!' immediately screamed a brand name, like Flash or Cillit Bang. Then we were thinking, what's something that's very recognisable, very British, very universal? You can't get much more universal than a tin of beans — and the colour scheme was blue and light grey, which I think was probably hinting towards Tesco Value [laughs]. You know, Eddie was very popular with students, and I remember when I was a student, I ate so many tins of Tesco Value beans. What I can't remember is... if that tin of beans was lifesize or not. Quite often, when we did photoshoots, we used to photograph things much bigger than they were in real life. So for a long time we had a Mitsubishi pill in the office that was [puts hands up either side of his head] around this size, just for it to be tiny in a picture, but look really good quality. I'd love to know where that massive pill went.

Do you remember the photoshoot of Eddie with the cat and the beans?

Peter Rogers: Angus Mill did the photography of the CD sleeve itself, he was the photographer that we'd use to do lots of different jobs at the magazine — a sort of all-rounder, he'd go out and shoot stock footage for us, then also go out and do club shoots, that kind of stuff.

Eddie Halliwell: It was a normal sized tin of beans, they took the wrapper off and had the 'Bosh!' label printed to stick on the tin. We actually did that photoshoot at home, and the cat eating out of the tin of beans is our pet cat, Mooch. We actually couldn't get her to come up to the table and look at the tin for ages, so we had to put some cat food in it.

Can you remember what you thought of the 'Bosh!' mix when you first heard it?

Gavin Herlihy: To be honest, trance and hard house were never my thing. I was always a house and techno kid, but I knew a good DJ when I heard one, and Eddie was such a freakishly good DJ that he was hard not to spot! I'm proud that you can hear a vinyl DJ hard at work on that CD, and the energy and journey are top-tier. A good DJ transcends genre if their ability to tell a story is potent enough. The second CD ['Next Level Bosh!'] was perhaps a lot more my thing, thanks to tracks like Renato Cohen 'Pontapé', but selecting DJs to play music I liked was not what the job was about! It was about reflecting what was happening up and down the country every weekend.

Eddie Halliwell: Honestly, when it came to posting the mix off... I was that reluctant, I nearly didn't post it down. So I was gobsmacked and overwhelmed by the reception it got.

Did you expect 'Bosh!' to have the impact it did?

Gavin Herlihy: It was immediately apparent that it had caught a moment, and we received a lot of letters about it for sure. Eddie was such an underground hero at that time that other magazines weren't writing about, so giving him the pedestal was a gamble. But within months of the first CD coming out and watching Eddie's rise to superstardom take shape every quickly, it was clear we had backed the right horse.

Peter Rogers: I was only the designer, but there was this mood in the office - we were quite a tight-knit group - you understood it was coming at exactly the right time. He wasn't exactly as big as Carl Cox, and it felt like Mixmag was on it at just the right time. And fair play to Eddie, it's not my kind of music, but whatever he did — he obviously nailed that mix in a big way.

Eddie Halliwell: Surprisingly when it first came out, people were on message boards saying it wasn't real, and the scratching on it wasn't real. So my brother came up with the idea to go and do it live, and I was thinking: “People don't want to hear it, they've already got the CD so why would they want to hear it live?”. But they really did, people were absolutely buzzing, and that's where the first 'Bosh! The Tour' came about.

How does it feel to know a new generation of listeners will be giving it their first go?

Gavin Herlihy: The timing is quite appropriate as trance and hard house are both having a moment again, even if just in a postmodern way more than a cultural resurgence of cyberkid culture. There are lots of classics and modern day examples of both genres being played by current DJs for example, but as yet, unless I'm mistaken, the cyberkids have not really made a major reappearance to accompany the music, which is a shame. Music fashion now is a little too samey. It's hard to tell a fan of one subgenre from another. If anything, I hope new readers getting into the scene get inspired by the cyberkids or the club kids of the 1980s who came before them, and instead of repeating the same look, I hope they are inspired to create their own distinct look that is counter-cultural and sticks two fingers up at everyone else. And like the punks and cybers, if the snobs mock you for what you're wearing, you know you're doing something right.

Peter Rogers: What's funny about it is, I look back at it, you can do that photo of that tin with AI in about five seconds now — but I've really not done the best job on those beans [laughs]. The text is a little bit wavy, a bit wonky, but I think that does add to the charm of it. I don't think we thought about it much in the moment; it was a busy office, and we were probably onto the next thing quite quickly. But you never know which of these things are going to become quite iconic and which are not, and which are going to get lost. Really amazing to think it's still going after all these years.

Eddie Halliwell: To be talking about this still 20-odd years later is unbelievable. It's good to see that the new generation is getting into more energy in music. You see things go round in cycles so much – it's kind of the same thing that happened back then, which you notice a lot more when you've been in music as long as I have.

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